Fiction. In these seven new stories Paul Bowles ranges widely in time, in form, and in geographic area-from Massachusetts to Morocco, from 1932 to the 1970s. Portraits and contemporary scenes mix conventional narration with experimental monologues, and the volume concludes with a tale presented as six letters written to a bitter, dying man. The formal versatility is as arresting as the content. The whole is proof (if it were needed) that, as Gore...