The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

On the cover of this book is this quote from the New Republic: 

It stands head and shoulders above most other novels published…since World War II. 

Ellen Degeneres was going on about those dots in quotes on her show once, saying regardless of all the good things a quote says you have no idea what they have left out with that ellipsis.  Her thoughts were you could always insert a “my ass” and make the quote entirely unflattering to the subject of the quote.  While grammatically that doesn’t work here, I can certainly appreciate the sentiment.

The Sheltering Sky was published in 1949  and has its share of well written scenes.  Another story about bored, privileged individuals (this time they are American) who live with such despair they must go to extremes to feel alive.  There is a couple, Port and Kit Moresby, and their friend, Tunner who have taken off on a whim to tour North Africa while World War II is raging in Europe.  Not the best idea anyone every had you might think and you’d be right.  

There’s some weird dynamic going on with the husband and wife who never share a hotel room or much of the way of trip activities, but internally go on about how much they love the other.  They’ve apparently invited Tunner along to help keep things with each other at arms’ length.  They visit some rather uncivilized places with less than stellar hotel accommodations, the food is questionable and the locals are not interested in having meaningful experiences with these foreigners any more than these foreigners are interested in finding out what makes the natives tick.  Also, the thought never seems to occur to these idiot Americans that what they are doing is foolhardy and dangerous. Horrendous things happen.    I don’t know what the point of any of it is exactly.

It isn’t a bad story, it did keep my interest, but it didn’t do anything for me either.  As far as the title there is a lot of talk about the sky, imagery about it being something that blocks out something beyond it.  The sky is the layer between Port and the unknown beyond.  Or something.  There is a lot of ridiculous, dramatic philosophizing going on in this book that I can’t make heads or tails of.  One  example:

And just as she was unable to shake off the dread that was always with her, he was unable to break out of the cage into which he had shut himself, the cage he had built long ago to save himself from love.

Say what?  And better yet, show me something in the story, tell me something that happens in this story, to back any of this up.  Somehow we are supposed to get the idea that these are two wounded souls struggling for some inner peace, to find some clarity in life, blah, blah, blah.  I just found most of it to be pretentious blither blather.

They made a movie of this one too, which I’m not sure I would waste my time on either.  Especially when one of the taglines refers to this story as some sort of erotic journey.  What happens in the second part of this book is hardly erotic, unless you consider being raped and held captive erotic.   My advice on the book and the movie both – don’t bother.

Next week:  Ernie reads another book by Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim.