Customer Reviews

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

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"The end of the world" of the book title is Tangier, in Morocco (the phrase is taken from something an ex-junkie once mumbled to William Burroughs in a dockside bar). For the quarter century after WWII, however, Tangier seemed more like the center of the world - or center of a parallel world - for sybaritic, disaffected, outcast, loony, or rebellious Westerners. It became a mecca for expatriates with a passion or compulsion for outré behavior - much of which involved drugs or sex or both.

Those flaunting their eccentricities or flouting conventionality were so numerous that the odd was normal and the normal odd. Illustrative anecdote: At a French brothel in Tangier there was a floorshow with a series of tableaux amoureux. The pairings consisted of a woman with a woman, a man with a man, and a woman with a donkey. A visitor asked the madam, "Why don't you show a man with a woman?" She drew herself up and said, "Monsieur! This is a respectable house!"

In THE DREAM AT THE END OF THE WORLD, Michelle Green tells the story of Tangier as a mid-20th century Sodom and Gomorrah. The book is centered on the lives of Paul and Jane Bowles. Paul Bowles settled in Tangier in 1947 and made it his base for the rest of his life. His wife Jane was never truly at home in Tangier, but, faithful to Paul in her own peculiar way, she too spent most of her time there until mental illness and poor health overtook her in the late Sixties. Over the years, Tangier and the Bowleses hosted a who's who from the cultural avant garde and associated gossip columns and scandal sheets, including Francis Bacon, William Burroughs, Truman Capote, Alfred Chester, Allen Ginsberg, David Herbert, Barbara Hutton, Christopher Isherwood, Jack Kerouac, Timothy Leary, Robert Rauschenberg, Susan Sontag, Gore Vidal, and Tennessee Williams - to name (in alphabetical order) some of the individuals who appear in the book.

Paul Bowles explained the magnetic appeal of Tangier thus: "Tangier doesn't make a [person] disintegrate, but it does attract people who are going to disintegrate anyway. Life is so easy here, so cheap and the climate is marvelous. If you're going to go to hell you can do it here more cheaply and more pleasantly than in Greenwich Village." (That of course only applied to the Western interlopers. It was because most of the natives were so mired in abject poverty that the expatriates were able to live such exotic lives so cheaply. Then once independence was achieved, the natives began to insist on their own culture and mores, to the gradual exclusion of Western self-indulgence and decadence. )

I learned enough about Paul Bowles to have a grudging admiration for him. I also learned enough about William S. Burroughs to be thoroughly repulsed by him. As for the rest, I must say that, on the whole, THE DREAM AT THE END OF THE WORLD left me feeling vaguely slimy and discomfited. It is the story of a strange excrescence of Western Civilization. Three-and-a-half stars.

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.

This book provides an excellent excuse for exploring what was probably the last, or one of the last, places the existentialists and pseudo-existentialists of the world could ply their trade. Heck, Algiers is just around the corner and Camus was there, wasn't he? And all of those folks with money and "name" to keep tabs on. Ms. Green both buys into the hype and sees through it, so that you can't put the book down, even when sanity calls.

Tangier's unelected, though graciously accepting, ambassador was Paul Bowles, an ove writer and stoner who couldn't help but take himself much too seriously. (Gertrude Stein probably threatened to beat him up if he didn't.) Bowles is ultimately strange enough to be likable though, as well as insightful on the plight of "society existentialists." A REAL existentialist would have gone off and never have been heard from again, but not Mr. Bowles.

If you think the current world is a mess, reading Ms. Green's book will at least give you some contextual insights. On the surface, Tangier presents a picture of utter decadence, replete with the kinds of things that drive head coaches and parents crazy. But if you go on to read more about the North African context, especially using Bowles as your guide, a heady mixture of camp chronicles will emerge that greatly overshadows the issue of original sin. Tangier is the southernmost tip of Europe, it's architecture and topography perfectly suited to a stoner/blowhard assemblage of dukes, princesses, heirs and addicts, the kind of people who would have Key West towed by barge over to North Africa if they could, just in case they run out of gossip.

Here's the scenario as I see it: A bunch of wackos need to put some space between themselves and the normies so they can go to their own dinner parties and talk about their own weather. Paris it too crowded and foggy, so they book a room with a view of the harbor in Tangier and proceed to go further nuts. And that's about it, I guess.

The book is only partially about Bowles and really focuses on the excesses of the three ring circus that was Tangier. The head clown is Bill Burroughs, of course, a non-action, mainline writer who took , while up his hotel room with one of his guns, while throwing pages of his manuscript for "Naked Lunch" on the floor for mice to poop on and Ginsberg and Keroauc to later compile into a book. (And he wants to know, "Where's my Arab boy?") Keroauc should have made him do it, I tell you. So you keep going back to Bowles for some sanity and all you get is more insight into the insanity. Ms. Green is equally devious methinks, as she keeps throwing you tidbit after tidbit like you're some trained seal at the aquarium.

If anything, Bowles was a practical existentialist, one who instinctively followed a path away from the modern world into one inhabited by magic and magicians, and enough to keep you interested. The Moroccans perform vicariously for Bowles and Bowles performs vicariously for the West. Though the circus act got to be a bit wild at times, Bowles was quite a juggler, and, living on the cheap, he was able to control minds on a shoestring. And so it all worked out. There is no salvation in this world -- only diversions, armchair damnations, pulp fictions peddled as classics, intrigues better left on the drawing board, luggage to nowhere, extensive recollections of events, Burroughs, Capote - some of it tape-recorded by Bowles himself - enough to make you gag and chuck up some of your precious majoun.

Ms. Green's book will fascinate you, though. I can recommend at least two other Bowles books: "Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue" and "Conversations with Paul Bowles." I also have just ordered "Paul Bowles, Magic and Morocco." The Taschen book, "Morrocan Interiors," also lets you see some of the scenery and architecture and you can better understand how tailored the place is to being loaded and artsy. A veritable San Miguel de Allende on the beach.

Despite the insane frivolities chronicled in Ms. Green's book, and there are many, they ultimately are products of sick Westerners trying to get "out" by indulging themselves in something "exotic." A much more interesting world than the one we currently inhabit methinks.

This book will take you on an unattended amusement ride you may wish at some point to get off of. Tough: you paid, you're strapped in, you're dispensable. You'll just have to jump off mate and hope for the best. Then, you can get back on later, which you will. Anywhere in the book should do.

It's a history of Tangier, Morocco from post-World War II cafe society with its heady mix of black sheep nobility, charlatans and ever so interesting criminal types through the beats writers to the hippies. During this period Morocco went from French colony to independent country, which was a big enough local event that it did seem to have some impact on the dinner parties. The book is well written and researched, the author apparently talked to members of the Tangier expat community to get the right gossipy touch. The scene where Jack Kerouac sees his future, and is repulsed by it, is priceless.

It does raise interesting questions of (1) why do some writers thrive in exile and some writers do not and (2) whether I would have had any patience with the hippies who lined up at the American embassy on Sunday afternoons to call home to their mothers to demand more money for drugs and (3) how much sympathy do I have for people with unlimited resources that complain of boredom.