Gay Surrealist Notes

Paul Bowles signing prints
of his photographs, Tangier,
1990 (Simon Bischoff)

Gay Surrealist Notes
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1

“I personally
am content to see
everything in the
process of decay”
—Paul Bowles,
Pages from Cold Point

I expressed sympathy—
for the surrealist notion of
shocking the bourgeoisie out

of its complacency by—
dredging up the raw material
of the unconscious & exposing it

Norman Mailer's apocalyptic—
assessment of my work places it
in this current of literary terrorism
______________________________

But like one of my characters—
I claim that writing is merely
a form of personal therapy

I don't like the things—
I write about, it's a kind of
exorcism that's all

It doesn't mean that—
I approve of what goes on in
the pages of my book, God forbid

2

“What can go wrong
is always much more
interesting than what
goes right.”—Paul Bowles

If I am here now—
it's only because I was
still here when I realized it

The extent to which—
the world has worsened, and
that I no longer want to travel

In defense of Tangiers—
I can say that so far it has
been touched by fewer things
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The negative aspects of—
contemporary civilization that
most cities of its size have

More important than that—
I relish the idea that in the
night, all around me in my sleep

Sorcery is burrowing its way—
invisible tunnels in every direction
from thousands of senders outward
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To thousands of unsuspecting—
recipients, spells being cast
poison running its course

Souls are being dispossessed—
parasitic pseudo consciousness lurking
in unguarded recesses of the mind

3

"I sent it out to Doubleday
and they refused it. They said,
'We asked for a novel.' They didn't
consider it a novel. I had to give
back my advance. My agent told me
later they called the editor on the
carpet for having refused the book
only after they saw that it was
selling fast. It only had to do with
sales. They didn't bother to read it."
—Paul Bowles

The immense domed sky—
of the Sahara dominates my books
it's a sheltering thing

I often have the sensation—
when I look at it that it's a solid
thing up there, protecting us

Protecting us from what?—
from what's behind it that's
lurking, gazing down at us humans
____________________________

As we're dying in the desert—
we see the sky cracking open and
it's not very pretty what we see

It's a rather convincing and—
harrowing evocation of death that
I wouldn't wish on anybody

Tolstoy's Ivan Ilyich looks—
into the void beyond and what does
the poor man see hiding there?
____________________________

From there the novel follows —
Port's wife, Kit (who people in
Tangier will assure you is Jane)

As she moves thru the Sahara—
fleeing the memory of her adultery
with Port's friend Turner

Pursuing the primitive—
and the unknown, surrendering herself
to a Bedouin who rapes her
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Finally leaving her reason behind—
the desert becomes like Conrad's jungle
and Eliot's wasteland landscape

Emblematic of a world—
in which individuals are radically
isolated from one another