The famously enigmatic writer-composer Paul Bowles is the subject of Millicent Dillon's unforgettable new book. Her portrait of the chameleonlike artist is much more than an account of Bowles's life, however. It is also a meditation on biography that questions the biographer's role, the subject's credibility, and the very nature of "truth" in the telling of a life.
Millicent Dillon first met Paul Bowles in Tangier in 1977, when she was writing a biography of his wife, the author Jane Bowles, who died in 1973. Dillon returned to Morocco in 1992 to work with Bowles on a book about his own life. In Bowles's book-lined apartment often crowded with visitors, Dillon observes the magnetism the aging artist exerts on anyone who comes into his circle. Bowles talks of his difficult childhood and of his grief over Jane's long illness, of exile, dreams, and madness. He is charming and evasive with Dillon, generous and devious. As the book unfolds, Dillon's own reflections and concerns surface alongside details of Bowles's daily life, his physical condition, his interactions with others. Her portrait of the artist is seen simultaneously with her construction of that portrait, and in a kind of literary legerdemain we are able to observe Dillon on the biographical canvas along with Bowles and his deceased wife.
Author of the international bestseller The Sheltering Sky and numerous other works, as well as an acclaimed composer, Paul Bowles has had an immensely rich creative life. Millicent Dillon seems to have been destined to write this unconventional biography of the artist, and the result is wonderful, disturbing, and strangely compelling, like Paul Bowles himself.
Millicent Dillon's published works include fiction and nonfiction as well as numerous short stories. She is the editor of The Portable Paul and Jane Bowles (1994), Out in the World: Selected Letters of Jane Bowles, 1935-1970 (1990), and A Little Original Sin. Millicent Dillon lives in San Francisco.
"Less a biography than a meditation on the curious nature of biography and on the even more curious nature of Paul Bowles. Brilliantly done, and intensely interesting."—Alice Adams
"[I love the Paul Bowles biography.] A seriously innovative biography about a fascinating literary figure, an exotic locale, the haunting ghost of Jane Bowles, and an endearing and important biographer. Any of these ingredients would be enough to recommend it; altogether, a brilliant book."—Diane Johnson
"I am impressed by the honesty, lucidity, and maturity in every sentence. This stunning pas de deux by two wary, relentlessly intelligent people is a delicious reading experience."—Phillip Lopate, author of Portrait of my Body and Art of the Personal Essay
"Millicent Dillon brilliantly manages to turn her difficulties with the notorious elusiveness of Paul Bowles, and of Tangiers, into the most revealing account ever given of his personality and his achievements. It's a fascinating, exhilirating book."—Richard Poirier
354 pp.5.5 x 8.875Illus: 15 b/w photographs
9780520224933$29.95|£25.00Paper
Mar 2000