Deborah Eisenberg

Who can really understand Bowles’ writing? Well, some people can, but not I. Nonetheless I love it, and it has the irrefutable hyper-reality of dreams. Only a very few other writers (Denis Johnson is one) have used American English with such exactitude and so cracklingly, have observed so fearlessly the emotional abysses that confront us, and are so deliriously funny. Claire Messud’s introduction to the recent Ecco edition is eloquent and insightful.