Avoid the Orient

Colm Tóibín

• BuyPaul Bowles: A Life by Virginia Spencer Carr
  Peter Owen, 431 pp, £19.95, July 2005, ISBN 0 7206 1254 3

Long before the sin of Orientalism was discovered, Paul Bowles had frequently been guilty of it, in word, in thought and in deed. In his first stories, for example, the natives are shining examples of naked otherness, created partly to refresh our view concerning the mixture of simplicity, guile and sexual beauty available in remote places. The white heroes, on the other hand, are neurotic and complex. Against artless allure, they have technology and a gnarled consciousness. When left to their own devices, the natives are cruel and irrational, in need of guidance and tips and the wisdom of Western laws and the bright, clear line of Western narrative. Bowles’s trick as a narrator is to make each side as unreliable as the other. While one side merely look like animals, the others, travelling with money and attitude, act like animals whenever they can, or else feel sorry for themselves when opportunities to do so do not come in sufficient quantity.