Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T17:00:45.509Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Constructing the Postwar Art Novel: Paul Bowles, James Laughlin, and the Making of The Sheltering Sky

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Evan Brier
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper considers the story of the making of Paul Bowles's novel The Sheltering Sky as a case study for the emergence of the art novel as a commercial niche after World War II. Bowles's novel expresses disdain for American culture and depicts its characters' flight to the Sahara, but its subject matter contrasts with the story of the novel's creation: an unlikely collection of American mass-culture and high-culture institutions, including Doubleday, the William Morris Agency, and the avant-garde publisher New Directions, collaborated in the production and promotion of The Sheltering Sky. The story of the novel's making and of its immediate commercial success, the product of a New Directions marketing campaign that effectively advertised Bowles's distance from American culture, exemplifies a neglected aspect of postwar cultural history, when institutions from across the cultural spectrum recognized the existence of a growing market for avant-garde detachment. (EB)

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 121 , Issue 1: Special Topic: The History of the Book and the Idea of Literature , January 2006 , pp. 186 - 199
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Aldridge, John W. After the Lost Generation: A Critical Study of the Writers of Two Wars. New York: McGraw, 1951.Google Scholar
Barnhisel, Greg. “Ezra Pound, James Laughlin and New Directions: The Publisher as Spin Doctor.” Paideuma 29.3 (2000): 165–78.Google Scholar
Bender, Thomas. “Politics, Intellect, and the American University, 1945–1995.” American Academic Culture in Transformation. Ed. Bender, and Schorske, Carl E. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1998. 17–54.Google Scholar
Berkley, Miriam. “The Way It Was: James Laughlin and New Directions.” Publishers Weekly 22 Nov. 1985: 24–29.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Field of Cultural Production; or, The Economic World Reversed.” The Field of Cultural Production. Ed. Johnson, Randal. New York: Columbia UP, 1993. 29–73.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. “The Production of Belief: Contribution to an Economy of Symbolic Goods.” The Field of Cultural Production. Ed. Johnson, Randal. New York: Columbia UP, 1993. 71–111.Google Scholar
Bowles, Jane. Two Serious Ladies. My Sister's Hand in Mine: The Collected Works of Jane Bowles. New York: Noonday, 1995. 1–203.Google Scholar
Bowles, Paul. In Touch: The Letters of Paul Bowles. Ed. Miller, Jeffrey. New York: Farrar, 1994.Google Scholar
Bowles, Paul. Preface. Bowles, Sheltering Sky 5–6.Google Scholar
Bowles, Paul. The Sheltering Sky. New York: Ecco, 1998.Google Scholar
Bowles, Paul. Without Stopping. New York: Putnam's, 1972.Google Scholar
Butscher, Edward, and Malin, Irving, eds. Paul Bowles Issue. Spec. issue of Twentieth Century Literature 32 (1986): 225–450.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carr, Virginia Spencer. Paul Bowles: A Life. New York: Scribner's, 2004.Google Scholar
Cerf, Bennett. At Random: The Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf. New York: Random, 1977.Google Scholar
Chandler, Raymond. “Ten Percent of Your Life.” Atlantic Monthly Feb. 1952: 48–50.Google Scholar
Coser, Lewis A., Kadushin, Charles, and Powell, Walter W. Books: The Culture and Commerce of Publishing. New York: Basic, 1982.Google Scholar
Dickstein, Morris. Leopards in the Temple: The Transformation of American Fiction, 1945–1970. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2002.Google Scholar
Epstein, Jason. Book Business: Publishing Past Present and Future. New York: Norton, 2002.Google Scholar
Fiedler, Leslie. Love and Death in the American Novel. New York: Stein, 1975.Google Scholar
“Four New Writers: Unknown Names Fill the Publishers’ Lists.” Life 30 Jan. 1950: 35–36.Google Scholar
Friend, Tad. “Years in the Desert: The Sheltering Sky at Fifty.” New Yorker 15 Jan. 2001: 90.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Clement. “Avant-Garde and Kitsch.” Art and Culture: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon, 1989. 3–21.Google Scholar
Gussow, Mel. “James Laughlin, Publisher with Bold Taste, Dies at 83.” New York Times 14 Nov. 1997: D19.Google Scholar
Hall, Donald. “The Difference of James Laughlin.” Morrow 273–83.Google Scholar
Hepburn, James G. The Author's Empty Purse and the Rise of the Literary Agent. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1968.Google Scholar
Horkheimer, Max, and Adorno, Theodor W. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. Cumming, John. New York: Continuum, 2001.Google Scholar
Hout, Syrine C. “Grains of Utopia: The Desert as Literary Oasis in Paul Bowles's The Sheltering Sky and Wilfred Thesiger's Arabian Sands.” Utopian Studies 11 (2000): 112–36.Google Scholar
Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, Norman, ed. Culture for the Millions? Mass Media in Modern Society. Boston: Beacon, 1959.Google Scholar
Kaestle, Carl F., Damon-Moore, Helen, Stedman, Lawrence C., Tinsley, Katherine, and Trollinger, WilliamVance. Literacy in the United States: Readers and Reading since 1880. New Haven: Yale UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Kammen, Michael. American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the Twentieth Century. New York: Basic, 1999.Google Scholar
Laughlin, James. “New Directions: An Interview with James Laughlin.” Interview with Susan Howe. The Art of Literary Publishing: Editors on Their Craft. Ed. Henderson, Bill. Yonkers: Pushcart, 1980. 13–48.Google Scholar
Laughlin, James. “Some Irreverent Literary History.” Random Essays: Recollections of a Publisher. Mount Kisco: Moyer Bell, 1989. 221–25.Google Scholar
Lehmann-Haupt, Hellmut. The Book in America. 2nd rev. Amer. ed. New York: Bowker, 1951.Google Scholar
Levertov, Denise. Collected Earlier Poems, 1940–1960. New York: New Directions, 1979.Google Scholar
Macdonald, Dwight. Against the American Grain: Essays on the Effects of Mass Culture. New York: Random, 1962.Google Scholar
Macdonald, Dwight. “A Theory of Mass Culture.” Rosenberg and White 59–73.Google Scholar
Mailer, Norman. Advertisements for Myself. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.Google Scholar
McGurl, Mark. The Novel Art: Elevations of American Fiction after Henry James. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2001.Google Scholar
Morrow, Bradford, ed. Inaugural Double-Issue. Spec. issue of Conjunctions 1 (1981–82): 1–295.Google Scholar
Rexroth, Kenneth. “An Interview with Kenneth Rexroth.” Morrow 48–67.Google Scholar
Riesman, David, with Glazer, Nathan and Denney, Reuel. The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character. New Haven: Yale UP, 1961.Google Scholar
Rose, Frank. The Agency: William Morris and the Hidden History of Show Business. New York: Harper, 1995.Google Scholar
Rosenberg, Bernard, and White, DavidManning, eds. Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America. New York: Free, 1957.Google Scholar
Sawyer-Lauçanno, Christopher. An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles. New York: Ecco, 1989.Google Scholar
Schaub, Thomas Hill. American Fiction in the Cold War. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1991.Google Scholar
Steen, Mike. A Look at Tennessee Williams. New York: Hawthorn, 1969.Google Scholar
Strauss, Helen. A Talent for Luck. New York: Random, 1979.Google Scholar
Tebbel, John. A History of Book Publishing in the United States. 4 vols. New York: Bowker, 1972–81.Google Scholar
Whyte, William H. Jr. The Organization Man. New York: Simon, 1956.Google Scholar
Wilinsky, Barbara. Sure Seaters: The Emergence of Art House Cinema. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2001.Google Scholar
Williams, Tennessee. “An Allegory of Man and His Sahara.” New York Times 6 Dec. 1949: 7+.Google Scholar
Williams, Tennessee. “Homage to J.” Morrow 45.Google Scholar
Williams, Tennessee. The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams. Ed. Devlin, Albert J. and Tischler, Nancy M. New York: New Directions, 2004.Google Scholar
Ziolkowski, Theodore. German Romanticism and Its Institutions. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1990.Google Scholar