All language subtitles for PaulBowles

I think there's a good deal of sadism in
my writing.

What is sadism anyway? It's to make
other people suffer, is that it?

Really?

But I always thought that sadists looked
down with pleasure at the suffering of

other people.

I don't think that was the case with me.

I was preoccupied with violence,
violence in my imagination.

There was no violence in my life, ever.

And I had to make it.

Maybe that's why I gave up writing
music, turned to writing words.

To be able to express those desires by

writing about it, I couldn't have done
any more than that.

If you want to behave violently, you
have to know or be pretty sure that you

can get away with it.

Surah Al-Fatihah

What can one do but submit to destiny?

I don't see that there's any
alternative, really.

Because if you imagine you can affect
your fate, you're deluded, it seems

to me.

People love to speak of the process of
life as having a meaning.

But that is a religious concept, really.
It comes from it.

It's an outcropping of belief in
supernatural powers.

It seems absurd to me to imagine that
there's some

kind of super consciousness which rules
every individual on the planet

simultaneously.

It seems absolutely impossible and a
rather mad concept.

Well, it's easy for me to feel the way I
feel and to think the way I think.

Because I never had any religious
training at all.

My father had a rather difficult couple
as a mother and father.

They were all, this is both sides of the
family, against any sort of organized

religion.

They always thought of that particular
sort of New England strain that has a

sort of a horror of anything, about
anything religious.

I'd learned as a child.

never, never to allow anyone to know
whether I liked something or not.

If I liked it, I had to pretend I
didn't, and vice versa.

I was not supposed to have what I liked.
I was supposed to be forced to have what

I did not like.

That was the whole family ethic.

I wrote a book when I was four, and this
is not to...

pretend to show myself as brilliant,
simply that I didn't have anything else

to do. I was all alone.

And how would I amuse myself?

But it was forbidden for me to be
writing.

My father didn't think it was normal.

And yet he gave me no chance to do
anything else.

And I couldn't run around and play by
myself.

So...

I was doomed to sit inside and

put words together, which I did.

On his way through the borderlands of
consciousness, he had a fantasy.

From the mountain behind the farm,
running violently over the icy crust of

the snow, leaping over the rocks and
bushes, came a wolf.

He was running toward the farm.

When he got there, he would look through
the windows until he found the dining

room where the grown-ups were sitting
around the big table.

Donald shuddered when he saw his eyes in
the dark through the glass.

And now, calculating every movement
perfectly, the wolf sprang, smashing the

panes and seized Donald's father by the
throat.

In an instant, before anyone could move
or cry out, He was gone again with his

prey still between his jaws.

His head turned sideways as he dragged
the limp form swiftly over the surface

of the snow.

I sent a copy of the short story, The
Delicate Prey, to

my mother, but of course she showed it
to him.

Then he wrote me a note saying,

I learned it by heart.

My, oh my, in what gutters have you
lain?

Why don't you try sitting on the curb
for a while? Things might look better

from there.

Perhaps if one had a so-called happy
childhood, one would have stayed with

one's parents, with one's family.

And I could think only of getting away.

Even as a child.

My dear Freddie, I did not answer sooner
because being a little troubled

about you, I wanted to see Harry first.

Now I have, and as it seems that you are
really not well, don't you think it

would be best to come to Paris, where
you can be looked after?

and then we all can decide what you
ought to do.

You poor boy, it's bad to be all alone,
and I do think that you had

better come here, don't you?

Always, Gertrude Stein.

Yes, he's full of criticism.

Obviously, she had her idea of what a
young man of 20 should do and be, and

I didn't match up to it at all.

And she called me Freddy.

Horrible.

Everyone was humiliated there at the
house, except Gertrude Stein.

But, I mean, she humiliated everyone.

There was Alice Tuckless, who, of
course, was constantly being humiliated,

because she had to...

give that awful poodle his bath every
morning.

And she did that only when I had
finished running him. I had to run this

way and then turn and run back this way
and keep him running.

But sometimes I couldn't go fast enough
and he would catch up and he had very

sharp claws and he would dig the back of
my legs behind the knee.

And she would say, Faster, faster,
Freddy!

And I didn't need to really say that
because it was so painful to have him

dig me.

I hate poodles anyway. I think they're
revolting animals.

There was a line in one of my poems that
in between the rows of corn, the heated

beetle pants.

And she grabbed it. She said, now there.

She said, why do you say that? And I
said, well, it's an image.

She said, yes, but it's false. Don't you
see? It's false.

Do beetles pant?

And I said, well, I don't suppose they
could. No, they're insects.

She said, that's right.

I still think she was right, not because
she was dying, but because she had

her own idea of what poetry was, and you
don't make poetry out of falsities.

I don't think you make anything much out
of that which is false, no.

Why bother when you can do it with
what's true?

Of course, his culture was French, his
background, his years in Paris, and the

whole Gertrude Stein nonsense language
business, you know, knocking everything

into a hat, the Dada business, it all
had its influence on his music.

Paul started as a composer. He was a
name in the 30s and 40s.

After all, it's an extraordinary thing
that one person should be a novelist

and a composer.

The music that I wrote long ago, I
listened and I can't believe I ever did

it.

I found that when I went to New York in
September.

And Philip Ramey was sitting beside me.
We were listening to the rehearsals.

He said, who wrote this music?

I said, I don't know.

And he said, well, I know who did all
right, but I think you were a little out

of your mind in those days.

to be a note to she, the sweet sweetie,
but actually it's April Fool to tend the

she, my sweetie, she is all me, my
sweetie.

The musical work is a collage of jazz
elements and Latin American music, honky

tonk Broadway, Tin Pan Island,
Stravinsky.

It all blends together in a wonderful
suit.

This work of Paul's is just sprawling in
its kind of

craziness and its joy and silliness.

And it's very, very expressive and
moving.

He did what the French do and what the
Germans do not do.

he tries to hone everything down to the
bone and get the essence.

And the essence, in his case, and in the
case of any composer worth talking

about, is melody.

Paul has a sense of tune.

Paul's education, as I've learned later,
is rather slapdash.

He fled from discipline.

And imagine, Prokofiev, the great
Prokofiev, accepted him as a student. He

didn't accept many students.

And the moment he did, Paul rushed out
of Paris to Germany and didn't show

up for the first lesson.

He likes to say that if he sat and
learned how to write large pieces, he'd

have to sit in one place and do it, and
he couldn't travel.

The music is lost and has disappeared,
and so I find it more

interesting.

It teases me more.

But when I was nothing but a composer, I
itched to write.

My idea of glamour was simply to write
something and have it published,

a book.

At the table in the darkest corner sat
three Americans, two young men and a

girl.

They conversed quietly and in the manner
of people who have all the time in the

world for everything.

One of the men, the thin one with a
slightly wry, distraught face, was

folding up some large multicolored maps
he had spread out on the table a moment

ago.

His wife watched the meticulous
movements he made with amusement and

exasperation.

Maps bored her, and he was always
consulting them.

Even during the short periods when their
lives were stationary, which had been

few enough since their marriage twelve
years ago, he had only to see a map to

begin studying it passionately, and
then, often if not, He would begin to

plan some new impossible trip, which
sometimes eventually became a reality.

I think I was fed up with being alone.

And she was such fun.

I thought it would be wonderful to be
with her all the time.

We discussed it as though it were a
fiction.

You know, wouldn't it be funny? Wouldn't
it be amusing?

Imagine what your mother would say.
Imagine this, that.

And the more we said that, the more
amusing it became until finally it

turned into reality.

She had an apartment and he had an
apartment.

And they had meals together.

And they'd sit at the table and they'd
talk as if they were two old friends

that hadn't seen each other for quite a
while.

And I was fascinated that here was a
husband and wife and they'd talk to each

other as if...

As if they just met.

I've never seen two people together that
I would so obviously say were in love

with one another.

They were absolutely fascinated with one
another.

I mean, they couldn't take their eyes
off one another.

Well, she was like no one I'd ever seen
before or since.

And you never knew what her reaction was
going to be.

She was such a mixture of...

Tragedy and comedy together.

The worst things that made her laugh.

I loved Janey with all my heart. And she
was absolutely wonderful and frightfully

funny. And full of humor.

Just about, she was going to tell you
something funny, and then she said

something that made you want to cry.

She had a sort of genius about her.
She's very special.

Two serious ladies.

It's great.

Great.

Some of her short stories are superb.

She was a characteristic, very desirable
for a writer.

Take one sentence, it couldn't be
anybody but Jane.

Jane was a perfectionist, a total
perfectionist, and she tore up much more

than she wrote.

For any reason, she didn't think it was
good enough.

I mean, she was such a hard critic on
herself.

She told Truman Capote that writing was
so easy for me and so

difficult for her, and he said, That's
because he's not a writer, baby.

And you are.

And that, I suppose, pleased her. It
should have.

A lot of people thought that she was a
far better writer than I, but I don't

care.

There's no competition involved.

Paul appreciated very much our
friendship.

When he used to go off to the desert,
you know, and leave her quite alone, I'd

say, well, that's the time.

She called me Gloompot because I was
very pessimistic about the

future. And she didn't really like that
because what she loved was to laugh.

And we could always laugh if there were
other people around.

But if it were just she and I together,
we didn't laugh.

Oh, no, we groaned, you know.

I can understand.

It must have been very boring, would be
the big, the correct

adjective, really, the correct way of
looking at it, to be alone with me and

hearing I, they all the time.

Paul Reddy is only happy when things are
going wrong.

That sounds stupid to say, but he's
happier when things are going right.

He's miserable.

Oh, I think he got that from my writing.

I always explain to him that it's much
better to write about things that don't

go right, because in life very little
goes right.

Right meaning the way one expected it
and the way one wanted it.

One has no right to want or expect
anything.

He did not think of himself as a
tourist.

He was a traveler.

The difference is partly one of time, he
would explain, whereas the tourist

generally hurries back home at the end
of a few weeks or months, a traveler

belonging no more to one place than to
the next.

move slowly over a period of years, from
one part of the earth to another.

I didn't agree with, I suppose, the
fundamentals in America.

The emphasis on success, that seems to
me a very vicious

element in any society.

He said, I didn't want to live there
anymore.

I'd had enough of it.

But once you reject something, it
doesn't bother you anymore.

He went to see Gertrude Stein when he
was in Paris, and she advised him to go

to Tangiers, I think.

She was paying for a studio for the
painter Christian Tony in Paris.

But Tony had a girlfriend,

here in Tangier, so he left his studio
and rushed down to Tangier.

And it turned out, eventually, that was
why she suggested that I come here.

She wanted me to spy on him and send her
messages about what their life was like.

We were waiting for Aaron Copland to
arrive, so I couldn't very well leave.

until he had arrived and we left
together.

We went to Tatuan.

And the roof was covered with sheep, you
know, blang, blang,

blang.

And Aaron said, I'm in a madhouse. I
don't know where I am.

I've never seen anything like any of it.
He didn't like it at all.

And I was overjoyed because I thought it
was a madhouse completely.

The landscape makes me ecstatic.

Just looking at it, I think, ah, this is
really the way the whole planet should

be.

Much of the fiction starts out with
landscape in my head.

Well, first, the scene, where is it
laid?

And then if I know the place...

I know what can happen there, who can be
in it, and what the influence of the

place is on the protagonists.

The places through which he was passing
were like the torturous corridors in

dreams.

It was impossible to think of them as
streets or even as alleys.

There were spaces here and there among
the buildings, that was all.

And some of them opened into other
spaces.

Some did not.

If he found the right series of
connections, he would get from one place

to the next, but only by going through
the buildings themselves.

And the buildings seemed to have come
into existence like plants, chaotic,

facing no way, top-heavy, one growing
out of the other.

Sometimes he heard footsteps echoing
when someone passed through one of the

vault-like tunnels, and often the sound
died away without the persons ever

coming into view.

I think one has the right to live
wherever any government will allow one

to live.

And one really should have the right to
live anywhere on the surface of the

planet.

And participating in the idiosyncrasies
of the individuals who live there

seems to me almost foolish to try.

I can imagine that there could be a
debate on the subject because the other

side would say, but human beings are
human beings and you should really have

some kind of contact with other human
beings.

Well, that's their idea.

That's fine.

Mine is what says in the Thousand and
One Nights, I can think of

no greater delight than to be a
foreigner among those who are not of my

kind.

One day we were sitting in the shade of
a tree.

And we looked up.

It was a fantasy.

That the sun of the moon had fallen.

And she broke.

Four pieces.

Murabit asked me about Larbi's book.

He listened to some of it, and he didn't
think very much of it.

He said, anybody can do that.

I said, yeah, all right, but not anybody
has.

And he said, I can.

And I said, well, do.

So I sent him to work on the tape
recorder, and he began firing off

stories.

It was very black, very dark, because
there was no

more moon.

The people were crying out and running
around.

And they'd run into the houses and lock
themselves in and hide.

Writing other people's material requires
no imagination, but it

requires a lot of attention paid to
capturing the essence of the

voice.

I think everyone has not only a
different voice physically, but

a different voice lyrically, like a bird
singing.

Thank you. End of story.

The house of the spider.

So there, he defends the Moroccan
opinion for independence.

We haven't an inkling of the things that
motivate them.

There was a certain amount of hypocrisy
in this attitude of his.

The truth was that he hoped principally
to convince others of the existence of

this almost unbridgeable gulf.

The mere fact that he could then even
begin to hint at the beliefs and

purposes that lay on the far side made
him feel more sure in his own attempt at

analyzing them and gave him a small
sense of superiority to which he felt he

was entitled.

in return for having withstood the
rigors of Morocco for so many years.

This pretending to know something that
others could not know, it was a little

indulgence he allowed himself, a bonus
for security.

Secretly, he was convinced that the
Moroccans were much like any other

people, that the differences were
largely those of ritual and gesture,

that even the fine curtain of magic
through which they observed life was not

a complex thing.

and did not give the perception to any
profundity.

I think he regretted writing this book.
Why?

Because he thought that when the
Moroccans would have independence, they

would return to live like they did in
the 30s and 40s.

to recover their traditional life.

But in his opinion, the Moroccans have
become Europeanized.

So he wanted Morocco, in general, to
remain as a

chic life, very cheap, you find all the
boys you want, you like it,

and then the houses, with a thousand
dollars, two thousand dollars, you buy a

house, and you always have a waiter.

Yes, it was a little paradise.

No, my

cigarette.

Yes, the boy came with my cigarette.

Do you see?

Where is the child?

So please tell me, Mr. Garrow.

Tangier was really very happy under the
international regime, because here

people did live very well, not the way
they lived under the French or the

Spanish.

There was a place called the El Faja,
and Truman Capote was there, and

Tennessee Williams, they were all
staying up there, and I was staying in a

house called the Villeneuve Tube.

Cecil Beaton. And I remember once, one
day, suddenly Cecil getting a wire

saying, I've been ordered to do all the
clothes for my fair lady.

And the next morning, Truman got a wire
saying they'd taken his first book,

Other Voices, Other Rooms.

And so I said to Janie and Paul, why
don't you come and move in with me in

the villa where I was staying?

So that's where we really got together
in a big way.

In the international days, foreigners
were sort of privileged.

And after that, they weren't. After
independence, they were no longer a

privileged class.

I was here in the 30s.

They never came until the 50s.

First, Moros came.

And after that, his admirers came.

Ginsburg, Orlovsky, Corso.

Hi. How are you, Bill?

Better than you think.

I'm sorry to be late, a little late.

I'd send him a fax inviting him for
lunch.

And he came.

And he brought several people with him.

He brought Allen Ginsberg with him. At
first, when Bill arrived in Tangier,

there was some distance between them, as
I seem to remember in the letters.

Paul probably didn't know who Bill was,
but somehow they got into contact after

about a year or so, or maybe shorter.

and got on very well. I don't remember
what year you were, 52?

I, 54.

54, was it that late? And then I didn't
meet Paul really until

about two years after I'd been there,
through Brian Geisen.

I was in correspondence with Bill.

For many years. From 54 early to 57.

I'd been to San Francisco and he'd been
sending me very interesting letters with

a lot of the routines that are in Naked
Lunch.

Kerouac was there already in Tangier
helping type.

So it was time to go visit Bill and see
Kerouac there and also bring the

manuscript and see what we could do to
edit it and put it together. And for me

it was like... first time across the
Atlantic.

And so I found Bill and met Jane Bowles
and Paul Bowles there then.

Knew these people, that's all. It's
about all guilt by association, like

McCarthy.

McCarthyism. Anybody that knew a
communist was a communist.

So anyone that knew Alan Ginsberg,
Gregory Corso, myself to some

extent, gets labeled a beat.

But I think that it certainly is not, is
rather obviously doesn't fit

Paul, whose novel, The Sheltering Sky,

at least his first novel, is almost a
classic, a classic, I mean, in a

classical style.

It certainly isn't in any beat style at
all.

I didn't want to...

make exceptions to the observance of
grammatical rules.

They didn't care. They often purposely
changed it.

They would use a verb as a noun and so
on.

And several things came out of that
which seemed to have stuck in the

language, such as this is a good read.

What does that mean? I never understood
it.

Yes, he said, they do not observe
parliamentary procedure.

He did.

Well, of course, I'm older than the

Beats, really, and existed before they
came on the scene.

Certainly.

So it's only the fault of journalists
that lumped me with them.

They've got to pigeonhole everyone.

There's no reason for it.

I remember Graham Greene, one of those
English writers,

said that he was a good friend of Evelyn
Waugh, but of course we never discussed

writing.

I thought it was somehow indecent to
discuss writing.

No, we were not as extreme as that,
certainly.

But I don't recall any formal discussion
on the subject. Do you, Paul?

Never. No. No. I can't discuss writing
with anybody anyway. I have nothing to

say.

No one seems to have realized that
practically all the tales are a variety

of detective stories.

Not the usual variety, I admit, but
still detective stories in which the

reader is the detective.

The mystery is the motivation for the
character's behavior, and the clues are

given in the form of reactions on the
part of the characters to details of

situation and surroundings.

If Chalia moves her bed out from the
wall each night before she goes to bed,

there's a reason for it.

If Van says, gee, I was burned up last
Friday, if the employee on the rowboat

has a somewhat simian face, and the
husband walks toward him offering to pay

the supplementary fare to him, and then
remembers that his wife has his wallet,

there is a reason, and it is usually the
reason for the entire story.

That particular thing that Bould, that
characterizes Bould's prose, is sort of

an underexposed film, darkness.

that you get very definitely in the
sheltering sky, particularly in the

typhoid delirium scenes.

The pain was all of existence at that
moment.

All the energy he could exert would not
budge him from the spot where he lay

impaled, his bleeding entrails open to
the sky.

He imagined an enemy arriving to step
into his belly.

He imagined himself rising, running
through the twisting alleys between the

walls.

For hours in all directions in the
alleys with never a door, never the

final opening.

I asked Bertolucci if he wouldn't put it
off.

I used a different script, a different
novel.

He said, no, he wanted to use that
because it was better known, but it made

no sense at all.

It should never have been filmed.

It's not really filmable.

All the action takes place in people's
heads. That's right. That's no good.

It's hard to read about, but it's not
very good to try and make visible.

What did they do with the end? I didn't
see it.

The end of the...

I remember the end of the book very
well, and I wondered how that could be

conveyed on screen.

It wasn't. No, that's what I thought.

It was the end of the line. I don't
know. I think they all wanted to get

back to Rome fast. I mean, you just want
to wrap it up.

It's idiotic, the end of the film. The
rest of it is pretty bad, too, but the

end is unforgivable.

The Sheltering Sky is almost a perfect
novel.

It's perfectly done.

That's all. It's a very good novel.

Well, I've reread that book several
times, of course, and I thought that

there would be other ways of saying this
or that, which I could do better now.

Well, that's natural.

This was written in...

47, 48.

And we're now in 96.

So a lot of years have gone by in which
one assumes I would have attained more

technique, writing technique.

So the novel I like the best is Up Above
the World, which is the most recent.

Well, one would like one's most recent,
I would think, whether it's good or bad.

The youngest child.

That first visit, because I was there
again in 61, when Tennessee Williams and

Francis Bacon were there also.

I remember it was the first time I tried
to smoke keef

continuously for about two weeks and
stay high all the time to see what that

was like.

Where was this in Tangier? Tangier,
yeah. Really?

I had never done that in America.

Well, there was a chance, but it felt
safe there.

It felt protected. When I was writing
Naked Monster, I used to have my

children on one day and then took the
seven joints the next day.

Those really helped me a lot.

Well, they were so drugged, they
couldn't see straight half the time, so

it wasn't worth seeing them.

And Burroughs was known by the name,
because he was so thin, and they called

him the Invisible Man.

I mean, he just had his pipes, you know.

Well, that's all right.

Some people imagine that keef, or other
drugs maybe, do away

with inhibitions.

I don't change at all, really.

I think I'm comfortable.

And that's nice, and that's all I want.

And I think, well, I'm lucky to be
comfortable, to have no pain and no

worries, nothing scratching at the door.

It cleans out my mind.

And when I was busy writing books, I
always started to write before I

began to smoke, because the other way
around I might not write at all, which

is a waste of time.

The Keith simply makes it easier to
concentrate on what one's doing.

One doesn't get restless.

That's my trouble, that I'm restless and
I want to move around.

I heard the water running by and I felt
cold.

Then I knew I was cold because I was
afraid.

In my head I was thinking, if something
should happen that never happened

before, what would I do?

You want to laugh?

Hashish in your heart and wind in your
head.

You think it's like your grandmother's
prayer mat.

This is the truth.

This isn't a dream brought back from
another world past the customs.

like a teapot from Mecca.

There at the water, I was afraid.

I

did

have visions of paying for young boys to
sleep with me.

And I did once.

But it was a great disappointment.

actually. What was the disappointment?

Well, I don't know. We never got it on
really sexually.

And I wound up with crabs.

And then four days later or five days
later, the young guy who was himself

only like 16 or 17 came by with his
12-year-old brother who he said needed

to see a doctor and needed money.

So I thought it was a bottomless hole.

Sounds ominous. So I sort of
discontinued that particular

relationship, but I also somehow it was
too dead a situation. There wasn't

enough communication.

So I never did get into enjoying the
delights of the flesh that I'd read

about so much.

I remember I asked someone before or
after independence, how does it happen

now that men do not go to bed with each
other the way they did

when I first came here?

And the answer was, they flew la mode.

It was... I don't know there's any
difference from Provincetown.

I'm speaking of the good old days.

or Cannes in France, except for the fact
that it oozed poverty.

And a lot of the sexuality comes from
people selling themselves because they

are desperately poor and because their
sense of morality is not the same as an

American Protestant's sense of morality.

So there's freedom for the American and
money for the native.

But Burroughs didn't like my
autobiography.

He called it Without Telling.

That was his idea of the proper title.

I never understood why.

Well, because it didn't tell anything.

This memoir of

Gorby doll.

Very entertaining.

It's just come out.

Very good.

There's some little scandalous story on
every page.

None in Paul.

Nothing about his own sex. Sex life.
Nothing.

Yes, but that one may feel something
without telling what one feels.

And certainly

It's not proper to tell what you feel.
At least I was always taught that.

That's very New England.

It is very New England in many ways.

If you know what you want sexually, I
suppose you can be open about it.

Because you can probably have it,
whatever it is.

But if you're not sure what you want, if
you don't know, then you yourself are

likely to speculate about it.

Of course, he's always been, I think,
very much afraid of being

barred from Morocco.

That accounts for some of his reticence,
but I don't think by any means all.

There's a remark that Gore makes in his
book.

He says, to categorize is to control.

Therefore, you don't categorize.

You can't say someone is this or is
that. You can only say that someone has

done this or has done that.

Then it makes sense.

then you can be accused.

I assume that anyone in the world would
be ashamed of being considered

homosexual.

It's a great shame, of course.

And there always, I think, has been a
great deal of scorn on the part of the

majority for the minority, sexual
minority.

And no one wants to be scorned.

or considered inferior, disgusting, etc.

So naturally one wouldn't talk about it.
On the other hand, one doesn't

have to lie about it. I never have lied
about sex.

The room was airless.

I flung my clothes onto a chair and
looked at the night table to see if the

carafe of water was there.

Then my mouth opened. The top sheet of
my bed had been stripped back to the

foot.

There on the far side of the bed, dark
against the whiteness of the lower

sheet, lay Racky asleep on his side, and
naked.

I stood looking at him for a long time,
probably holding my breath, for I

remember feeling a little dizzy at one
point.

I was whispering to myself as my eyes
followed the curve of his arm, shoulder,

back, thigh, leg.

A child.

A child.

The son saw to it that he had sex with
his father in order to blackmail him.

But it's scarcely noticeable in the
telling of the story.

He just suggests that they invite Uncle
Charles down.

And the father says, there's no room for
him.

And the son says, in my room, it's
empty.

That's all there is.

It was supposed to make the reader
believe in all kinds of things which are

not mentioned.

And why would one mention it?

Especially if the reader's imagination
can do it so much better.

I think the writer should keep himself
out completely of what he's writing.

If the writer allows himself to get in
as a person into the

fabric of his fiction, he weakens it.

I think it becomes an interesting
question vis-à-vis the novel Sheltering

Sky.

Paul would deny and say the novel's
about Kit and Port, not about Paul and

Jane, and he has every right to say
that.

Obviously, if you've known Paul and
Janie Bowes, you see, as Bertolucci did,

and as Deborah Winger did, you see
relations between these two. They're not

just two fictional characters way out
there.

I know what you're thinking.

That's a wonderful friend. What do you
mean about not trusting Turner?

Port, let's just not talk about it.

Okay, then.

Anyway, Turner is much more your
business than he is mine.

And I think that the break-off in sexual
relationship between Port and Kit

has no logical explanation in

the novel.

And I think it's a defect of the novel.

And I think that if Port had announced
to Kit that I love you with all my

heart, but basically I'm queer,

it would have had a different impact.

David said she was a lesbian because
Paul was that way.

I mean, Paul always had more boyfriends.

So she was trying to make it easy for
Paul.

Nonsense. Total, complete nonsense.

First place, Paul wouldn't have to have
any...

to explore his gay relationships and
Janie wasn't doing him any favor by...

She had lesbian relationships before she
met Paul.

I would say that when Paul fell in love
with Jacoby, who was the

Moroccan painter, who also was married
to an American girl who lived in America

and died, had a great success.

And I think, again, her love for Paul
was so great that the moment she...

He started with Jacoby.

Then she started with Sharifa.

What I mean is, if Paul wanted a
boyfriend, then she'll get a girlfriend.

She had some catching illness,

and she had to stay at home.

And she said to David, Will you go down
to the grain market and tell Sharifa?

If she comes and sleeps on the floor in
my bedroom during my time in bed with

German measles, I would give her a
radio.

So that was the beginning of Sharifa.

She's so funny, Jenny.

I once said to her, because I shouldn't
say this, I don't know.

Anyway, I once said to her, how many
years now have you known Sharifa?

And Jane said, 17 years.

And I said, it is a long time.

She's only touched me a certain time.

Jane had discovered bits of black magic
around her house.

And when Ahmed Yacoubi heard that,

He went up in arms and said, you can't
bring her

here because I was living with Alma just
sort of around the corner from Jane.

And he said, she's a witch and she's
very...

Dangerous?

That wasn't the reason they said she was
a witch.

Even Jane's doctor said, get that woman
out of the house.

She said, I don't know whether the woman
is guilty.

I suspect that she is, that she has fed
Jane something which brought about the

stroke.

Jane drank far, far too much.

And she used to complain that she felt
that she had a steel band around her

head.

And I said, well, stop drinking.

She said, oh, yes, that's easy for you
to say, isn't it?

I said, yes, it would be easy for you to
do if you wanted, but I don't think you

want to.

And she said, you're right.

Something was going on, a sort of war
going inside her, which was driving her

mad.

It was 16 years that she was going
downward, and that got to be

very depressing.

Finally, she couldn't see anything. She
became blind.

Then she began to be paralyzed.

Each time I would see her, it would be
worse.

In some way, she knew very well, better
than any of the doctors ever

expressed it, that she would never get
well, that she couldn't.

Jane died in 73.

Yeah.

And that, of course, affected the
contour of my life.

There were many things I wanted to say
to you before you left.

Now I shall not say them.

Though the light spills onto the
balcony, making the same shadows in the

same places, only I can see it.

Only I can hear the wind, and it is much
too loud.

The world sees you through the words.

Forgive me.

I love you, but I must not hate you.

That is the law.

Not everyone obeys it.

The time is past.

The air is never the same.

I shall not change.

That is the law.

And it is right.

Paul Bowles, he n'a pas d'amis, il n'a
jamais aimé personne.

Et je doute qu'il a aimé à soi-même.

Is it assumed that most people love
someone? I don't think so.

Being in love, it's extremely abnormal,
let us say.

You can hardly find something more
abnormal except schizophrenia.

From what I've deduced from reading
about the state of being in love

and what one sees in the films and so
on, it makes

the person in that state into an

upset person. It's a depression.

Paul did have a very profound
relationship with Ahmad Yacoubi.

And I don't know how you express such
things. Was it the love of his life and

all of that? I don't know. But he
certainly played a tremendous, important

role in Paul's life.

I mean, this was a...

romantic mad love affair.

He did very strange things.

When he finished doing a painting, he
sat in front of it on the floor,

ten minutes, playing the flute to it.

And I said, but why do you do that? He
said, otherwise it will be dead.

I have to bring it to life by blowing
the flute to it.

He'd sit there ten minutes.

I could hear it, even though the door
was shut.

And I loved that idea that if he didn't
do that, the painting wouldn't come

alive.

I think people are planets floating,
spheres.

So if they touch, they just touch at one
tiny point.

That's the maximum touching. But I think
in general they don't touch at all, they

just float around, self-sufficient.

Paul never really has done anything
since Janie died.

She was his muse. I mean, all the
Shelter in the Sky and all that was all

inspired by Jane.

It's true that we always showed each
other everything we did, we wrote.

But he's completely wrong to say I
didn't do anything once she died.

What did I do, according to him, I
wonder?

Nothing.

Now all my work is behind me, best and
worst,

and in between.

I don't see anything objectionable about
that.

I know, but I mean, some people do.

And they say, oh, no, you have to go on
producing as long as you're conscious.

Why? Be

good.

I mean, keep well.

You too.

I'll try.

It's impossible to be dead, because to
be

is quite the opposite of death.

But it's not important.

If one lives or dies, there's no meaning
either way.

And one always does die.

Whatever is alive has to die.

Well, maybe that's the meaning of life.

The meaning of life is inevitable death.

You may regret the idea of dying.

You probably would wish that you could
go on and see what happened tomorrow.

But that's impossible.

It's written that you should die today.

That's that.

You

want

me to describe myself?

If I could do that, I would assume that
I existed and that I was a person.

And I've always assumed that I don't
exist, that I'm not a person.

Therefore, what applies to people
doesn't apply to me. You know, it's a

way of escaping.

I suppose the best way to describe
oneself is to describe the circumstances

in which one finds oneself.

Then, of course, it would be normal
to...

go into one's reaction to those
circumstances.

I mean, why am I living in this country?
I have no idea.

Why am I living in this city of Morocco?

And do I want to escape from this
situation, or don't I?

Probably I do. But the cost of doing it
would be so enormous.

I don't mean financial. I mean the cost
to one's comfort would be so tremendous

that I think I'm best off remaining in
this bind.

I think there's a good deal of sadism in
my writing.

What can one do but submit to destiny?

The places through which he was passing
were like the torturous corridors and

rooms. A traveler belonging no more to
one place than to the next moved slowly

over periods of years.

I think one has the right to live
wherever any government will allow one

to live.

But hours in all directions of the
alleys were never a door, never the

final opening.

Well, they were so drugged, they
couldn't see straight up and down.

I think I'm comfortable.

Continuously for about two weeks and
stay high all the time to see what that

was like.

Just looking at it, I think, ah, this is
really the way the whole planet should

be.

The sheltering sky is almost a perfect
model.

I think people are planets floating,
spheres.