Paul Bowles, Man of Mystery

I first met Paul Bowles while I was down and out in Tangier, in December 1991. A Moroccan tour guide named Abdul took me to the apartment building where Bowles lived, and by a stroke of fortune, Bowles happened to be arriving just as I was. I greeted him and, after a moment’s hesitation, he invited me up for a cup of tea. I didn’t know at the time that Bowles was renowned for such hospitality, so I was somewhat stunned by the offer. Of course I accepted, and from that point on, and for the next few months while I was in Tangier, I made regular visits to the House of Bowles, probably on average of once every couple of weeks. I met Rodrigo Rey Rosa and a host of other people, ones who took care of Bowles and those simply passing through to meet him. Paul was never anything but civil and courteous, if mostly cool. I generally visited in the early evening, after he’d had his chicken dinner and I knew he would be settling down to smoke his first kif cigarette of the day. Sometimes I brought my semse and smoked kif with him, and we would chat about whatever came up, while I basked in the warmth of his apartment and the sweet, slightly surreal knowledge of being in the company of one of my literary heroes. Some of my happiest moments during this dark period came out of knowing that, for all my destitution, solitude, homelessness and hunger, and in the absence of any real emotional support, I at least had an audience with Paul Bowles whenever I felt like it!

Bowles was certainly my favorite living novelist at the time (unless you count Castaneda as a novelist). After Dostoyevsky and Edgar Allan Poe, he was probably the fiction writer I most admired, and I told him as much. (He was touched, if somewhat bemused.) I first read his stuff on a bench in the zocalo in Oaxaca, Mexico, soon after arriving on my Castaneda-inspired pilgrimage of 1989. I had heard about Bowles through a band called The Swans, whose song “Let it Come Down” was inspired, I discovered, by a novel of the same name. It was an old Oaxaca library edition of The Sheltering Sky that provided my first exposure to Bowles’ work. I recall clearly sitting on that bench around twilight, opening the book and reading the first page. Before I had even got to the second page, I knew I wanted to read everything Bowles had ever written. I eventually did (though I only got to read The Spider’s House in Tangier, when Paul lent me one of his copies). Re-reading that opening passage now, it’s easy to see why I was so struck by the prose. The first few lines describe a man (Port) emerging from dreams and slowly adjusting to his waking reality. With precise, haunting prose, Bowles creates a sense of the vertiginous nature of consciousness, and of how “reality” is a peculiarly precarious affair.

What struck me, however, wasn’t what Bowles’ prose expressed but the effect it had upon me. For the first time I became aware of the power of the written word not just to describe states of consciousness but to invoke them. As I sat on that park bench in the twilight and devoured those words, I distinctly felt my consciousness shifting and changing under their influence. And I recognized Bowles as an unparalleled master of the written word. Castaneda wrote about sorcery, but Bowles’ writing appeared to be sorcery. This was something to look further into.

I went back with a friend to see Bowles one last time before he died, I believe it was in 1998. I took along a copy of my Conversations with Paul Bowles and he signed it, “To Jake Horsley on his return to Tangier.” When I told him, with a slight smile, that it was my favorite of all his books, he looked flabbergasted and said, “But it’s not.” In fact, he hadn’t even known it existed until he saw my copy. I have read that book half a dozen times now, and I still enjoy hearing Bowles’ thoughts expressed verbally more than I enjoy reading his prose. The prose is formidable, touched with genius, but it’s anything but revealing. Bowles himself, on the other hand, was astonishing frank in his interviews. His was a truly unique sensibility, probably the one I felt the most affinity for of any writer this side of Dostoyevsky. I never really found out what he thought of me, or of my writing (he read some my hand-written journal once, and all he said was “I can see that you’re serious”); but I have little doubt that he enjoyed my visits. He certainly remembered me, even after a five-year absence. During those months in Tangier, one of his neighbors commented that he must like me because he mentioned my name from time to time, and he never said anything bad about me. Someone else remarked that he never said anything bad about anyone, to which the reply came that, if Bowles didn’t like someone, he simply didn’t mention them at all.

Jake Horsley Sept 2006

Paul Bowles, A Mythical Personality. A more esoteric discussion of Bowles, based on personal impressions.

The Official Paul Bowles site can be found at www.paulbowles.org/

Bowles wrote four novels, The Sheltering Sky, Let it Come Down, The Spider’s House, and Up Above the World, and numerous short stories. Conversations with Paul Bowles is published by University of Mississippi Press.

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