The Blind Spot Hubert Martin

tunity to ditch him). His story seems to demand precisely the non-committal narrative melodrama that Bowles previouly devoted to interracial amours and murders. It is impeded all along the way with explanations, generally well phrased, though somehow always lacking in finality or authority. In addition, the American character, a novelist, seems to have no business being there at all: he is merely a more sympathetic figure in Bowles’ gallery of tourists and expatriates hypnotized by a concept of primitive freshness and vitality. Bowles’ striving for balance and perspective has resulted in patient, or even labored, spelling-out of Amar’s story. The same striving has removed from this book the melodrama of his earlier works, in which Americans and Europeans are just drawn into the whirlpool. Here they are plain dumb: far from being pulled by some D. H. Lawrence-like appeal of the primitive, they merely haven’t sense enough to get out.

It may be that the fact that Bowles is writing for Americans like the American girl in this book accounts for the excessive detail about Amar’s motives and reasoning. And it may be that, without the American novelist in the story to provide the point of view, the picture of French policy would be over-simplified.

Featured Tags

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Adolf Hitler

tunity to ditch him). His story seems to demand precisely the non-committal narrative melodrama that Bowles previouly devoted to interracial amours and murders. It is impeded all along the way with explanations, generally well phrased, though somehow always lacking in finality or authority. In addition, the American character, a novelist, seems to have no business being there at all: he is merely a more sympathetic figure in Bowles’ gallery of tourists and expatriates hypnotized by a concept of primitive freshness and vitality. Bowles’ striving for balance and perspective has resulted in patient, or even labored, spelling-out of Amar’s story. The same striving has removed from this book the melodrama of his earlier works, in which Americans and Europeans are just drawn into the whirlpool. Here they are plain dumb: far from being pulled by some D. H. Lawrence-like appeal of the primitive, they merely haven’t sense enough to get out.

It may be that the fact that Bowles is writing for Americans like the American girl in this book accounts for the excessive detail about Amar’s motives and reasoning. And it may be that, without the American novelist in the story to provide the point of view, the picture of French policy would be over-simplified.