You Are Not I: A Portrait of Paul Bowles

Rating:
Summary: Was she had?
Review: Having spent a good deal of time reading the work of Paul Bowles, I found it an interesting read for the fact that it gave insight to Bowles and his recollections of life in a fascinating time. A time of which he shaped a piece. He's a tremendously interesting character, all the more engaging because of his modesty and self effacing style.

I found Millicent Dillon's style to be rather annoying, however. Dillon constantly returns to a focus on herself. She writes endlessly about herself, how she feels, how she writes, how she fits into it all - and that's not why I bought the book. I wanted to read about Bowles, and found Dillon putting herself into way too much of the book. She'd never be mistaken for a fly on the wall.

Rating:
Summary: Bowles insight, Dillon too interested in herself.
Review: Having spent a good deal of time reading the work of Paul Bowles, I found it an interesting read for the fact that it gave insight to Bowles and his recollections of life in a fascinating time. A time of which he shaped a piece. He's a tremendously interesting character, all the more engaging because of his modesty and self effacing style.

I found Millicent Dillon's style to be rather annoying, however. Dillon constantly returns to a focus on herself. She writes endlessly about herself, how she feels, how she writes, how she fits into it all - and that's not why I bought the book. I wanted to read about Bowles, and found Dillon putting herself into way too much of the book. She'd never be mistaken for a fly on the wall.

Rating:
Summary: A portrait of who?
Review: I have to agree with another reviewer, I didn't think it was a radical new direction for biography either... I'm not even done with the book yet and I'm still waiting for Ms. Dillon to begin shifting the focus of her investigations away from herself and Jane Bowles.
Right now I'm thinking that perhaps I'd prefer reading The Invisible Spectator by Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno. Maybe that would be a better portrait of Mr. Bowles...

Rating:
Summary: A portrait of who?
Review: I have to agree with another reviewer, I didn't think it was a radical new direction for biography either... I'm not even done with the book yet and I'm still waiting for Ms. Dillon to begin shifting the focus of her investigations away from herself and Jane Bowles.
Right now I'm thinking that perhaps I'd prefer reading The Invisible Spectator by Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno. Maybe that would be a better portrait of Mr. Bowles...

Rating:
Summary: Was she had?
Review: Just finished the book. Fascinating in its detail about Bowles' life in North Africa. But, a new form of biography? No, I don't think so. Rather, a series of extended interviews with Dillon's highly subjective and personal analytical apparatus attached to them. Or, simply a memoir. I think there is a great danger of loss of perspective when a writer admires his / her subject too much, as well as admiring too much his / her relationship with the subject. I had this uncanny feeling all throughout the book that Bowles, as he did with other people he knew, was stringing Dillon along, knowing he could hand here just about anything for posterity. The photograph on the back fold of the dust jacket speaks volumes, as Dillon gazes in what looks like rapture upon an apparently inert Bowles. He wasn't that good of a writer. And, I disagree with both of them. Sheltering Sky was a fine film....

Rating:
Summary: An Engaging Mix of Memoir and Biography
Review: Millicent Dillon, who wrote a wonderful critical biography of Jane Bowles, has presented readers with an equally engaging examination of Jane Bowles' husband Paul Bowles. As an inveterate reader of literary biographies and autobiographies, I enjoyed this hybrid of critical evalluation and memoir for Dillon not only reports on the sources of Bowles' fiction and his interactions with his wife she also provides a glimpse into the process of writing a biography. I appreciated her desire to get it right, to be sure she was reporting Bowles' response rather than her expository evaluation of his response. For the well-seasoned reader of Mr. and Mrs. Bowles, this book will add yet another angle to the lens. To the uninitiated, it will whet the appetite for more. To the latter, I recommend the aforementioned bio of Jane Bowles, "A Little Original Sin."

Rating:
Summary: A very revealing portrait of a very reclusive writer
Review: Paul Bowles, probably best known for The Sheltering Sky, which arrived on the literary scene in 1949 signaling the impending arrival of that Pandora's Box better known as Postmodernism, was a living literary anachronism. He was the American expatriate artist non plus ultra, the bohemian incarnate, someone who had turned his back on America in a quiet gesture of rebellion to follow his true calling as a writer and composer, travelling the world and finally coming to rest in distant, exotic Tangier. The fact that he'd quit college and run away to Paris to rub shoulders with the literati and surrealists, and had managed to be received by Gertrude Stein, confirmed for many the non-academic view of how one could move up in the world. And the fact that it was Gertrude Stein who suggested to Bowles that he stop writing poetry, and that he should visit Tangier, sanctioned the belief in the life-altering powers of chance and synchronicity, endearing him to the Beats, the hippies, and generations to come.
Above all, it was Bowles' unique stance as an outsider in the otherwise clubby world of literature that appealed to many. Although frequently associated with the Beats, other than a few snapshots where he appears in the company of Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Gregory Corso, and despite the fact that Bowles was also an experimenter with drugs and their relation to creativity, he really didn't have much in common with the Beats. Bowles was too much the dandy and gentleman, travelling through North Africa in his Jaguar sedan with his Moroccan driver, complete with stacks of trunks and suitcases full of impeccable suits and ties and shoes, sometimes even accompanied by a parrot in a cage, about as far from On The Road as one could get while still being on the road. Bowles was Bowles wherever he went, which seemed to follow a course along the frontier of Western civilization, especially those places where it came into dangerously close contact with primitive or native cultures that had little respect or even understanding of Western ways, a sort of moveable confrontation which formed the basis of the majority of his literary work. His macabre and at time nihilistic stories and novels had more in common with post-war existentialism than anything Beat or beatific.
Despite numerous interviews and articles, as well as several full-scale biographies, the opaque and enigmatic nature of Paul Bowles was already legendary in his own lifetime. Even his autobiography, Without Stopping (dubbed Without Telling by William Burroughs), told the reader basically nothing. Millicent Dillon, an excellent writer in her own right, and editor of Out in the World: Selected Letters of Jane Bowles, 1935-1970, as well as The Portable Paul and Jane Bowles, already proved her acumen and talent for biographical writing with her highly acclaimed book, A Little Original Sin, The Life and Works of Jane Bowles. In You Are Not I, A portrait of Paul Bowles, Dillon pushes the envelope of biographical writing to new extremes. Much of this book is based on her visits to Tangier to interview Paul Bowles for her biography of his wife, Jane. Gradually, the idea for a book about Paul Bowles himself began to take shape, a project which began in 1992. Eschewing the standard chronological mode of biography, Dillon has opted for an innovative blend of factual material, conversations, and speculation, using her first meeting with Bowles in 1977 as a point of departure. Utilizing the intimacy of her relationship with Paul Bowles that was established during Dillon's research and countless interviews concerning his wife, it required only a subtle shift to put the focus on Bowles himself. What follows is an absorbing narrative which eventually becomes a self-reflexive consideration of the biographical process itself. The penetrative nature of Dillon's questioning and Bowles' frank answers sometimes pushed their conversations into the realm of psychodrama. The resulting "portrait" is astonishingly detailed and revealing, simultaneously expanding and deconstructing the existing parameters of biographical writing, a biography turned "inside out."
The Paul Bowles that emerges remains as enigmatic as ever, but thanks to Dillon's oblique line of inquiry and sensitivity to her subject, we are given a rare opportunity to peer behind the sphinx-like facade of one of the twentieth century's most complex and inscrutable writers.

Rating:
Summary: Yes! Read this book.
Review: Yes, read this book. I liked it because I felt I was in this exotic, strangely present yet distant place, with Paul & Millicent Dillon. And also Jane. Maybe you know what I mean if you like Paul Bowles.

This is a loving book. It is a pleasant place to be -- with elements of disturbance, as you would expect. It is an addition to what you already have.