Paul Bowles

Paul Bowles
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The Surrealist Technique

“I decided to use a
surrealistic technique”
—Paul Bowles, An Interview
with Daniel Halpern

Every work suggests—
its own method, each novel’s
been done differently

Under different—
circumstances and using
different kinds of methods

I got the idea for the—
Sheltering Sky riding on a
Fifth Avenue bus one day
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I was going uptown from—
Tenth Street when I decided
the point of view I’d take

It would be a work—
in which the narrator was
omniscient above me

I would write it consciously—
up to a certain point, and after
that let it take its own course
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There’s this little Kafka quote—
at the beginning of the third section
about how the storyline would go

“From a certain point onward—
there’s no longer any turning back:
that’s the point that must be reached.”

This seemed important to me—
and when I got to that point beyond
which there’s no turning back…
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That’s when I decided to use—
a surrealistic technique—simply writing
without any thought of what I’d written

Without any awareness of—
what I was writing, or intention of
what I as going to write next

without knowing how—
I was going to finish the novel
And that’s exactly what I did