The Dream at the End of the World: Paul Bowles and the Literary Renegades in Tangier

Rating:
Summary: Paul's place
Review: This isn't a strict literary biography of any of the individual authors that gathered for a time in Morocco, rather its a portrait of the night life (mostly) that all the celebrities literary and otherwise took part in while there. Its better than you might think though. Coming to this book for its literary interest is not a waste of time. There is an interesting segment about Brion Gysin and his club where the mountain musicians performed(would love to have seen that). But there is an awful lot of socialites up to no good ... too. Who gives a ... about Barbara Hutton? The interesting aspect of that though is that it shows the decadent westerners living it up in the lap of poverty. Artists go to places for different reasons than Mick Jagger(no offense Mick) does after all. It is the artists that make a place hip for the work they do while there. This book is in a way perhaps unconsciously an example of how hip gathers parasites and then the parasites take over,and after that happens the place becomes too expensive and too congested and too self-consciously hip for the real artists and they move on. This is Vanity Fair,the magazine, both the good and the bad(they have on occasion done a good literary piece). It is an entertaining read at least and loaded with good glossy black and white pictures and we all like a little decadence now and then, the parties are kinda cool. A good photo album with snapshot portraits of all the players but for the deeper story(you know the stories about the ones that actually wrote a book or two) read the bios of the individual artists.