Unwelcome Words

Fiction. In these seven new stories Paul Bowles ranges widely in time, in form, and in geographic area-from Massachusetts to Morocco, from 1932 to the 1970s. Portraits and contemporary scenes mix conventional narration with experimental monologues, and the volume concludes with a tale presented as six letters written to a bitter, dying man. The formal versatility is as arresting as the content. The whole is proof (if it were needed) that, as Gore Vidal remarks, Bowle's art is as disturbing as ever.