The Delicate Prey and Other Stories explained

The Delicate Prey and Other Stories
Author:	Paul Bowles
Country:	United States
Language:	English
Publisher:	Random House (US)
Release Date:	1950
Media Type:	Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages:	307 pp
Isbn:	0-88001-263-3

The Delicate Prey and Other Stories is a collection of 17 works of short fiction by Paul Bowles, published in 1950 by Random House.^{[1] [2]}

Typical of Bowles's oeuvre, the majority of the stories in this volume are set in Latin American and North Africa. Only two are set in the United States.^{[3] [4] [5]}

Bowles, at the time of its publication, was known primarily for his work as an American modernist composer. The Delicate Prey and Other Stories established him as a notable literary talent.^{[6] [7] [8]} The stories published in this collection include a number of chef-d'oeuvres, including "A Distant Episode", "Pages from Cold Point" and "The Delicate Prey".^[9]

Stories

• at paso rojo
• pastor dowe at tacaté
• call at corazon
• under the sky
• señor ong and señor ha
• the circular valley
• the echo
• the scorpion
• the fourth day out from santa cruz
• pages from cold point
• you are not i
• how many midnights
• a thousand days to mokhatar
• tea on the mountain
• by the water
• delicate prey
• a distant episode

Theme and style

One of the unifying features of the stories in this collection are their settings: many of them occur in regions foreign to most Americans, including North Africa and Latin America. From these settings arise Bowles's "thematic concerns."^[10] Author Gore Vidal notes that "Landscape is all-important in a Bowles story" and Bowles himself remarked: "It seems a practical procedure to let the place determine the characters who will inhabit it."^{[11] [12]} The characters are impelled towards alien and strange territory, both physically and psychologically, challenging their Western cultural assumptions.^{[13] [14]}

Bowles's "unmistakably modern" thematic concerns" are demonstrated by his "depiction of violence and terror."^[15] The violent episodes that appear in the stories of this collection have been widely remarked upon, as well as the style in which they are rendered.^{[16] [17] [18]} Literary critic Allen Hibbard, though recognizing the "thorougly pessimistic" themes, traces Bowles's literary style to that of 19th Century authors, such as Flaubert, Turgenev and James:^[19]

Bowles, commenting on his own style: "I don't try to analyze the emotions of any of my characters. I don't give them emotions. You can explain a thought but not an emotion. You can't use emotions. There's nothing you can do with them."^[20]

Literary critic Francine Prose observes:

Sources

• Hibbard, Allen. 1993. Paul Bowles: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twayne Publishers. New York.
• Prose, Francine. 2002. The Coldest Eye: acting badly among the Arabs. Harper's Magazine. March 2002. https://harpers.org/archive/2002/03/the-coldest-eye/ Retrieved July 10, 2022.
• Tóibín, Colm. 2007. Avoid the Orient. Review, of Paul Bowles: A Life, by Virginia Spencer Carr. London Review of Books, Vol. 29 No. 1, January 4, 2007. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v29/n01/colm-toibin/avoid-the-orient Retrieved July 11, 2022.
• Vidal, Gore. 1979. Introduction to Paul Bowles; Collected Stories, 1939-1976. Black Sparrow Press. Santa Rosa. 2001.

Notes and References

1. Hibbard, 1993 p. 3: Random House "...brought out [the collection] in November, 1950..."
2. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/216157.The_Delicate_Prey_And_Other_Stories Good Reads description
3. Hibbard, 1993 p. 3, And p.xi: "One of the most distinguishing features of Bowles's fiction is his use of foreign settings."
4. Vidal, 1979: "The stories fall into rough categories…Mexico and North Africa are the principal settings. Landscape is all-important in a Bowles story."
5. Hibbard, 1993 p. 237
6. Hibbard, 1993 p. 12
7. Hibbard, 1993 p.ix: Vidal: "His stories are among the best ever written by an American…as a short story writer, he has few equals in the second half of the twentieth century."
8. Hibbard, 1993: The collection "established a range of themes…helped secure Bowles's literary reputation. These early works were responsible for creating in large part the image most readers and critics have of the author today [1993]."
9. Hibbard, 1993: "...'The Delicate Prey' and 'A Distant Episode, two stories for which Bowles is perhaps best known."
10. Hibbard, 1993 p.xii: "Bowles's thematic concerns arise from the experiences of his characters have in these foreign landscapes."
11. Hibbard, 1993 p.xi: "One of the most distinguishing features of Bowles's fiction is his use of foreign settings."
12. Vidal, 1979: "The stories fall into rough categories. First, locale. Mexico and North Africa are the principal settings. Landscape is all-important in a Bowles story.
    Hibbard, 1993 p. 237
    Hibbard, 1993: Bowles: "It seems a practical procedure to let the place determine the characters who will inhabit it."
13. Hibbard, 1993 p.xii
14. Prose, 2002: "Paul Bowles's obsessive subject is the tragic, even fatal mistakes that Westerners so commonly make in their misguided and often presumptuous encounters with the mysteries of a foreign culture."
15. Hibbard, 1993 p.xii
16. Hibbard, 1993 p.xii: "A sense of terror to which he subjects his characters and readers." And p. 239: Joyce Carol Oates: "...a horror far more persuasive than anything in Edgar Allan Poe."
17. Tóibín, 2007: Tennessee Williams: "It wasn't the Arabs I was afraid of while I was in Tangier; it was Paul Bowles, whose chilling stories filled me with horror.
18. Vidal, 1979: "...a sense of strangeness and terror…" in 'The Delicate Prey' and 'A Distant Episode.'"
19. Tóibín, 2007: On the passage in which the professor's tongue is cut out in "A Distant Episode': "The passage has all the hallmarks of Bowles. It is clearly written, coldly imagined, cruel and sensual at the same time."
20. Tóibín, 2007