Two Serious Ladies

by Jane Bowles

The only novel by avant-garde literary star Jane Bowles, the highly influential wife of legendary writer Paul Bowles, Two Serious Ladies is a modernist cult classic, mysterious, profound, anarchic, and funny, that follows two "respectable" women as they descend into debauchery—updated with an introduction by Claire Messud, bestselling author of The Emperor's Children and The Woman Upstairs.

Christina Goering, eccentric and adventurous, and Frieda Copperfield, anxious but enterprising, are two serious ladies who want to live outside of themselves. Old friends, each will take a surprising path in search of salvation: during a visit to Panama, Mrs. Copperfield abandons her husband, finding solace in a relationship with a teenage prostitute; while Miss Goering, a wealthy spinster, pursues sainthood via sordid encounters with the basest of men. At the end the two women meet again, each radically altered by her experience.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Novels, Queer, LGBT, American, Womens

221 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Born Jane Sydney Auer, Jane Bowles's total body of work consists of one novel, one play, and six short stories. Yet John Ashbery said of her: "It is to be hoped that she will be recognized for what she is: one of the finest modern writers of fiction in any language." Tennessee Williams called her the most underrated writer of fiction in American literature. During her lifetime and since her death in 1973, she has been considered a writer's writer, little known to the general public but with a loyal following of intensely devoted readers.

She was born in New York City on February 22, 1917, the daughter of Sidney Auer and Claire Stajer Auer. Her childhood was spent in Woodmere, Long Island. On her father's death in 1930, Jane and her mother moved back to Manhattan. As an adolescent she developed tuberculosis of the knee. Her mother took her to a sanatorium in Leysin, Switzerland, where she was put in traction for many months. During this time she developed an intense love of literature and an equally intense series of obsessions and fears. Upon her return to New York she began to experiment with writing a novel and with sexual adventures with men and women, though primarily with women.

In 1937 she met Paul Bowles, and in the following year they were married and set off for a honeymoon in Central America, which was to be, in part, the locale of her novel Two Serious Ladies. The Bowleses went on to Paris, where she started writing and at the same time visited lesbian bars. The marriage remained a sexual marriage for about a year and a half, but after that Jane and Paul lived separate sexual lives. After returning to New York in 1938, the Bowleses went on to Mexico, where Jane continued to work on her novel and also met Helvetia Perkins, who was to become her lover.

Two Serious Ladies was published in 1943. The reviews were mostly uncomprehending. Soon, Paul, who had been involved in the editing of Two Serious Ladies, began to write short stories, which were immediately published with great distinction. Jane, having published a few short stories, began to work on a novel, but ran up against a serious writer's block.

In 1947 Paul went to Morocco to work on The Sheltering Sky. Jane followed him there the following year. She continued to struggle to work, and published several short stories, including her masterpiece, "Camp Cataract," and began to work seriously on her play In the Summer House. In Tangier, where the Bowleses resided, Jane fell in love with a Moroccan peasant woman.

In the Summer House was performed on Broadway in 1953 to mixed reviews. Jane returned to Tangier and continued to try to write a novel, but her attention was primarily devoted to her love affair with Cherifa, the Moroccan woman, to affairs with other women and also to a social life in which she did a considerable amount of drinking.

In 1957 she suffered a serious stroke, which affected her sight and her capacity to imagine. Nevertheless, notebook after notebook attests to her still continuing struggle to try to write. Her condition worsened, and after hospitalizations in England, New York and Málaga, Spain, she was confined in the Clinica de Los Angeles in Málaga, where she died in 1973.

Yet it should be noted that despite this tragic story, her personality captivated many people. She was brilliant and witty, always doing and saying the unexpected thing. She was in every way as surprising as her work, one moment mystical, the next moment hilariously funny.

Copyright © 2003, by Millicent Dillon

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel appears to have been written by someone who has not the faintest idea of what a novel actually is, who has overheard someone describing a novel very poorly once and thought ah, I must do that. And it further appears that the author has only the remotest notion of what human beings are like, what happens in peoples’ lives, why they do they things they do. Also, it seems quite possible that the author was quite drunk when she wrote this, since it has the zoned-out zigzag attention span of the barfly whose eye is caught by every passing punter.

Jane Bowles did know about novels and had knocked around (a lot!) in the world, so the conclusion must be that everything in Two Serious Ladies is intentional. Ha ha!

After some slight bafflement to begin with I got into its indie-movie vibe and by the time the last 50 pages of woozy wanderings and affably aimless absurdities rolled round, I wanted more. More random guys unexpectedly punched in the nose, more serious ladies mistaken for prostitutes and going along with the idea. More please! But it stopped, almost as if someone assassinated Jane Bowles half way through.

SOME LOVELY QUOTES

The “story” is about two rich dames. The first one, Christina Goering, is borderline bats. At the age of ten

Even then she wore the look of certain fanatics who think of themselves as leaders without once having gained the respect of a single human being.

The other one, Mrs Copperfield, is on a Central American holiday with her husband. They stroll round Panama City and find a woman sitting on a chair outside her house :

A West Indian type, she was flat chested and raw-boned, with very muscular arms and shoulders… The Negress turned around and when she saw that both Mr and Mrs Copperfield were watching her, she stood up and smoothed the folds of her dress. She was almost a giantess.
“Both of you for a dollar, “ she said.

You get sudden digs in the rib like that and you get delectable turns of phrase :

Now for a little spot of gin to chase my troubles away. There just isn’t any way that’s as good. At a certain point gin just takes everything off your hands and you flop around like a little baby.

The serious ladies have strong opinions

"I’ve always been a body-worshipper,” said Mrs Copperfield, “but that doesn’t mean I fall in love with people who have beautiful bodies. Some of the bodies I have liked have been awful."

The guys in the book specialise in back-handed compliments

"You have a very special type of beauty,” he said to her; “a bad nose, but beautiful eyes and hair. It would please me in the midst of all this horror to go to bed with you."

Same guy a page later :

I was engaged to be married to a very nice girl who worked. I loved her as much as a man can love a woman. She had a smooth forehead, beautiful blue eyes and not so good teeth.

IN CONCLUSION

This is described sometimes as an avant-garde novel, but I don't think it recognises a garde to be avant of, it's just in some other dimension. So for collectors of literary bizarreries Jane Bowles wrote one just for you.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I’m unhappy,” she said.
“Again?” asked Mr. Copperfield. “What is there to be unhappy about now?”
“ I feel so lost and so far away and so frightened.”

Do we really need another unfulfilled-women-reach-breaking-point-and-self-destruct story? Don’t ask me – I happen to adore those. But this little gem from Mrs. Paul Bowles is not your cookie cutter crisis tale. Something inside these Two Serious Ladies has severely cracked and we’re along for the ride. These oddball seekers are a little fancy and a little artsy, and they embark on a series of bizarre and impulsive actions amongst a cast of quirky and almost equally weird husbands and roommates and strangers. There’s an overwhelming sense of “oh, fuck off” at play here; to hell with the world, these Serious Ladies said. To hell with you all, Jane Bowles seemed to be snarling.

The more I read, the more my heart sank with the knowledge that this was Jane Bowles’s sole novel. Her writing spoke to me. She created a completely unexpected atmosphere of suspense and confusion and her story was unpredictable, darkly humorous, and quietly gloomy. This seemed to be her biting commentary of the social constraints that she must’ve felt as a bi but mostly gay woman married to a bi but mostly gay man (who happens to be one of my favorite writers). I was ready to adore this book; and I absolutely did.

“True enough,” said Mrs. Copperfield, bringing her fist down on the table and looking very mean. “I have gone to pieces, which is a thing I’ve wanted to do for years. I know I am as guilty as I can be, but I have my happiness, which I guard like a wolf, and I have authority now and a certain amount of daring, which, if you remember correctly, I never had before.”

What is a ‘normal’ life? Can happiness only be obtained through living an arbitrary existence? These ladies are longing for an authentic life, free from the ordinary and the expected. But what about sadness? What about that dark, brooding place inside? These roadblocks mean our ladies are perhaps doomed, but they’re going to go down fighting (and drinking).

“Darling,” she said, “something terrible has happened to that woman, I feel it in my heart. Please don’t be bad-tempered with her.”

Also, this book is really funny. Funny-sad, funny-strange.

“Well, lady,” he said to her, “are you an artist too?”
“No,” said Miss Goering. “I wanted to be a religious leader when I was young and now I just reside in my house and try not to be too unhappy.”

There’s something unsettling about this book because it’s easy to imagine that breaking-point isn’t as far off as we’d like to think. These women may have become impulsive and reckless, but they were not entirely nonsensical. They didn’t completely lose it and maybe that’s what’s so scary. It’s not that far outside the realm of possibility to leave a husband, or sell a house, to wander around aimlessly and strike up random conversations, spend all your money, or heck, even to move in with a Panamanian teenage prostitute. Right?

[Nidhi Singh · Rating 4 out of 5]

One must allow that a certain amount of carelessness in our nature often accomplishes what the will is incapable of doing

This is a weird little book with the weirdest people I have come across. The two serious ladies are adorably weird. Adorably impulsive. They make something tap against the unopened doors. To remind that don’t we all have that eccentric ‘seriousness’ within us which we got chained and domesticated like the most docile dogs. They make something flutter within. To just go where you want, do what you want, say what you want. This heady desire for freedom, for being dangerously uprooted from your place of security, for rushing back again and again to whatever the heart longs for. To identify it, and to want it, with all the strength, with all honesty and the wolfishness of desire. To want it so badly that it breaks you to pieces, leaves a beautiful mess around. Just to be giddily unhinged. To disarrange everything you picked up and dusted and shelved to security, all your life. And to have your consciousness forwarded to you again like a crumpled piece of paper, left to you again to smoothen, erase, and draw and redraw.

No one among my friends speaks any longer of character-and what interests us more certainly is finding out what we are like.

They attract all the odd ones; the whimsical, the curious, the vulnerable, the delusional, the disgruntled ones. It is interesting and almost endearing how they respond to such oddities; with naturalness, and a lack of consciousness of the self. There is the urgency to connect and the need to let go. I wonder what is the primary driving force behind their decision to unfasten themselves, to forego all control and discipline. Maybe they recognize that gaping void in their lives. It necessitates escape. It requires freedom and novelty. It warrants happiness. Happiness and desire of the certain kind, which has been recognized only in the most personal spaces of their minds. They would not really bother telling you about it, defining it for you, but nevertheless, have done it for themselves. Not the conceited type of self-interest, but a self-determinism, an autonomy, a recognition of one’s own responsibility towards happiness and fulfillment. And a responsibility towards the effect of it, as the making and unmaking of their own desires. They are different, without any awareness whatsoever of their own difference. They display a most uncommon curiosity towards their surroundings. A most uncommon, almost juvenile interest towards the people they encounter. It is often unsettling for the reader. But it is hard not to see that it is also the most essential kind of awareness that comes as a surprise. Like unwittingly finding your fingertips at that point on a map you had been searching for. They respond erratically. They have an unpredictable liking and disliking towards people. They amuse, befuddle, and sometimes make you laugh. And throughout the story, they warm up the heart with the most foolishly insightful ways.

'The idea,' said Miss Goering, 'is to change first of your own volition and according to our own inner promptings before they impose completely arbitrary changes on us.'

I really have no sense of shame, and I think your own sense of shame is terribly exaggerated.

That has everything to do with what is beautiful in the world. When you wake up in the morning and the first minute you open your eyes and you don’t know who you are or what your life has been-that is beautiful. Then when you know who you are and what day in your life it is and you still think you are sailing in the air like a happy bird-that is beautiful. That is when you don’t have worries. You can’t tell me you like to worry?

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

THOUGHTS ON A RE-READ: As I had posited in my initial review from 2016 below, I fully expected to 01) feel an inexplicable need to return to this sooner than later, and 02) this inimitably odd novel would totally click for me knowing what I was getting into from the start. Both of these things came to pass. What a mysterious, supremely unlikable text, in all the best, most fascinating ways. Rating bumped up from four stars to five.

[Read #20 of "2021: My Year of (Mostly) Midcentury Women Writers"]
...

ORIGINAL REVIEW: By the time I felt like I was finally getting a handle on this bitter, black-hearted little novel, it was all over. As I quickly discovered, to make the acquaintance of these titular two ladies is to be initiated into a state of perpetual disorientation; I was not, I’ll frankly admit, adequately prepared, even if Bowles’s novel frequently brought to mind the work of her contemporaries Djuna Barnes and Flannery O'Connor, two favorites of mine.

All three authors have an uncanny ability to distill unsettling visions of the world into terrifying portraits of individuals who, by simply defying the “natural” order of things, unleash an aura of chaos and existential anarchy around everything they do. Yet turmoil is often the source of humor, and I’d say the work of all three is funny—albeit in bleak, dark ways. But where Barnes and O’Connor employ violence (both emotional and physical) and grotesquerie to elicit the kind of laugh that transforms into a horrified gasp before it manages to escape the throat, Bowles’s approach is more akin to screwball comedy, a comedy of manners where the main players have decided to redefine what “manners” entail, upending the world around them (ie “until recently [Miss Goering] had never followed too dangerously far in action any course which she had decided upon as being the morally correct one”). That said, these forms of comedies depend on a sense of order and decorum reestablishing itself by the resolution, typically with a romantic pairing reinstating the “unruly” female safely back into the social order. Not so with Two Serious Ladies: it’s instead a whirligig of despair whose last words offer no sense of solace. Instead it feels like a temporary stopgap in an inevitably continuing story destined for misery and destruction.

But also, in the meantime, a sense of escape, even freedom. Perhaps?

Aware of the general outline of Bowles’s biography (sadly, an infamously tragic one), one of the things I was curious was if she would be working in the grand queer tradition of taking up a certain term to signify covert lifestyles and behaviors, and there does seem to be some evidence to support such a reading. In the novel’s first few pages Miss Gamelon inexplicably moves in with Miss Goering—indeed, I assumed these would be the two “serious” ladies—and immediately entwine themselves into an incredibly intense codependent relationship; Mrs. Copperfield has a similar impulse toward Pacifica, noting that the Panamanian prostitute “takes everyone quite seriously” as she takes “Pacifica’s hand in her own.” I’ll be paying closer attention to this on inevitable (at some point) repeat readings, but whatever inflection one wants to read into them, it is undeniable that there are not only more than just two serious ladies populating Bowles’s novel, and, furthermore, all take their relationships with other ladies very, very seriously.

Barnes’s rueful observation the she was “the most famous unknown in the world” also resonates with Bowles’s own legacy, having long been regarded as one of the great, undersung prose stylists of the twentieth century, inspiring an almost cult-like veneration from writers who achieved a much larger degree of fame than she ever managed to (Tennessee Williams’s proclamation that Two Serious Ladies is “his favorite book” and that he “can’t think of a modern novel that seems more likely to become a classic” continues to adorn current reprints of the novel; Truman Capote, John Ashbery, and Bowles’s own husband Paul were other prominent supporters). Millicent Dillon has more recently described how “one soon begins to know the sound of a Jane Bowles sentence, its odd jumps, the way in which it continuously confounds expectations, the way in which secrets are withheld and as suddenly revealed.”

Perhaps Bowles does reveal some secrets throughout the tangled trajectories of the two serious ladies of Two Serious Ladies, but it seems more defined by its resolution to always remain something of an enigma, restless and on edge. I can’t say I actually much enjoyed the process of reading this novel, but I nonetheless sense that it will be joining the small cadre of texts I find myself returning to on occasion, almost inexplicably, trying to scratch some kind of deep itch it has created. To try and discover some answers to the unnerving existential questions it poses—even if I never really expect to ever actually find them.

"She thought that she was only interested in duplicating a dream, but in doing so she necessarily became the complete victim of a nightmare."

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

For one reason or another, the most likely one being I can't quite put my finger on what it is I'm getting from it, this book draws a number of other titles and times to my mind. The introduction mentioned Carson McCullers, I had suspicions of Flannery O'Connor, and then there's the famous husband and and the quoted (more?) famous playwright on the cover. I'm sure this has as high a chance of amounting to an indication of personal interest as it does the obsessions of today's academia, what with the word Modernism being thrown around at times, but that doesn't lessen the instance of when I thought of Under the Volcano and everything clicked. I read that one long enough ago to not have had an awareness of exotification in literature and all that colonialist jazz (the irony), but the messy scrabbling at the corners of civilization for a barest scrap of ethics is familiar. Putting UtV's lushfest of a military industrial complex next to TSL's quagmire of white female performance of sexuality and class in the late 30's and early 40's, you can't really say one's more obvious than the other.

A number of people describe this book as crazy, or the author as crazy, or use the word crazy somewhere in the vicinity of their review; all I can think is that if I were looking into this book today, I wouldn't have added it like I did two years ago. As someone whose history of "crazy" could get her fired or institutionalized if the wrong individuals catch wind of it, the carelessness with which people throw this word around is both threatening and lazy cause seriously, what crazy we talking about? Major depressive disorder? Bipolar disorder? Borderline personality disorder? A mix of all three and then some? Cause things get really fun when the diagnoses cross borders and doctor's don't want to know what the hell is going on.

Crazy's got a hierarchy like any other grouping of human beings, from the marvels of creative folks to the recent adaptation of Deadpool having his schizophrenia erased cause producers don't want him to be "too" crazy. Look up the way schizophrenia literally eats at your brain, compare how often schizophrenic individuals are killed compared to the rest of the not "too" crazy, and you can see the mess these adapters are trying to avoid. In light of that, next time you call someone/something/somehow "crazy", are you doing it cause they're weird? Cause they're different? Cause they shot up a school and that correlation between mental illness and violence must be upheld as absolute? I can't tell if one person did it and the others are just following or the ideological connectivity of the concept's really that universally convincing and it's flat out unnerving.

Trust me, I liked the picking at presentations of femininity, socioeconomic brutalization, the ethical heaven of one being the moralizing hell of another, the rich being rich and the poor being poor and a modern day saint of a woman instantly regaled to the line of sex work cause that's how females on the lam always function in this society of ours, but seriously, where the fuck is this lazy "crazy" business coming from. Do you actually know what you're talking about in the wider spectrum of what many have to take into account every day of their lives? Or are you just being cute. The slurs didn't help either, but someone's going to throw a tantrum about chronological universality if I go down that pathway, so I'll just leave that there.

Look, if you're some sort of crazy like I am in the literal, biological, governmental sense of the word, you can do whatever with the crazy cause that's your life. The rest of you, I'll be over somewhere else for the sake of my well being while you figure out what exactly you mean by this "crazy", and what you intend to accomplish.

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jane Bowles is a crazy woman, and I love crazy women. She has written a great book here, which oddly has all the lightness of Kafka when he is light, but a different kind of darkness. This book is about freedom, and desire, but not exactly of the sexual kind. More like a passion for life, or alternately, a sadness for the lack of life. It is constantly surprising and hilarious, and filled with weird and somewhat naive characters who act unconventionally but in a way that makes you think "well, why not act that way???" However, at no point did I feel like the character's surprising behavior was unwarranted or random. Each character felt genuine, each with their particular brand of individuality. Because of how strange and funny it is, it may be easy to overlook how resonant and deep it is as well. I loved this book immensely and I think it is criminally overlooked and under-read.

"But you still look terribly morose."
"I am less morose. I am just showing the results of the terrific fight that I have waged inside of myself, and you know that the face of victory often resembles the face of defeat."
p.186

Here's the awesome author photo on the back cover:



PS - When I said that the desire was not sexual, I don't mean there wasn't a lot of reference to sex and sexual tension. Just that the sexual component seems to be a result of boredom, or an extension of the character's independent searches, than something arising from lust or love. I may be way off, though.

[Brodolomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dugo se nisam ovoliko smejao čitajući neku knjigu. Za razliku od mučnih i tužnih scena u književnosti, gde se čitaoci uglavnom mogu lako usaglastiti u ustisku, humor je neuhvatljiva kategorija i zahteva poklapanje senzibiliteta između pisca i čitaoca – jednostavno, nisu smešne svima iste stvari. Ovo je iščašena knjiga koja traži čitaoce sa barem upola toliko iščašenim smislom za humor. Jednima je baš smešno, drugi ostaju ravnodušni. Stoga, „Dve ozbiljne dame”, nikad nisu mogle da postanu deo glavnog toka u književnosti, ali su mogle da okupe oko sebe mali kult verujućih u genijalnost Džejn Bouls.

Kada je izašao 1943. kritičari su sahranili „Dve ozbiljne dame” toliko da je jedna kritičarka tvrdila da i samo prepričavanje ovog romana rizik za mentalno zdravlje. Uprkos upozorenju, iščašenost ne leži u samom zapletu, jer je on manje-više jednostavan. Dva paralelna pripovedačka toka o prijateljicama, Fridi Koperfild i Kristini Gering, koja su objedinjena susretom prijateljica na početku i na kraju romana, dok se između ta dva susreta pripoveda o Fridinom putovanju u Panamu i Kristinom putovanju na neimenovano ostrvo. Obe prijateljice na putovanja odlaze zbog unutrašnjih traganja; prva je krenula u potragu za srećom, druga radi religioznog uzdizanja putem uniženja.

Iščašenost leži u načinu na koji je taj zaplet predočen: likovi su skroz ravni, kao da su opeglani, isceđeni od psiholoških karakteristika a onda uštirkani da je ekscentričnost jedina preostala osobina u njima, motivacija gotovo da ne postoji, sama priča pijano leluja vamo-tamo, sasvim bez razloga, čini se da nema ni repa ni njuške u nizanju situacija koje se nalaze na granici apsurda iako se ona nikada ne prelazi, stil je siromašan kao crkveni miš a opet taj miš ima šljokice po sebi, i ponajviše dijalozi. Dijalozi su ubedljivo najizvitopereniji deo, a oni sačinjavaju najveći deo teksta. Nikada se ne može pretpostaviti šta će ko kome odgovoriti i kako će ko reagovati. Takav humor meni prija i bio je glavni pokretač čitalačkog erosa tokom čitanja. Ne može se reći da su dijalozi apsurdni, već su više pomereni u značenju. Recimo, neka zaglavljena ironija. Jer ako ironija, kao retorička figura, uvek počiva na odnosu smenjivanja bukvalnog značenja iskaza i višku značenja koji je sakriven iza, ovde nam često izmiče retorički mehanizam smenjivanja značenja, gotovo da se zaglavio ili da je nešto pogrešno u postavci. Stoga, književni rođaci „Dveju ozbiljnih dama” bi bili romani Ronalda Ferbenka i Ajvi Kompton-Bernet, a neki malo dalji rođaci bi bili i „Priče o zanatima” i „Uloga moje porodice u svetskoj revoluciji” Bore Ćosića, i to ne samo po tim nastranim dijalozima već i po mračnim stvarima (doduše sasvim drugačijim) koje leže negde iza. Ma koliko se smejao, iza vesele fasade romana jesu osećanja samokrivice, usamljenosti, anksioznosti, izdvojenosti, ne baš veselih ljudskih odnosa, erotske želje, greha, Boga, straha i drhtanja. Pomalo, skriveni Kjerkegor koji je stavio perjanu bou oko vrata.

Jedina stvar koja mi je pokvarila uživanje u čitanju je pogovor Tatjane Rosić. Meni nije smetalo njeno tumačenje jer duboko verujem da svaki čitalac vidi u knjizi „milo” ono što mu se „snilo”, te poštujem što se njoj priviđaju neke komune i ideologije ili što tvrdi da ovde postoji „polifonijsko pripovedanje”, i „istovremeno i istovremno višeglasje” iako je roman istim stilom ispripovedan od početka do kraja, a likovi sasvim providni i govore isto. Ono što ne mogu i neću da poštujem su dubioze tipa: „Heteroseksualna i promiskuitetna Kristina postaje jedino što žena može biti u svetu heteroseksualne žudnje – pasivna mučenica.” Ne znam šta da kažem, osim da je Rosić prsla od ideologija pa zašla u heterofobiju. Drugo, u pogovoru se pokazuje kao aljkav čitalac; tipa govori kako gospođa Koperfild nema ime, što nije tačno; gđa Koperfild se zove Frida. Povrh svega, ona iskrivljuje biografske podatke o autorki. Tako Džejn Bouls, koja je sebe zvala Kike Dyke, „postaje” heteroseksualna u pogovoru („gajila je erotsku naklonost isključivo prema suprotnom polu” (235)). Džaba Džejn što je vukla Koru po Meksiku i to što ju je Šerifa trovala kada ju je Rosić strejtvošovala u jednom zamahu (Urednica u Štriku u tome nije učestvovala pošto opsežna i lepo uređena biografija autorke pominje i Koru i Šerifu). Naravno, nije seks. orijentacija ni važna, ali mi je intesresatno kako neko može da pokazuje znake i aljkave homofobije i heterofobije u jednom tekstu (slutim da je prvo nastalo zbog lenjosti a drugo iz ideološkog naprsnuća). Nadam se da Štrik nije morao da plati ovaj pogovor, već da ga je dobio za DŽ.

[BrokenTune · Rating 2 out of 5]

She was suffering as much as she had ever suffered before, because she was going to do what she wanted to do. But it would not make her happy. She did not have the courage to stop from doing what she wanted to do. She knew that it would not make her happy, because only the dreams of crazy people come true. She thought that she was only interested in duplicating a dream, but in doing so she necessarily became the complete victim of a nightmare.

Well, that was a rambling gallop through the litany of first world problems faced by the bored if ever there was one.

Did this book have shock value when it was first published?

This nearly ended up being the first DNF of 2017, and part of me wish it had been.

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

"One must allow that a certain amount of carelessness in one's nature often accomplishes what the will is incapable of doing."

Ah, if one could only plead Glib in real life. It would not exonerate me, but might get me to a halfway house earlier.

I'm sure the cultists got much more out of this than I did but, if I didn't exactly see myself in this story, I could nevertheless follow the two main characters with something like sympathy. Harm, in fiction, only comes if the author intends it, and Jane Bowles was very kind instead.

Fiction, really, can't improve upon the storyline of the M/M Bowles' marriage. But, for what it's worth, I prefer Jane's glazing to Paul's.

Other Goodreads reviewers (I'm pointing to Aubrey, here) have noted the feeling of derivation in this book, one way or the other. I got that feeling too, although I tasted Elaine Dundy and Carole Maso.

There's a feeling here of experimentation, for experimentation's sake. (You could read this as allegory, but you should be ashamed of yourself if you did so.) Every rational thought should have our character saying "No, that's absurd. I can't go with you." But our character(s) always say yes.

That there are two main female characters, one entranced by very young female prostitutes and another following every man from abrupt to dangerous, speaks obviously of the bisexual nature of the author. And, more.

_____ _____ _____ _____ _____

More, you say? It's the political season. It always is. So, here:

The appropriately named Dick is perorating in a bar:

"I'm interested in the political struggle...which is of course the only thing any self-respecting human being could be interested in. I am also on the winning side and on the right side. The side that believes in the redistribution of capital." He chuckled to himself and it was very easy to tell he thought he was conversing with a complete fool.
. . . .
Miss Goering (our heroine) by now was very anxious to get into the conversation.
"You," she said to Dick, "are interested in winning a very correct and intelligent fight. I am far more interested in what is making this fight so hard to win."
"They have the power in their hands; they have the press and the means of production."
Miss Goering put her hand over the boy's mouth. He jumped. "This is very true," she said, "but isn't it very obvious that there is something else too that you are fighting? You are fighting their present position on this earth, to which they are still grimly attached. Our race, as you know, is not torpid. They are grim because they still believe the earth is flat and that they are likely to fall off it at any minute. That is why they are so hard to the middle. That is, to all the ideals by which they have already lived. You cannot confront men who are still fighting the dark and all the dragons, with a new future."
"Well, well," said Dick, "what should I do then?"
"Just remember," said Miss Goering, "That a revolution won is an adult who must kill his childhood once and for all."

_____ _____ _____ _____ _____

Agree or not, transpose or not; this is not a simple lark. It is woman untethered. A shifting paradigm.

The men here are not admirable, but human enough to utter this:

"Do you know . . . how beautiful and delicate a man's heart is when he is happy for the first time? It is like the thin ice that has imprisoned those beautiful young plants that are released when the ice thaws."

Maybe it is just like that.

[Haytham ⚜️ · Rating 2 out of 5]

چين بولز (1917-1973) هي زوجة الكاتب الأمريكي پول بولز، وسيدتان جادتان روايتها الوحيدة 1943. من المعروف أن الكاتبة كانت تعاني منذ الطفولة من الأمراض جسدية ونفسية وميول جنسية مثلية؛ يستطيع القارئ أن يستشف ميول كاتبة الرواية متمثلة في شخصية السيدتان الجادتان وهو بالطبع عنوان تهكمي يعكس الضياع والسعادة المفقودة في حياة تلك الطبقة من النساء الضائعات في ذلك العصر.

يقول الكاتب المغربي محمد شكري وهو صديق للكاتبة وزوجها نظرًا لإقامتهما في طنجة لسنوات عديدة: "عندما كانت تذكر كلمة السعادة في حضور چين، فإن عينيها تتسعان ضاحكة وتقول بسخرية؛ السعادة، ما السعادة؟ أين السعادة؟ وطبعًا لم يكن أحد يجرؤ على أن يجيبها!" وهذا هو حال إحدى بطلات الرواية: "كان هدف السيدة كوپرفيلد الوحيد في الحياة أن تكون سعيدة، رغم أن من لاحظ سلوكها من الناس على مدار سنوات كان ليُدهش من اكتشاف أن هذا كل شئ".

إذًا نجد هنا شخصية الكاتبة المضطربة للغاية طاغية على سلوك شخصيات العمل، من الجنون والحيرة والعلاقات المفتوحة مع الغرباء والمجون الفاحش في بعض الأحيان. كما أن بعض الأحداث الحقيقية للكاتبة نراها متمثلة في الرواية: مدينة نيويورك، جنون سن المراهقة، المرض العضوي، الزواج من پول وشهر العسل في المكسيك ونراه في بنما مع السيدة كوپرفيلد، والميول المثلية مع النساء، وهو ما كان بين الكاتبة وزوجها في الحقيقة وعلاقتهم المفتوحة بالرجال والنساء وعلاقة الكاتبة بسيدة مكسيكية وأخرى مغربية في طنجة.

سيدتان صديقتان لكل منهما تجارب في عالم الأزمات والأحزان، والبحث عن السعادة المنشودة في ظلال الجنون والمجون، تلتقيان في بداية السرد وفي نهاية السرد مرة أخرى ولكن بعد الخسائر الفادحة لكلتيهما. تقول الآنسة جويرنج في النهاية: " بالتأكيد أنا أقرب أن أصبح قديسة، لكن هل من المحتمل أن يكون جزء مني مخفيًا عن نظري يراكم خطيئة فوق خطيئة بنفس سرعة السيدة كوپرفيلد؟"

كان السرد بطئ وبارد، المعالجة لفكرة الرواية لم تكن موفقة، حوارات غير شيقة والمواضيع المتناولة غاية في الغرابة وكأن الكاتبة قصدت بذلك دفعنا على تجرع تجارب تلك الفئة من النساء المنكسرات واللاتي كان الضجر والعار في نهاية المطاف مصيرهن المحزن.

"لم يكن لديها الشجاعة كي تتوقف عن فعل ما أرادت أن تفعل. عرفت أنه لن يجعلها سعيدة، لأن فقط أحلام المجانين هي ما تتحقق. فكرت أنها كانت مهتمة فقط باستنساخ حلم، لكن في فعلها هذا أصبحت بالضرورة ضحية كاملة لكابوس".

{ترجمة وائل عشري رائعة وسلسة}

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd read Paul Bowles long ago and vaguely knew his wife wrote but not until I heard Paul Lisicky discuss this one on Book Fight (a literary book-discussion podcast thing run/posted/performed by two grad school friends) was this one on my radar. Turns out it's a well-loved classic, deservedly so. After listening to three writers talk about it for an hour, I had some preconceptions about its apparent irregularity/unconventionality -- and I expected something crazier per the podcast. But it seemed aligned with Salinger's stories of neurotic upper-class/upper-middle-class urbanites. There's the same sort of spiritual anxiety. Think of that surprisingly good-natured intelligent American angst in Franny & Zooey. They're of the same era, peri-WWII, precursors to the Beats. A generation later these serious ladies would explicitly conceive of their restlessness, impulsiveness, and need for freedom from traditional morality/activity as "finding themselves," and they'd be doing it en masse. Other than the stellar insightful sentences, the unpredictable movement, the rampant cleverness that never became cloying for me, the wonderfully dramatized conflicts between thought and action (ie, so often one of the ladies thinks no way she wants to do something and then says of course let's do it), for an American novel published in 1943 this one's a serious literary lighthouse for what once was called Women's Lib. Explicit physical lady love is still mostly under wraps in this and the book prospers thanks to that tension and subsequent attention to tenderness and affection, especially, as Paul Lisicky points out in the above-linked podcast, in the scene when Mrs Cunningham and Pacifica go to a rocky Panamanian beach for a morning swim after staying up all night. What makes this great is that the men also long for liberation, no matter how abrasive or proto-slacker these men might be. Everyone's after their freedom -- Arnold from his parents, Arnold's father from his wife, Andy from his past, Mrs. Cunningham from her depression, Ms Goering from her class. No mention of the war in Europe or the Pacific, interestingly -- not even a suggestion of it? In general, I loved the language, the crazy bits like Belle (the woman without arms or legs), descriptions of interiors of various bars and momentary side characters in Panama, the parallel feelings of elation felt by Cunningham and Goering, parallel suggestions that the ladies suffered some major insult/abuse/tragedy when younger, parallel letters from men trying to rationally explain their feelings, realistic non-melodramatic dramatization of disconnects in general, the fragility of Arnold's borrowed image of a plant trapped in thin ice. Not to mention the weird Javanese parallel, with Ms Gamelon (as in the percussive repetitious music of the Indonesian islands) and the crazy needy half-Irish/half-Javanese girl in Panama. Structurally, I didn't find it so odd. It felt more like a multi-part story than a novel? Anyone familiar with the movements of an attentively written, clever, contemporary short story would be at home here -- there's no overt plot other than sensing and calibrating the characters' spiritual progress and registering/associating thematic resonances (freedom, loneliness, friendship, hope). To say that nothing happens wouldn't make sense since stuff happens and moves the internal/thematic plot forward. Otherwise, certain sections were a bit of a drag for me often thanks to lack of transitions between scenes or not quite being sure who's talking -- lots of short paragraphs and dialogue throughout, with sudden unpredictable movement -- I had to go back and re-read after mini-zoneouts. Also, although I was interested in the characters, it's hard to pull for them (ie, "like" them), in part because, as life is described in the book, they're "medium fair" -- neutral good, not diabolical. They're real: they're selfish and generous, in search of internal peace and external beauty, complicated, acting not always in their best interest, and I guess that's likeable, or maybe I anticipated overindulgence in terms of the freedom quest and a cosmic smackdown for getting their way? Anyway, a great short book I'll try to reread one day since it's the type in which you surely miss so many dimensions and laughs the first time through.

[Evie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"It wasn't exactly in order to have a good time that I came out. I have more or less forced myself to, simply because I despise going out in the night-time alone and prefer not to leave my own house. However, it has come to such a point that I am forcing myself to make these little excursions." – Miss Goering

Two Serious Ladies was an absorbing literary train wreck that I just couldn't avert my eyes from! I was reminded of why I loved the documentary series Grey Gardens and The Beales of Grey Gardens. It's not like I can rightly explain why it's a huge favorite of mine, or why the two eccentric women at the center of the nonexistent plot steal my heart with each viewing. Questions that follow each viewing include: what is the definition of "normal" or of a "conventional" life?



Christina Goering and Frieda Copperfield are two women desperate to live their lives devoid of fear despite their restrictive roles in society. Throughout a momentous year, Miss Goering pursues asceticism in hopes of reaching sainthood, and Mrs. Copperfield chooses to take the reigns of her life back from the hands of her overbearing husband. In the process, the women meet a slew of shady hangers-on and degenerates. Equally hilarious and grotesque, I had a wonderful time reading this little book. Bowles has a unique way of writing; what she chose to share and omit really created an element of suspense and mystery.



Esthetically, I am so in love with my copy of this book, published by Ecco Books. I'm kind of a typography geek, and I loved the typeface used throughout the book. Check out the page numbers! The cover art, designed by Suet Yee Chong, is also awesome eye candy as well; it definitely reflects Bowles's avant garde style. This edition included an introduction by Claire Messud, author of The Woman Upstairs. I usually skip introductions, but in this case I found it so fascinating, and I was glad I chose to read it after I finished the book. Messud sheds light on Bowles's personal life, and her disappointment with the mixed reception of her work. Overall a great read; I'm sure I'll glean much more with further readings.

[Frona · Rating 3 out of 5]

What at first seems as a sequence of peculiar acts and events, occurring without an explanation and disappearing without a trace, soon reveals its substance and connects causes with effects in a most unconventional manner. It is briefly mentioned in the book as a »dispensation from the world«, but its presence radiates through every sentence.

The world as known to common people, without enough luck or money to follow every impulse to the end, is quite foreign to the two serious ladies. They posses wealth and with it a chance to create their own universe; they are free of worries about their future, consistency and composure. Without external obstacles to overcome and goals to reach, their reality is entrapped in the present flow of affairs. They don't know the need to escape anything that happens. Everything is interesting to them, if anything is interesting at all. A lack of any but prosaic initiative of their own, brings their fears to the surface and their world becomes as claustrophobic as it is free. If in a way their experience is similar to that of a child - their pride and self-respect are subdued to an interest in what each opportunity can provide-, it differs in one crucial aspect. The child learns by trial and error, while they know no errors. The more they try to change something for sanity's sake, the more it becomes obvious that their errands have ends only in themselves.

If at the beginning of the book I couldn't care less about this imaginary life-style, I felt like walking through a funfair with them later. I'm not sure whether I could stay there for long, but I certainly lingered on the question "Who of us is freer and merrier?" for more then a while.

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It is against my entire code," says Miss Goering, "But then, I have never even begun to use my code, although I judge everything by it." She's about to change her code.

Things ladies are serious about

- drinking
- hookers
- escape

Mostly that last thing in Jane Bowle's defiantly, extravagantly weird 1943 novel. She writes like she doesn't know what books are. Her husband (also a novelist) was bewildered by her inability to "use the hammer and the nails that were there. She had to manufacture her own hammer and all the nails." She feels like Dostoevsky in that way - you know how everyone acts like fucking aliens in his books? Because they just say what's literally in their heads, instead of trying to be civilized about it? Miss Goering and Mrs. Copperfield are like that, too, except that the rest of Jane Bowles' world is normal so everyone is just thoroughly put off by them all the time.

Miss Goering moves herself to a dingy island with several hangers on, and finds herself a series of increasingly distasteful lovers as some kind of bizarre...penance or something. "Heroically unaware of her strangeness, or indifferent to its effects, Miss Goering seems to do everything she can to reject the life that is expected of her," is how the New Yorker describes it. Meanwhile Mrs. Copperfield goes on vacation to Panama with her husband, and then goes on vacation from the husband, involving herself with a young prostitute and a great deal of alcohol.

What both of these bourgeois ladies do is they steadfastly untether themselves from the demands society makes of them. They don't seem to have conscious plans to do so, but they also don't seem capable of or willing to not do so. They're acquaintances, and they're not together most of the time. When they finally meet near the end, Mrs. Copperfield says to Miss Goering: "I have gone to pieces, which is a thing I've wanted to do for years." I was reminded of Kate Chopin.

Mrs. Copperfield "hated to know what was around her, because it always turned out to be even stranger than what she had feared." And you get the impression that Jane Bowles was one of those poor people who actually looked around her all the time, and what she found was so much stranger that she had to invent her own hammer and nails and laboriously construct this strange little book about it, which barely anyone even understood a word of. "You call yourself an artist," says someone or other, "and you don't even know how to be irresponsible." This book is downright irresponsible. I loved it.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sorry, Doug. I've never been on a bad acid trip (or a good one either, for that matter) but this book is what I envision one to be like. I read the great reviews, even went on-line at the midway point to see what I was missing that everyone else was raving about. "Avant-guarde, modernistic, hallucinatory prose" is apparently just not my thing, although I will agree with the hallucinatory part. At the end of the mercifully short 200 pages, I still have absolutely no idea what this book was about. I am awarding one extra star because some of the sentences were very witty and made me sit up and take notice. With apologies to all my GR friends who love this book, it just wasn't my thing.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, color me the sexist asshole. All these years and I just recently discovered that JANE was the genius residing in the House of Bowles. This is no knock against my beloved Paul; I’d say I’d read the guy’s diary, but I already have—a few of them. But sumbitch—Jane! Such an innately, naturally inclined novelist must be more than a mere footnote or referential point in Paul’s work. She only gave us this one perfect diamond of a novel—okay, and a play—and went about the business of living her life. Now that is goddam admirable; one and done and off to see the world as an amazing partner and friend to her conspirator, Paul. It’s no revelation to say that many a men’s tents a-shook in North Africa as Mr. Bowles smoked hash and sampled the local dude flesh. Nor is it news to anyone that Jane knew her husband was a gay man. Their personal lives, while legendary and chockablock with legitimate derring-do, were their own. So why all preamble and huff?

Because Two Serious Ladies is a REVELATION of female agency, autonomy, and the same joyous, reckless abandon found almost exclusively in the province of men and male writers. Playing auspex, to suggest that the Bowles’ wonderfully boundaryless (but fez-full) approach to the convention of marriage informed some aspects of this absolutely superb novel is, in my view, a celebration of a woman that dared live her life without explanation to anyone. Two Serious Ladies makes zero concessions to the reader’s wants or needs and is all the more wonderful for it.

I’m taxed on superlatives. Phew. And I still have to pitch a tent for Paul, the boys, and I before the sun gets under that horizon in my supernatural escape hatch of some eternal Moroccan desert. I brought my extra sezy fez. And yes, Jane is here too, making her own tracks in the same sands. I could not imagine more delightful company.

[Banu Yıldıran Genç · Rating 3 out of 5]

insanı acayip ters köşeye yatıran bir roman “ağırbaşlı iki hanımefendi”. christina’nın çocukluğundan başlayıp lineer bir zaman çizgisi izleyecek sanıyoruz, hayır. christina ve adını öğrenmediğimiz bayan copperfield’ın hikayelerinin bir yerde bağlanacağını sanıyoruz, hayır. christina ve bayan copperfield sonda bir araya geldiklerinde işte şimdi roman boyunca süren dönüşümlerini birbirlerine açıp can ciğer kuzu sarması olacaklar sanıyoruz, hayır.
yani açıkçası jane bowles klasik roman kurgusuna, karakterlerine ve roman okurunun beklentilerine savaş açarak roman yazmış. her iki kadın karakterin davranışları yine “normal” bir insan için son derece mantıksız, daha ne kadar saçmalayabilirler diyoruz ve evet saçmalıyorlar çünkü esasen iki kadın da sınırlarını zorlayarak özgür olmanın derdinde.
roman boyunca önce christina goering’in kadın erkek pek çok insana verdiği tavizleri okuyor, sonra bayan copperfield’ın farklı tavizlerini farklı coğrafyalarda takip ediyoruz. yine de iki kadının ortak noktası etraflarında onlara sürekli karışıp duran ve buna izin verdikleri erkeklerin varlığı. bay copperfield’le çizilen evlerden ırak koca tiplemesi mükemmel bir erkek figürü. aynı şekilde arnold’ın lapacılığı ve değişeceğine dair önce kendini sonra herkesi kandırmaya çalışması çok tanıdık.
jane bowles aslında çok derinlikli bir biçimde çizdiği karakterleri absürt durumların içine yerleştirmeyi seviyor belli ki. kocası paul bowles’la geçirdiği balayının, annesiyle ilişkisinin, yaşadığı adanın, keşfettiği biseksüelliğinin izleri görülüyor “ağırbaşlı iki hanımefendi”de ama çok da önemli değil.
her iki kadın karakter de olmaları beklenen ağırbaşlı iki hanımefendi kimliğinden iki ayrı uca doğru uzaklaşıp gidiyor, öyle ki, birbirlerinin yaptıklarını bile anlayışla karşılamayacak kadar uzaklaşmışlar, hayatta ben şimdi ne istiyorum deyip tam da ona göre davranan iki kadın.
yer yer absürt bir roman okuyorum herhalde hissi yaratsa, kahramanlara sürekli kızıp aslında ne kadar tekdüze bir insan olduğumla yüzleşsem de garip bir biçimde eğlenceli bir roman “ağırbaşlı iki hanımefendi”. elif kolcuoğlu ustalıkla çevirmiş.

[Nate D · Rating 4 out of 5]

...it is against my entire code, but then, I have never even begun to use my code, although I judge everything by it. (p.19)

Found via a list of John Waters' favorite five books, and general rave reviews from trusted GR sources. They did not lie. I think my enjoyment of this has already been summarized by my explanation in the comments section:

"This is all I've read of hers, and I'm not quite done, but I think I love it. What I like, beyond the characters and the situations, is how she gives the distinct impression that the characters themselves are putting themselves into these situations due to believably irresistable personal systems, rather than the situations being imposed from outside by a manipulative author. Which is not so easy to do when your characters and storyline are this weird."

I think I loved the first half, Mrs. Copperfield's story, a little more than the latter, but they are two parts of a weird whole, different versions of semi-self-destructive truth-seeking that feels right in some sense even through its inexplicability. Jane Bowles was a very strange women, and it is a shame that she only wrote this one novel.

Tourists, generally speaking ... are human beings so impressed with the importance and immutability of their own manner of living that they are capable of traveling through the most fantastic places without experiencing anything more than a visual reaction. (p.45)

What separates a man from a wolf if it is not that man wants to make a profit? (p.21)

[Strega Di Gatti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahhh the feminine urge to abandon your husband in Panama!! Two Serious Ladies features a cast of oddballs being disagreeable to each other in unexpected ways. To me, this is heaven!

All of the relationships are deeply unsettling, thoroughly off-putting. Our two serious ladies "can't go 5 minutes without introducing something weird into the conversation". Enjoying this book gave me a "terrific feeling of sinning".

You wouldn't expect Jane Bowles, of all people, to be interested in how women are meant to behave. So she wrote a whole book about what happens when you follow rules that only make sense to yourself. No wonder John Waters loves this novel. Pick it up if going to pieces is a thing you've "wanted to do for years".

[Russell Bittner · Rating 1 out of 5]

I must confess, I picked this novel up only because I’d recently read that the wife of Paul Bowles (a rather well-regarded twentieth-century itinerant writer and composer) was the author and was, herself, a woman of much talent but limited repute. I believe I actually saw her described as “a writer’s writer.”

If so, I guess I ain’t no writer – or, at the very least, I can’t support that particular view of Jane Bowles’s work.

Two Serious Ladies is, in a nutshell, bizarre – and I don’t mean because of its content. I mean that the writing is bizarre. On the one hand, I kept asking myself whether English was really Ms. Bowles’s native language. On the other hand, the descriptors ‘fey’ and ‘airy-fairy’ occurred to me over and over again. I was consequently not in the least surprised that Tennessee Williams should’ve proclaimed Two Serious Ladies “(m)y favorite book” – and added – “I can’t think of a modern novel that seems more likely to become a classic.”

I’m sorry. I really wanted to like it – and to be able to declare with Claire Messud, who wrote the Introduction, that “I (too) simply could not put it down.” My problem was the opposite: I kept having to poke myself to pick the book back up and read more of Ms. Bowles’s drivel.

Yet I plunged on, wanting to find out why: “John Ashbury called Jane Bowles ‘one of the finest modern writers of fiction in any language’; Alan Sillitoe anointed the novel ‘a landmark in twentieth-century American literature’; Truman Capote deemed her ‘one of the really original pure stylists’; James Purdy said she was ‘an unmatchable talent’; and Tennessee Williams (once again) announced that she was ‘the most important writer of prose fiction in modern American letters’��� – all on p. vi of Claire Messud’s Introduction.

I had to wonder whether Ms. Bowles had been trading sexual favors for flattering reviews – or, more likely (given their separate but equal sexual proclivities), maybe this was payback time to Paul Bowles for a bit of past authorial kink.

To take just a random example (this one on p. 72): “‘All right,’ said Mr. Copperfield. He looked sad and lonely. He enjoyed so much showing other people the things he liked best. He started to walk away towards the edge of the water and stared out across the river at the opposite shore. He was very slight and his head was beautifully shaped.”

Why would a man who’d been married to the same woman for decades suddenly look “sad and lonely” because she opted not to accompany him on a little stroll through the Panamanian jungle? Disappointed, yes. Annoyed, yes. Possibly nonplused if he’s like most men whose wives change their minds at the last minute. But “sad and lonely?” Really? And would that same woman then suddenly observe that that same husband of ten thousand and one nights between the sheets now appeared to her to be “very slight(,) and his head was beautifully shaped?” If he’d been reaching up for a banana in that same instant (not out of place, given the setting of the incident), she might well have observed that he was ‘a simian delight to behold, my exuberant little tropical punch,’ but God knows not that “(h)e was slight(,) and his head was beautifully shaped.”

(Please forgive: I first learned the word ‘simian’ forty years ago chez Theodore Dreiser –who in fact used it three times in the same novel – and I’ve been dying to use it myself ever since!)

Or maybe this is the answer (on p. 76), ostensibly from the mouth (or thoughts – it’s always a little difficult to tell with Ms. Bowles’s idiosyncratic punctuation) of Mrs. Copperfield, although I think we can safely assume that that same Mrs. Copperfield serves as something of a mouthpiece for Ms. Bowles here and elsewhere: “‘Now,’ she said, jumping off the bed, ‘now for a little spot of gin to chase my troubles away. There just isn’t any other way that’s as good. At a certain point(,) gin takes everything off your hands(,) and you flop around like a little baby. Tonight(,) I want to be a little baby.’”

I like a snifterful (or “hookerful,” as she calls it in the sentence immediately following) as much as the next guy or chick, but I’m also ever-mindful of Hemingway’s dictum: “Write drunk; edit sober.” I have to wonder whether Ms. Bowles ever bothered to pull herself up from under the table long enough to heed the second part of that dictum.

I will give Ms. Bowles credit for one rather trenchant observation early on in the novel – viz., “(t)ourists, generally speaking,” Mrs. Copperfield had written in her journal, “are human beings so impressed with the importance and immutability of their own manner of living that they are capable of traveling through the most fantastic places without experiencing anything more than a visual reaction. The hardier tourists find that one place resembles another.”

As she and her husband were particularly well-traveled, I have to concede to her a well-earned authority in this quasi-aphorism. I just don’t understand how it could’ve been penned by the same hand that wrote so much tripe. Maybe – just maybe – she was actually sober when she wrote it.


But the long and short of it is that this book, in my opinion, is an amateur piece of work – AMATEUR writ large and bold. There is one anecdote or action after another that leads nowhere and hardly advances the plot of the book – if advancing the plot was ever even a thought in Jane Bowles’s head. Categorize it however you like – modern; post-modern; post-post-modern; irony; parody; buffoonery; critical social commentary – it just didn’t work, at least for this particular reader.


But as I never fail to add, de gustibus non est disputandum. If my fellow reviewers found the work enchanting, I’m certainly in no position to question their judgment or their choice of enchantment.

RRB
11/30/14
Brooklyn, NY

[Aleksandra Fatic · Rating 3 out of 5]

Suluda knjiga u kojoj niti znate šta da očekujete, ni šta da mislite, najviše me iznervirao kraj, ostao mi je nedorečen, kao na pola prekinuta misao! Inače, vrlo atmosferičan roman, uđete u priču kao da hodate pored junaka, ali i dalje ne mogu da mu dam više od 3⭐️, a baš mi žao! Možda se predomislim nekad, ostavljam otvorenu opciju!

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel is a delightfully deadpan examination of female friendships and how tedious it can be when men don’t listen. The protagonists are Miss Goering and Mrs Copperfield, both of whom are unsatisfied with their dull lives and therefore move to new places and consort with eccentric personages. I found both of them wonderfully honest, unaffected, and unconventional, which consistently confuses other characters, especially men. In my favourite scene, Miss Goering tries to start a conversation with a stranger on a train and is severely reprimanded. I can imagine that happening in the UK, where the implicit social contract on trains remains ‘no eye contact, no starting conversations’.

I found out about this novel when a friend linked me to this intriguing piece about Jane Bowles: http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-t... I really enjoyed Bowles’ writing style, which has a fresh and elegant quality about it. This novel is also wonderfully funny, seeming to parody literary melodrama and puncture pomposity. For example:

”I’ll get down on my knees,” said Andy, shaking his fist at her. No sooner had he said this than he was down on his knees near her feet. The waiter was terribly shocked and felt that he had better say something.
“Look, Andy,” he said in a very small voice, “Why don’t you get up off your knees and think things over?”
“Because,” said Andy, raising his own voice more and more, “because she daren’t refuse a man who is down on his knees. She daren’t! It would be sacrilege.”
“I don’t see why,” said Miss Goering.
“If you refuse,” said Andy, “I’ll disgrace you, I’ll crawl out into the street, I’ll put you to shame.”
“I really have no sense of shame,” said Miss Goering.

I greatly enjoyed the characterisation of Miss Goering, Miss Gamelon, Mrs Copperfield, et al. The fact that women were referred to formally by their titles, whereas men generally only got a first name, also pleased me. After the misogyny of the last novel I read, this one made for a lovely change. The dialogue, which appears fraught with misunderstandings, is clever and would I think repay a re-read. What a pity that Bowles only completed this one novel.

[Max Nemtsov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Удивительный это роман все-таки — я бы даже сказал, «загадочный», но это слово изрядно поистаскалось. Да и эпитет «удивительный» как-то стерся. Будем считать его просто странным.

Ну, начать с того, что «серьезных дам» сперва было три — одну посоветовал вычеркнуть Пол Боулз, который редактировал женину пробу пера. Третья «серьезная дама» осталась у Джейн в паре рассказов-набросков, она не англо-американка, а латиноамериканка — то ли из Гватемалы, то ли из Панамы, ну суть. Если упрощать историю вопроса, то редактировать жену, Полу так понравилось, что дальше он взялся писать сам, причем настолько небезуспешно, что практически затмил жену. И написал, в итоге, раз в пять больше нее — а у нее этот начальный творческий ручеек сяк-сяк, да и иссяк совсем, увы. Осталось только бухло да роковые влюбленности. Но не будет преувеличением сказать, что писать Боулза научила именно она: отстраненный взгляд энтомолога на человека и «нулевой градус письма» — это у него от нее и в «Двух серьезных дамах» уже конечно, чувствуется. И Джейн первой в этой удивительной паре, как видим, начала исследовать поведение человека западной цивилизации в разнообразных зонах фронтира, там, куда не ступала нога человека, будь то зона Панамского канала или дальние свояси Лонг-Айленда. Пол со своей Северной Африкой подтянулся уже потом.

Роман это начала сороковых годов, но его персонажицы, плоды своей эпохи и образцы межвоенного «потерянного поколения» (ничей возраст там не указывается, но можно заключить, что «дамам» где-то между 25 и 35, т.е. детство их прошло в аккурат при Великой войне, а действие романа происходит параллельно началу Второй мировой, но до Пёрл-Харбора — и вот об этом не забывать тоже полезно), из которого уже проклевываются битники и битницы, — так вот, персонажицы его воспринимаются как совершенно симультанные нам фигуры, несмотря на прошедшие почти 80 лет. Наверное, это что-то говорит о неизменности человеческой природы, и я не уверен, хорошо это или нет. Если вкладывать суть романа в ореховую скорлупку, то он о том, как вполне заурядные и еще не старые тетки, прочно вписанные в тогдашний истэблишмент и образ жизни начинавшегося общества потребления (одна буржуазно замужем, другая буржуазно богата) выходят из зоны комфорта. Что может быть современнее, да?

Но в скорлупку этот небольшой, но важный роман никак не вкладывается. Для начала, у нас не хватает мотивационных ключей. Персонажи и персонажицы (а сознательно не зову их героями и героинями — эти были у Ричарда Олдингтона, как известно, и известно, что с ними стало) совершают один за другим немотивированные поступки, которые громоздятся один на другой до того, что за всех действующих лиц тут становится неловко. У него, конечно, должен быть подзаголовок «роман финского стыда».

[George K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Αυτό, δυστυχώς, είναι το μοναδικό μυθιστόρημα που έγραψε η Τζέιν Μπόουλς, σύζυγος του εξαιρετικού συγγραφέα Πολ Μπόουλς. Και λέω δυστυχώς, γιατί μου άρεσε τόσο πολύ μέσα στην παραξενιά και την ιδιορρυθμία του, που πολύ θα ήθελα να διαβάσω και άλλα μυθιστορήματά της, αν είχε μπει στη διαδικασία να τα γράψει (και ήταν της ίδιας λογικής και της ίδιας ποιότητας). Υπάρχει κι ένα άλλο μικρό βιβλίο της με διηγήματα στα ελληνικά, αλλά δεν αρκεί! Λοιπόν, πρόκειται για ένα ιδιαίτερο μικρό μυθιστόρημα, με μάλλον ιδιόρρυθμους χαρακτήρες και διάφορες περίεργες καταστάσεις, το οποίο απόλαυσα από την πρώτη μέχρι την τελευταία σελίδα. Ναι, σίγουρα, δεν είναι για όλους, και δεν μπορώ να πω σε ποιο είδος ανήκει ακριβώς (είναι κάπως αταξινόμητο σαν έργο), πάντως εμένα μου άρεσε, το βρήκα ενδιαφέρον, εξαιρετικά γραμμένο, οξυδερκές και αναπάντεχα μοντέρνο, με φοβερούς διαλόγους. Και πραγματικά ένιωσα ότι η όλη ιστορία -που πήγαινε χωρίς διακοπή από τη μια σκηνή στην άλλη, από το ένα επεισόδιο στο επόμενο, χωρίς κάποια οργάνωση ή κάποιο σχέδιο-, θα μπορούσε να συνεχιστεί για εκατό ή και διακόσιες σελίδες ακόμα, τελειώνοντας ουσιαστικά σε οποιοδήποτε σημείο. Αλλά μάλλον για καλό δεν το πήγε παραπέρα η συγγραφέας, γιατί ίσως σαν έργο να έχανε τη δυναμική του και εντέλει την ποιότητά του. Είναι από τα βιβλία που πολύ ευχαρίστως θα ξαναδιάβαζα κάποια στιγμή στο μέλλον.

[Carmen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Madcap, strange, surreal, and erotic, Two Serious Ladies is like no other novel I've encountered. I didn't realize I'd been waiting my entire life to read it - turns out, I have.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two Serious Ladies introduces us to two characters Christina Goering, daughter of a powerful industrialist, now a well-heeled spinster, adrift and bored with her comfortable, predictable existence and Frieda Copperfield, married to a man who pursues travel and adventure, dragging his wife (who funds this insatiable desire) out of her comfort zone, to the untouristed, red-lit parts of Panama, where she finds solace and digs her heels in, at the bar/hotel of Madame Quill, befriending the young prostitute Pacifica.

Christina, referred to as Miss Goering and Frieda, Mrs Copperfield, acquaintances, meet briefly at a party and will come together again briefly at the end, both having had separate life-changing adventures, driven by a latent, sub-conscious desire to radically change their situations, both of which come about in a random, haphazard way.

Miss Goering invites a companion Miss Gamelon, to move into her comfortable home and at the party where she encounters Mrs Copperfield, she meets Arnold. Though she doesn’t particularly like either of these characters, when she decides to sell her palatial home and move to a run-down house on a nearby island, they agree to come with her. Neither are enamoured of her decision, to remove them from her previous comforts, which they were quite enjoying.

“In my opinion,” said Miss Gamelon, “you could perfectly well work out your salvation during certain hours of the day without having to move everything.”

“The idea,” said Miss Goering, “is to change first of our own volition and according to our own inner promptings before they impose completely arbitrary changes on us.”

Once on the island, still restless, she abandons her invitees and takes the ferry to the mainland, opening herself up to whatever random encounters await her, as if seeking her destiny or some kind of understanding through a series of desperate and reckless acts.

Mrs Copperfield seems less to seek out the depraved, than be attracted by a perceived sense of belonging, she spurns the comfortable, pretentious trappings of the Hotel Washington, declines to go walking in the jungle with her husband and instead takes the bus back to the women she has met at the Hotel les Palmas whom she feels an affinity with, despite their lives of poverty and prostitution being so far removed from her own. She recognises they possess a kind of freedom and strength she lacks; in their presence, she begins to feel energised and empowered.

It is a strange book at first, it requires finishing and reflecting upon to figure out what it was all about. It is recounted in a straight forward style, we observe the actions of the two women without reflection on their part, making it necessary to unravel their intentions, which inevitably becomes a matter of reader interpretation, to find the meaning, if indeed there is any.

For me, it was clear the women lacked something significant in their lives, in their existence, even if they were unable to articulate it or even search appropriately for it, they sensed something missing in their lives of privilege and sought it among the downtrodden. They were experiencing an existential crisis.

Bowles takes two female characters from a similar social class (similar to her own) dissecting a woman’s presence and existence in society in a form of confrontational daring that was liable to elicit both scorn and eye-brow raising in her own time and continues to provoke a certain amount of bemusement in our own.

“I know I am as guilty as I can be, but I have my happiness which I guard like a wolf, and I have authority now and a certain amount of daring, which I never had before.” – Mrs Copperfield

Reading it alongside the life of Jane Bowles, was a pleasure, I enjoyed reading it and taking the extra time to understand the context within which it was written.

[Hux · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two bored upper-class women condescend to the lower classes and live in a word of utter luxury, privilege and ignorant detachment.

There are only three chapters. Chapter One is immensely boring and focuses on Miss Goering, a wealthy heiress who allows a random woman to move in with her followed by a random middle-aged man. They move to an island off the coast. Chapter Two focuses in Mrs Copperfield, a married woman who, with her husband, goes to Central America for a jolly. She wants to hang around with prostitutes because... reasons. Then Chapter Three goes back to the very dull and smug Miss Goering who now pops into town on the mainland to make the balls of men turn blue. The end.

Where to start with this? Chapter Two was really gripping because it seemed to be going somewhere salacious, as though Mrs Copperfield was a lesbian fiend who, with the permission of her husband, liked to screw young prostitutes. But Bowles only ever hints at things and never actually just comes out and says it. Mrs Copperfield and Pacifica (the prostitute) go back to her hotel room for example but then just... fall asleep. I dunno. It's all very vague and irritating. Just spit it out for Christ's sake! I felt like I was being given a hand-job by a woman then, just when I'm about to finish, she stops. I get that it's 1943 and she has to be subtle. But this went beyond subtle and was simply obfuscating matters needlessly. It was almost childlike.

Then back to the boring Miss Goering and I'm done. I'm sure people will tell me this is some great feminist take about women breaking free from their chains but no, it really isn't. It's two spoiled, privileged women who have no grasp of reality at all. Bowles was clearly a woman who never did a day's work in her life and assumed this was the norm and believed that the prostitutes she slept with actually liked her or something. Her husband, Paul Bowles, at least understood the privilege of their tedious ennui. Hence he has them die horribly or be repeatedly raped without the protection of their 'sheltering sky.' But Jane Bowles appears utterly ignorant of that reality and has these two women engage in behaviours that, in real life, would have resulted in being endlessly beaten or raped. But she presents it all as something quite twee and disposable.

And yet, I can't say that the book is entirely bad. It's well written and intriguing. I just don't think it's saying anything meaningful outside a room filled with posh people chattering about their little lives. I so wanted the prostitutes she met to tell her to fuck off. But no, they all want to be her friend because she's so lovely. Because that's life apparently.

[Siv30 · Rating 2 out of 5]

לאמר שלא אהבתי את הספר הזה יהיה יהיה בלשון המעטה.

מדובר ביצירה שכינו אותה בעיתון הארץ מופת. יצירה שהמבנה שלה מתריס, מסרב להתארגן בצורות צפויות, ממש חתרני, בזמן שכל אלה קומפלימנטים שאני מתקשה לשייך ליצירה הזו. אולי הקומפלימנטים האלה היו נכונים כשהספר יצא לאור. אבל במבט עכשווי לא מצאתי אותו סנסציוני או חתרני וגם אם יש בו חלקים סנסציוניים הם לא עוברים כמו שצריך לקורא בגלל סגנון הכתיבה.

זהו סיפורן של שתי מכרות: כריסטינה גרינג בת למשפחת תעשיינים עשירה עם נטיות דתיות בלתי אהודה בעליל בחברה ופרידה קופרפילד . על פרידה קופרפילד הקורא לא יודע דבר למעשה רק שהיא נשואה והיא על סף טיול עם בעלה לפנמה.

כריסטינה גרינג מתגוררת בבית מרווח שהורישו לה הוריה. איכשהו, היא מצליחה להתגלגל לכך שתארח לפרק זמן בלתי ידוע את לוסי גמלון, אותה היא גם מכלכלת. אישה שמלכתחילה כרסטינה חשה כי היא לא אישה נחמדה כלל וכלל אבל בכל זאת מציעה לה מגורים בצל קורתה. בהמשך היא פוגשת את ארנולד גם לו היא מציעה קורת גג וגם אותו היא מכלכלת.

בשלב מסוים לא ברור מדוע, היא מחליטה למכור את ביתה המרווח ולעבור לבית צנוע על אי. ההסבר להחלטה הוא שהמהלך הזה הוא חלק מתוכנית גדולה יותר. מיס גמלון מנסה לשכנע את כריסטינה לוותר על המהלך בלי הצלחה ולמרות איומיה כי תנתק את הקשר עם כריסטינה, היא וארנולד נגררים אחרי כריסטינה לביתה באי וגם אביו של ארנולד מצטרף לתקופת מה אליהם. אביו של ארנולד מוקסם מכריסטינה וכרוך אחריה. כריסטינה שמוצאת שעדין חייה לא מספקים נקלעת למערכות מיניות עם גברים זרים אבל גם זה לא מסייע לה להשיג את מעמד הקדושה שבו היא מעוניינת.

בעולם המקביל של פרידה קופרפילד, היא ובעלה מגיעים לפנמה שם היא פוגשת זונה בשם פסיפיקה ומתאהבת בה. בעלה נוטש אותה או היא נוטשת אותו תלוי איך מסתכלים על זה, ופרידה קופרפילד מתגלגלת בין זונות בארים ובתי מלון זולים יחד עם פסיפיקה אותה היא לא מסוגלת לעזוב.

בסוף הספר כרסטינה גרינג ופרידה קופרפילד שבות ונפגשות. נראה כי מצבן בחיים לא עבר שינוי מהותי.

סגנון הכתיבה הלהגני, והאירועים ההזויים והבלתי מוסברים הופכים את הקריאה למסע מייסר שבו הרגשתי שאני כל הזמן טרודה בשאלות היה או לא היה, והאם אני זוכרת נכון או לא זוכרת נכון את האירועים. קריאה מאוד טורדנית ובלתי מספקת שאני מרגישה שהפסדתי ולא הבנתי חצי מהעלילה.

העלילה עצמה לא קוהרנטית ולא עיקבית וגם הניסיון למצוא קשר בין שני קווי העלילה אינו מניב פרי שכן הן לא באמת חברות, הן מכרות וקווי העלילה שלהן יפגשו רק בסוף הספר.

הדמויות על סף נוירוטיות, בלתי מוסברות בעליל וכך גם המוטיבציה שלהן להתנהגות שלהן. בעיניי כל ההתנהגות שלהן חלולה, גחמנית וריקנית. מה שעוד יותר גרם לי חוסר נחת היא העובדה שכלל הדמויות המשניות נצלניות.

עבורי זו אכזבה. הספר הזה הוא בעיניי בעיקר בלגן עלילתי ודמויות חלולות עם החלטות אקראיות. לקרוא לבלגן ולאקראיות הזו מופת לא בבית ספרי.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ahhh, this is getting serious: another book about people who I didn't necessarily like, but that greatly reminded me of myself. What does this say about me? I must simply be a mess. Of course, unlike the characters, I hardly ever shack up with underage prostitutes (I mean, it's been WEEKS since the last time) so maybe I shouldn't draw umbilicals between us.

Having said that I didn't necessarily like the people in this book, I should cement that I did love them as characters. I found them endearing. Their constant state of wanting, without ever quite knowing what they're wanting. And their constant state of finding, without quite ever knowing they've found. They're looking for chaos so that they can have a little peace.

I could go on and on about this book, talking about how the floating structure perfectly matched the character's searches, or how the book was amazingly erotically charged, without having much (any?) in the way of sex, but the book should be experienced as itself, by itself, and for itself. Anything else would do it discredit, like a slide show of someone else's first date.

[Edita · Rating 3 out of 5]

I believe sincerely that only those men who reach the stage where it is possible for them to combat a second tragedy within themselves, and not the first over again, are worthy of being called mature. When you think someone is going ahead, make sure that he is not really standing still. In order to go ahead, you must leave things behind which most people are unwilling to do. Your first pain, you carry it with you like a lodestone in your breast because all tenderness will come from there. You must carry it with you through your whole life but you must not circle around it. You must give up the search for those symbols which only serve to hide its face from you. You will have the illusion that they are disparate and manifold but they are always the same. If you are only interested in a bearable life, perhaps this letter does not concern you.