Lot 278: BOWLES, PAUL

The Sheltering Sky. [New York]: New Directions, [1949]

Miller A2b

In 8s (8 x 5 3/8 in.; 202 x 137 mm). Original tan cloth. Dust jacket; a little chipped at heel of spine, rear panel slightly dust-soiled.

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION (the English edition appeared the prior month) of the author's first regularly published book. INSCRIBED BY BOWLES on the half-title: "for Jon Bradshaw with my best, Paul Bowles, Tangier, 7/x/79." Bradshaw was an English-born journalist who lived much of his life in America; his best- known book is Fast Company. "[Bowles's] detached style and his near- celebration of alienation, might be described as the literary equivalent of the 'birth of the cool'...Norman Mailer...comment[ed] on Bowles's work: 'He opened the world of Hip. He let in the murder, the drugs, the incest, the death of the Square (Port Moresby in The Sheltering Sky), the call of the orgy, the end of civilization...'" (Andrew Calcutt and Richard Shephard, Cult Fiction: A Reader's Guide, Chicago, 1999, p. 26).