Paul Bowles in Tangier

 

Me, Paul Bowles and that forgotten night in Tangier

A documentary on the American author triggered a memory of a disturbing night at the writer's apartment that had been suppressed for 40 years

Ronald Bergan

Tue 29 December 2009

In 1998, at the Edinburgh Film Festival, I was happily watching the documentary Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles, when the weirdest thing happened to me. While the 87-year-old author was being interviewed in his apartment in Tangier, I had a strange feeling of deja vu. An African mask on the wall triggered the sense that I had been in that apartment before. Was that possible? Maybe I had seen a photo of it somewhere. I had come to the film without any pre-conceived notions, nor did I know much about Bowles, merely that he had written The Sheltering Sky, a book I had not read. I had seen Bernardo Bertolucci's film adaptation of it, which I had not much liked. That was the sum of my knowledge of Bowles.

Paul Bowles / The Outsider of the Avant-Garde

PAUL BOWLES THE OUTSIDER OF THE AVANT-GARDE

By Dennis Drabelle

June 11, 1989

AN INVISIBLE SPECTATOR 

A Biography of Paul Bowles 

By Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno Weidenfeld & Nicholson. 

501 pp. $24.95 

A DISTANT EPISODE 

The Selected Stories B

y Paul Bowles The Ecco Press. 

352 pp. Paperback, $11.95 

IN THE INTRODUCTION to the 1980 edition of his second novel, Let It Come Down, Paul Bowles calls one of its characters, Richard Holland, "a caricature of myself." Holland, it turns out, occupies a mere handful of paragraphs in a book of almost 300 pages. So far as he is revealed, he strikes the reader as a chatty cynic, but only a psychic would feel confident of having fathomed him even as a sketch. That in itself -- the guardedness of Bowles' self-caricature -- speaks volumes about a man whose fiction Gore Vidal has trumpeted, whose music Ned Rorem reveres and whose biography Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno has told in this well-proportioned book. 

The Spider's House by Paul Bowles / Tension in Morocco

 

Tension in Morocco

By CHARLES J. ROLO
6 November 1955

While "The Spider's House," like Paul Bowles' two previous novels, has North Africa as its setting, it is distinctly different in character from Mr. Bowles' earlier work. "The Sheltering Sky" and "Let It Come Down" were novels of extreme subjectivity pinpointed on the solitary drama of the Hollow Man--withdrawn from the events of his time, passive and purposeless--who somnambulistically drifted through a nightmarish cosmos toward inevitable disaster. In "The Spider's House" the main protagonists are not ciphers and they are caught up in contemporary realities--the conflict between the French and the Arabs in Morocco. This is a more promising orientation (for if fiction is to have life it must see something more in life than a dreamlike drift from nullity to nothingness); but its immediate results are rather disappointing. "The Spider's House," though admirable in parts, is in the final analysis a faltering and fuzzy performance.

Jay McInerney / Paul Bowles in Exile

Paul Bowles
Photo by Dora Carrindon

PAUL BOWLES IN EXILE
BIOGRAPHY

Paul Bowles has kept himself aloof from all the hipsters and hypesters of American letters. Living in self-imposed exile in Tangier, he has cast a spell over such talents as Tennessee Williams, Libby Holman, Truman Capote, and Allen Ginsberg. Today, on the eve of the republication of his autobiography, his dark vision retains his power.

Vanity Fair, September 1985

By Jay McInerney

202F-004-32A
Paul Bowles with Moroccan storyteller Mohammed Mrabet on a recent visit in Tangier.

Paul Bowles opened the world of Hip. He let in the murder, the drugs, the incest, the death of the Square... the call of the orgy, the end of civilization.
-Norman Mailer

Paul Bowles / Travel Writing

Paul Bowles with Jane
New York, 1944

PAUL BOWLES
BIOGRAPHY

---

TRAVEL WRITING

As one might expect from an author who was such an inveterate traveler, Paul Bowles was an accomplished travel writer. Like many authors, Bowles used the commissions he received from his travel writing to fund his travel to exotic locales, such as India, Ceylon, Thailand, and North Africa. Bowles wrote travel essays for such conventional magazines as Esquire,Gentleman's Quarterly, Holiday, and Harper's Magazine, but he also wrote essays with a historical or political slant for The Nation, and his travel writing appeared in literary magazines such as American Mercury, Zero, and The London Magazine. But even in his most seemingly-conventional essays for popular magazines, Bowles explored the cultural differences and often humorous or even violent interactions between Westerners in the post-colonial world and the inhabitants of the Third World countries he visited. A substantial selection of Bowles's published travel essays was collected in Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue (1963). It is interesting to note that Bowles, in several later projects, generously contributed text or introductions to the work of photographers who shared his sense of discovery with a traveler's eye.Paul Bowles's papers include substantial materials documenting his travels and his travel writing. Copies of many of the magazines and journals in which his essays first appeared are present. Numerous manuscripts, correspondence, ephemera, memorabilia, and artifactual materials, and a host of other sources are available. Of particular interest are several of Bowles's notebooks which he compiled during his travels. Visually appealing are hundreds of photographs, including many of his own, which are housed among his papers.

Travel Writing: Items in the Exhibition

88a. "Yallah." Typescript signed, with autograph corrections, Summer 1955, 14 pp.

Bowles has appended a publishing history of "Yallah" on his manuscript: "published 1956, Conzett & Huber, Zurich; 1957 McDowell & Obolinsky, New York; and 1958, Merlin Press, London."

88b. Yallah. Photos de Peter W. Haeberlin, texte de Paul Bowles Zurich: Manesse, [1956].

This is the first French translation of the text Bowles wrote to accompany this collection of African photographs.

89. "From Notes Taken in Ceylon," in Zero (New York), Vol. 2, no.7 (Spring 1956), pp. 7-19. 

90a. "All Parrots Speak." Typescript signed, with autograph corrections, "Tangier, 1954," 14 pp. 

90a. "All Parrots Speak." Typescript signed, with autograph corrections, "Tangier, 1954," 14 pp.

The manuscript bears a note added by Bowles on the last page: "published Random House 1963, Peter Owen 1963 'Their Heads are Green'." 

90b. Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue. New York: Random House, [1963].

91. "Casablanca," in Holiday (New York), Volume 40 (September 1966), pp. 74-79, 108-111, 120-122. Illustrated with drawings by Ronald Searle.

92a. [Notebook from Thailand]. Autograph notebook, [1966], 140 pp.

Bowles's notebook, kept during several months of his 1966 visit to Bangkok, is filled with descriptive observations, journal-like accounts of encounters and adventures, historical and cultural notes, drafts of letters, scenes from his play The Garden, and notes about temple music he recorded on the trip. Laid in the notebook is a pencil sketch of Asian musical instruments, as well as a "Hong Kong Landing Card." 

92b. [Notes on Thailand]. Typescript manuscript with autograph corrections, n.d., 75 pp.

In 1966, Bowles contracted with Little Brown to write a book about Bangkok for the publisher's projected series of books on cities. "Notes on Thailand" remains from his unfinished project, dropped, in part, because of his need to return to Tangier to care for his ailing wife Jane. Bowles suggested that his friend Alec Waugh complete the abandoned assignment, resulting in Waugh's Bangkok: the Story of a City (1970).

93. "What's So Different About Marrakesh?," in Travel and Leisure (New York), Volume 1 (June-July 1971), pp. 35-37, 40. 

94. "An Island of My Own," in Great Escapes, A Section of the San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle (San Francisco), 24 March 1985, pp. 40-42.
Bowles recounts his life on the island of Taprobane, off the south coast of Sri Lanka.
95a. "The Hakima: Introduction." Typescript with autograph corrections, n.d., 3 pp.
This typescript is the original manuscript of Bowles's introduction to William Betsch's photographic journey through Morocco's famed city, Fez.
95b. The Hakima, a Tragedy in Fez, by William Betsch, with an introduction by Paul Bowles. New York: Aperture Foundation, [1991].
96a. Barry Brukoff to Paul Bowles, typed letter signed, January 22, 1990, 2 pp.

The photographer's letter confirms receipt of copies of articles of Bowles's prior travel writing, which he reviewed for their collaboration in Morocco (1993). 96b. Morocco. Text by Paul Bowles; photographs by Barry Brukoff. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1993. This is copy 15 of 50 specially-bound copies numbered and signed by the author and the artist, with an original photograph laid in.

92b. [Notes on Thailand]. Typescript manuscript with autograph corrections, n.d., 75 pp.

The photographer's letter confirms receipt of copies of articles of Bowles's prior travel writing, which he reviewed for their collaboration in Morocco (1993). 96b. Morocco. Text by Paul Bowles; photographs by Barry Brukoff. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1993. This is copy 15 of 50 specially-bound copies numbered and signed by the author and the artist, with an original photograph laid in.

97a. Vittorio Santoro to Paul Bowles, typed letter signed, April 8, 1993, 1 p.; with "The Sky" and "A Conversation," typed manuscript with Bowles's editorial notations, "Tangier, November 1992 / March 1993," 4 pp. "The Sky," with references to projected light, Saharan space, storms, and Sri Lankan sunsets, written for photographer Vittorio Santoro, is perhaps Bowles's most abstract travel piece. 97b. Portraits, Nudes, Clouds: a Book of Photographs, by Vittorio Santoro with text and an interview by Paul Bowles. Zurich: Memory/Cage Editions, 1993. This is copy 18 of 40 of the Deluxe Edition, signed by Vittorio Santoro and Paul Bowles; with an original photograph, signed and numbered by the photographer, laid in. 98. Morocco: Sahara to the Sea, photographs and text by Mary Cross, preface by Paul Bowles. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1995. Publisher's invitation laid in.

98. Morocco: Sahara to the Sea, photographs and text by Mary Cross, preface by Paul Bowles. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1995.

http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/bowles/travel.htm

Paul Bowles / Poetry

Paul Bowles

PAUL BOWLES

BIOGRAPHY

POETRY

Although Paul Bowles is best known today for his fiction, his initial literary efforts and first significant publications were in poetry. A member of the Class of 1928 of Jamaica High School in Long Island, Paul Bowles was an active contributor to the school's literary magazine, The Oracle. While in high school, Bowles discovered the Paris-based avant-garde literary magazine transition

and submitted several poems. Two of his poems, "Spire Song" and "Entity," were accepted and appeared in transition numbers 12 (March 1928) and 13 (Summer 1928). Apart from his writing for The Oracle, these two poems represent his first official publications. Over the next several years Paul Bowles's poetry was published in some of the most celebrated little magazines of the period, includingTambour, Blues, The Morada, This Quarter, Poetry, and Pagany.By the early 1930s, Bowles had been to France twice, met Gertrude Stein, and heard her pronouncement that his writing was "not poetry." Consequently, Bowles's work as a composer and music critic took center stage and he turned his attention to poetry less frequently. Still, Bowles's poetry surfaced in fits and starts throughout his career. His first published book, Two Poems (1933), was a small chapbook issued by Modern Editions Press in New York, which also published work by Bob Brown, Kay Boyle, Carl Rakosi, Kathleen Young, and others during its brief existence. Bowles's efforts as a poet lay dormant until the late 1960s when the American poet and photographer Ira Cohen asked

2. Blues: a Magazine of New Rhythms (New York), Number 8 (Spring 1930)

him to contribute a poem to Gnaoua, the legendary little magazine Cohen edited. Bowles contributed several poems originally written in Taxco, Mexico, in 1940, which Cohen also used inThe Great Society, another small magazine.California publisher John Martin saw The Great Society issue and suggested that Bowles allow him to publish a collection of his poems. With the

7a. [Next to Nothing]. Typescript and autograph manuscript, n.d.

Black Sparrow Press publication of Scenes (1968), Paul Bowles's poetry was issued for the first time in a collection.Scenes was followed by several other Black Sparrow collections of Bowles's poems, including The Thicket of Spring (1972) and Next to Nothing (1981). Bowles's poetry was also published occasionally in chapbooks and appeared in periodicals throughout his career. The University of Delaware Library's collection of Paul

Bowles's papers houses manuscripts and other resources relating to his poetry. Among the most

interesting materials which were present in the 1999 additions to the papers are several earlypoems which date between 1928 and 1940. Some of the earliest autograph and typescript poems are signed by Bowles and bear his parents' Jamaica, New York, address; others are signed and dated

4. "Can we make wounds beautiful?" Untitled typescript, dated "Taxco 1940"

"Taxco 1940"from the fertilewriting period Bowles spent in Mexico. Galley proofs, and other publishing and editorial materials are present, as are literary magazines in which Bowles's poetry first appeared.

Poetry: Items in the Exhibition

1. "Poem." Autograph manuscript, signed "Paul Frederic Bowles / 34 Terrace Avenue / Jamaica, N.Y.C., États-Unis," n.d., 1 p. Bearing the address of his parents' home in Jamaica, Long Island, Bowles apparently prepared this unpublished poem for submission to one of the French literary magazines that he was reading.

2. "Taedium Cupiditatis," in Blues: a Magazine of New Rhythms(New York), Number 8 (Spring 1930), p. 13. 3. Two Poems. New York: Modern Editions Press, [1933]. This chapbook prints the poems "Watervariation" and "Message."Two Poems is Paul Bowles's first published book. 4. "Can we make wounds beautiful?" Untitled typescript, dated "Taxco 1940," 1 p. Verses 1, 2-3, 4, and 5-6-7 from this untitled poem of death and decay, written during a stay in Mexico, appear as Scenes VIII, VI, VII, and IX, respectively, in the 1968 Black Sparrow Press collection Scenes. 5. Scenes. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1968. This is number 48 of 250 copies signed by the author. 6. The Thicket of Spring: Poems, 1926-1969. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1972. This is number 146 of 200 copies signed by the author and is accompanied by the publisher's prospectus.

7b. Next to Nothing: Collected Poems, 1926-1977. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1981.

7a. [Next to Nothing]. Typescript and autograph manuscript, n.d., 29 pp. This is the original manuscript of the 1981 Black Sparrow collection; two pages of the manuscript are written on the verso of letters to Bowles dating from 1975. Accompanied by an envelope marked "Orig. ms. of Next to Nothing" in Bowles's hand. 7b. Next to Nothing: Collected Poems, 1926-1977. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press, 1981. This is copy N of 26 lettered copies signed by the author.

8a. Jeffrey Miller to Paul Bowles, typed letter signed, May 13, 1997, 1 p. Miller discusses editorial matters relating to the Cadmus Editions publication of No Eye Looked Out from Any Crevice and encloses proofs of the small book. 8b. No Eye Looked Out from Any Crevice. San Francisco: Cadmus Editions, 1997. This is copy H of 26 lettered copies signed by the author. In his introduction, Lee Perron describes the discovery of this 1928 poem, sixty years after Bowles had sent a handwritten copy of the poem to a high school friend on the staff of a Syracuse University literary magazine. Not used by his friend, the poem was tucked into a book and neglected until the manuscript was identified by a bookseller and published by Jeffrey Miller in this limited edition.

8b. No Eye Looked Out from Any Crevice. San Francisco: Cadmus Editions, 1997 /8a. Jeffrey Miller to Paul Bowles, May 13, 1997

http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/exhibits/bowles/poetry.htm

An American In Tangier / Interview with Paul Bowles

An American In Tangier

Interview with Paul Bowles
BIOGRAPHY

The renewed academic and media interest in Paul Bowles as a figure of a rare intellectual complexion and a remarkable talent owes perhaps more than anything else to the release of Bernardo Bertolucci’s film The Sheltering Sky(1990) and Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno’s An Invisible Spectator (1989). The first is a major film based on Bowles’ first novel set partly in Morocco and partly in Algeria; the second is a voluminous and resourceful biography which attempted with great success to reintroduce Paul Bowles to his American readers.

Similar testimonies to the richness of Bowles’ writing appeared in the form of reviews of his books in their Abacus and Penguin editions. To these were added a number of biographical accounts which delved into the author’s own records and sought to expose the peculiar life he had led across continents in far-flung towns and villages in search of new revelations and discoveries. This avant-garde, bohemian lifestyle had transformed him into a cult figure among belated critics who came to recognize the compelling qualities of his writing so reminiscent at once of Poe’s, Kafka’s and Camus’ fiction. Bowles’ writings fall into different genres and reflect the broad scope of his interests and experience. The list includes four novels, several collections of short stories, a collection of poems, an autobiography, diaries, travel narratives and a number of miscellaneous publications, not to mention the series of interviews he had given throughout his lifetime.

It may not be enough to characterize him as a prolific writer with diverse intellectual occupations, though this alone should guarantee him an eminent position among modern writers. His location as an American expatriate has never failed to raise questions as to what makes a writer of his calibre forsake all the luxuries of European and American cities to live permanently in Tangier. This voluntary exile had for long concealed his work from academic recognition. The pleasures of exile, however, can not be underestimated. For a freelance writer, sceptical of traditions as he was, only one road had to betaken, and that road involved constant travel, and a relentless search for exotic sights, sounds and satisfactions.

If such had been his own personal disposition, his literary work has appealed to readers of various backgrounds and expectations. Bowles’ books stand at the crossroads of several cultures and histories which are defined, among other things, by a long tradition of exclusion and opposition. They are statements about the postcolonial condition encompassing geographies as distant as Latin America and the Far East, or USA and North Africa. It may not worthwhile to try to press his books for a definite political moral, though his own voices emanates from the ‘interstitial space’ often associated with individuals of distanced and passive nationalistic sentiment. Gore Vidal noted once that the absence of a full-hearted reception of Bowles’ fiction in the United States was due largely to the type of characters and situations he portrayed in his novels. Modelled on himself, his characters lead lives far removed from American day-to-day experience. While they embark on long journeys that promise adventure and self fulfilment away from the routine of metropolitan cities, they retain their racial prejudices and fail to adapt their foreign identities to local rhythms. The ultimate impact of these journeys is portrayed as tremendous and everlasting, the revelations as shattering.

This interview took place in Paul Bowles’ flat in Tangier during a visit I paid him in June 1996. I must acknowledge Alfred Yeager’s generous help in securing the meeting and, more still, in taking pains to convince Bowles to grant this interview. Upon realizing the purpose of our visit, Bowles, a frail figure in his mid eighties, confronted me by saying that nothing was more detestable to him than giving interviews. While consenting to answer my questions, he desired the interview to be as short as possible.

Karim Bejjit:  Tangier has been for many years your permanent home, and the locale of several of your short stories, what is it exactly that attracted you to this city?

Paul Bowles: Well, I had never heard of it, to tell the truth, until Gertrude Stein in Paris told me that she had come here a few times. She thought I would like it. So I said all right I would go.

KB: When did you first come here?

PB: In the summer of 1931.

KB:  Did you settle then?

PB:  I rented a house up on the mountains and bought furniture for it, which was absurd, because I knew I wouldn’t stay long.  Well, I ended by selling it off.  Then I went to Fez, I went to Marrakech, I went over the High Atlas, then to Ouarzazate…

KB:  How did you perceive the difference between Tangier and Fez, for example, at the time you experienced them?

PB: Well, Tangier was an amusing place to live in, and Fez was fascinating, not to live in, but to explore, I spent very much time wandering in the Medina…

KB: You said Tangier was amusing. Can you elaborate on that?

PB: It was full of ridiculous foreigners. If you wanted to be entertained, you simply went to the so-called tea-pot and sat in a café and watched the circus. Right that was amusing. I had also stayed in Fez. Fez was much more serious, and it was so full of foreigners who did not seem to know anything about Morocco at all. It was full of people who drank a lot, which I didn’t do, so that amused me.  I thought they did.  I think I had made a fool of myself by watching them, but I didn’t know then.

KB: In your preface to The Spider’s House, you expressed your regret for the speed at which traditional aspects of Moroccan life had been disappearing in the aftermath of the colonial era. Why did you think it was regrettable?

PB: You mean change? The Europeanization of Morocco? Well, I knew that if it were Europeanized, it would be a kind of bastard culture (laughs).

KB: You mean there would be no sense of homogeneity?

PB: No, how could there be homogeneity?

KB: And was that discomforting for you?

PB: No, no, I regretted to see that Morocco would no longer be medieval, that it would share certain things with Europe.

KB: That was your personal feeling?

PB: Of course, I couldn’t have an impersonal feeling.

KB: Your work cannot be charged with complicity with colonialism, although you were writing long before the Moroccans had their independence. Yet, neither did you ally yourself with the local politics as it was unfolding in Morocco. How did you perceive your position as an American writer?

PB:  No, I never had anything to do with local politics. I wasn’t French. I wasn’t Moroccan of course.

KB: The Sheltering Sky was your first novel. I know I am taking you many years back, but what particular circumstances had suggested to you the writing of that novel?

PB: None, I mean, I had no idea. I just started to write it. I wasn’t conscious of what I was doing, really. I understood what I wanted though.

KB: Did you feel you were writing within a particular literary tradition? I mean who is the writer that influenced you most?

PB: Well, I suppose Jean Paul Sartre. I appreciated his philosophy.  What would you say, he was an atheist existentialist, which I liked.

KB: This reminds me of an incident in The Sheltering Sky when Kit ventures from her comfortable first-class carriage in the train. Frightened and disgusted by the ‘natives’, she ultimately withdraws to change her clothes for fear she catches pneumonia.

PB: No he is forced to do so by Tunner!

KB: Right. I wonder if this failure to communicate with the ‘natives’ is cultural or ontological.

PB: Certainly not cultural, seeing nothing whatever by the culture and the land she was travelling through. I don’t think she was interested in it really, but she was obviously repelled by the sheep’s head, by the crowds of natives in the train, so she felt she was in an environment that wasn’t hers, and where she shouldn’t be.

KB: I wonder to what extent you are using autobiographical details in your fiction. I mean, how much of your personal experience is reflected in The Sheltering Sky?

PB:  I don’t know. In many places I set down what I remembered seeing. There was more invented, though. But the inventions there were often based on memories. I suppose that’s what you do with all novels anyway.

KB:  Several scenes in The Spider’s House display more intimacy with the Moroccan life than The Sheltering Sky could allow about Algeria. There is an entire narrative in the novel that is dominated by Moroccan characters. Adjacent to that narrative runs another dominated by Westerns. Only at the end do the two distinct narratives converge. But the encounter is once more a defeating one. Why such pessimism?

PB: Well, it was inevitable. What else could have happened? You are saying the final pages of The Spider’s House are pessimistic; well, the whole novel is pessimistic of course.

KB:  But at one time, it seemed there was a chance for some mutual understanding. It didn’t survive till the end of the novel where everybody had to go their own ways.

PB:  Of course, there was no other organization possible. Roads and cultures can merge and blend, but I don’t believe it. I think one destroys the other. It’s a battle and one wins, and the inevitable winner in this case will be European culture; in this case not, always.

KB: From mid 1960’s till mid 1970’s you worked with several Moroccan writers as editor and translator. Can you comment on that experience?

PB: Well I decided to do translation because Mrs. Bowles was very ill, and I had to see her every other minute, and so I had neither privacy nor solitude which were very necessary to me. It was then that I found I didn’t need to do that for translating, because I could stop it at any moment and return and pick it up where I left it off. But I couldn’t do that for writing fiction. So that’s why I was doing translating for several years, until Mrs. Bowles died. This was in 1973.

KB:  The books were published in the United States.

PB: Yes. They were translated into several languages, well reviewed accepted, enjoyed, I think, by readers. But you have to remember that the only one that wrote was Choukri. The others were oral. In other words, the others couldn’t use Arabic; they used darija. I couldn’t translate in Arabic. Well, I don’t know, I never learnt it. But I enjoyed doing translation. I thought it would perhaps shed light on the culture that was much despised. I thought it probably did.

KB: Do you think your own work has generally received its fair share of academic criticism?

PB: I’ve no idea!

KB: Well I remember Gore Vidal once saying that your work wasn’t very much known in the U.S. mainly because you wrote about individuals and situations that Americans would find very difficult to identify with.

PB:  Hmm, that’s true, he did write that.

KB: Would you agree?

PB: I don’t know. I don’t think it interests me any more. I don’t like academic criticism, or academic thinking. I’d certainly be happy not to have academic recognition. But now it has begun for several years and goes on.

KB:  Besides your creative writing, you also write music. How do you see the connection between literature and music?

PB: I don’t think there is a connection. I think one effaces the other, that is to say if I’m writing prose and I become restless I can go into the other room of my mind and write music, and vice versa. One more or less cleans off the blackboard for the other in my mind.

KB: Looking back is there something in your life you regret not having done?

PB: Not having done? No. Well, I wasn’t able to convince Mrs Bowles that she shouldn’t drink so much. I regret having allowed her to go ahead till it killed her. It isn’t really regret, not remorse. No, no. I suppose I wasn’t strong enough to stop her. Well, I don’t think it would have helped. One can’t convince someone else to be other that what they are. You can’t change people. I can’t …I mean… I don’t know.

KB: That’s a power no one has.

PB: I suppose so.

[Interview published initially in Moroccan Cultural Studies Journal, vol. 1 N° 1 (Spring 1999), pp. 115-119]

http://writingthemaghreb.wordpress.com/2012/07/21/an-american-in-tangier-interview-with-paul-bowles/