''The Delicate Prey and Other Stories'' is a collection of 17 works of short fiction by

Paul Bowles Paul Frederic Bowles (; December 30, 1910November 18, 1999) was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. He became associated with the Moroccan city of Tangier, where he settled in 1947 and lived for 52 years to the end of his ...

, published in 1950 by Random House. 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. Bowles, at the time of its publication, was known primarily for his work as an American

modernist composer The following is a list of modernist composers. In music, modernism is an aesthetic stance underlying the period of change and development in musical language that occurred around the turn of the 20th century, a period of diverse reactions in ...

. ''The Delicate Prey and Other Stories'' established him as a notable literary talent. The stories published in this collection include a number of ''chef-d'oeuvres'', including "

A Distant Episode "A Distant Episode" is a short story by Paul Bowles. Written in 1945, it was first published in the Partisan Review (January–February 1947) and republished in '' New Directions in Prose and Poetry'', #10 in 1948. It is also the title piece in a ...

", "

Pages from Cold Point "Pages from Cold Point" is a short story by Paul Bowles. It was first published in the Autumn 1949 issue of ''Wake: The Creative Magazine''. It was republished in ''New Directions in Prose and Poetry'' #11 (December 1949). It later appeared in a ...

" and "

The Delicate Prey "The Delicate Prey" is a piece of short fiction by Paul Bowles. It was written in 1949 and first published in Paris in the summer 1949 issue of the small literary journal ''Zero''. In 1950, Random House presented the story in the collection of Bow ...

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 "Pages from Cold Point" is a short story by Paul Bowles. It was first published in the Autumn 1949 issue of ''Wake: The Creative Magazine''. It was republished in ''New Directions in Prose and Poetry'' #11 (December 1949). It later appeared in a ...

'' * '' you are not i'' * ''how many midnights'' * ''a thousand days to mokhatar'' * '' tea on the mountain'' * ''by the water'' * '' delicate prey'' * ''

a distant episode "A Distant Episode" is a short story by Paul Bowles. Written in 1945, it was first published in the Partisan Review (January–February 1947) and republished in '' New Directions in Prose and Poetry'', #10 in 1948. It is also the title piece in a ...

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." 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." The characters are impelled towards alien and strange territory, both physically and psychologically, challenging their Western cultural assumptions. Bowles's "unmistakably modern" thematic concerns" are demonstrated by his "depiction of violence and terror." 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. 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: 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."Tóibín, 2007 Literary critic

Francine Prose Francine Prose (born April 1, 1947) is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and critic. She is a visiting professor of literature at Bard College, and was formerly president of PEN American Center. Life and career Born in Brookl ...

observes:

Footnotes

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 ''Harper's Magazine'' is a monthly magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts. Launched in New York City in June 1850, it is the oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the U.S. (''Scientific American'' is older, b ...

. 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 Lif''e, by

Virginia Spencer Carr Virginia Spencer Carr (July 21, 1929 – April 10, 2012) was a biographer of Carson McCullers, John Dos Passos and Paul Bowles. Carr was also a college professor for more than 25 years at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia, and Geo ...

London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review of ...

, 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. {{DEFAULTSORT:Delicate Prey and Other Stories 1950 short story collections Short story collections by Paul Bowles Random House books