Everyday Canvas

A Possible Find in a Book

Possible because I don’t know if it is a find]. By the word find, I’m referring to a book I bought for 50 cents from the local library’s book sale, The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. I’ve read other stories and memoirs by Paul Bowles and developed a respect for his style.

It seems the book has a movie made in 1990 with Debra Winger and John Malkovich, but I have no recollection of even seeing the title at the movie theaters. It might be due to the fact that 1990 was a year I was involved in a much more serious matter than focusing on movies, but I digress.

What made me buy this used physical book, however in very good shape, was its foreword written in 1998 by the author. He said that the novel was based on personal experiences and that he killed the protagonist in the middle of it.

His killing the protagonist in the middle of the story is what made me buy the book. Imagine any of us killing a protagonist in the middle of a story! None of us could get away with it, don’t you think?

Reading a physical book from beginning to end is a rarity for me after the rise of e-readers, not that I don’t buy physical books but those that I usually purchase are reference books. E-books do not occupy space and most E-Readers have built-in lights and adjustable fonts.

Now, I’ll have to see how this author killed the protagonist in the middle of his novel. From the reviews of it that I saw on its Amazon page, most readers didn’t care for it much, but then, anything literary usually gets comments like, ‘it is boring’ or ‘I couldn’t finish this,’ ‘It doesn’t make sense,’ or ‘the story dawdles,’ etc. When someone writes ‘boring’ without saying why, I tend to think that book is worth a read.

In the long run, it may just be that curiosity killed the kitten… in the middle.