IN CHAPTER 2 I EXAMINED Paul Bowles’ natural disposition toward the linked but mutually exclusive experiences of existence and consciousness during his earliest recorded moments in his autobiography, and the ways in which such impulses were reinforced by his upbringing and New England social and intellectual traditions, including a childhood reading of Emerson's Essays, and the post-Emersonian New England spiritualism and theosophy that were conveyed to him through his paternal grandmother and her siblings. In the present chapter I examine in passing indirect Emersonian influence on Bowles through Emerson's pervasive influence on Nietzsche, who in turn was an important influence on Gide, whom Bowles read and absorbed during his high school years and afterward. To recapitulate from the introduction above, when we consider the influence of Emerson on Nietzsche, “We are dealing with an intellectual and spiritual relationship that is so profound and pervasive that the word influence doesn't do justice to it” (3), which “raises the question of whether it is Emerson or his Danish contemporary, Søren Kierkegaard, who is entitled to be called ‘the first existentialist’” (9). These historical connections include a circularity of influence that, in addition to Emerson's original influence on Bowles, also leads from Emerson to Nietzsche to Gide to Bowles in an arc that takes in Western Europe and sweeps across North Africa. Such influences, affinities, and reflections become increasingly fascinating even as they become increasingly extensive and, sometimes, elusive. In the present chapter I propose to trace influences and affinities between André Gide and Paul Bowles in order to show two streams of transcendental and existential influence emanating from Emerson to Bowles to demonstrate that Bowles’ reflections of European existentialism is thoroughly “in the American grain.” Gide reflects many of the basic existential ideas of Nietzsche, who had reached a high point of popularity and influence in France around the turn of the twentieth century. The precocious Bowles read Gide in French while he was still in high school, and years later in his autobiography, he describes how during his intellectually formative youth he considered Gide as “the master.”