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At the center of Millicent Dillon's provocatively titled You Are Not I burns a mystery. The ever elusive Paul Bowles indirectly captured Dillon's attention. When in Tangier, Morocco, at work on her biography of Jane Bowles (A Little Original Sin, 1981), she was told repeatedly by friends of the Bowles that she bore an uncanny physical resemblance to Jane. For Dillon, this burgeoned into a compulsion, which she found "...unsettling, as if I am overstepping a line, violating that most rudimentary law of biography--not to confuse oneself with one's subject." Alas, in spite of the strong declaration implicit in the biography's title, one is made uncomfortably aware of the author's wavering boundaries. "To be a biographer," Dillon confesses, "meant that I was in the grip of an obsession."
Rejecting chronology as the chief organizing element of her biography, Dillon interweaves the "facts"--mundane and extraordinary--of Bowles's life with both of her Moroccan journeys (the Jane project of 1977; the Paul project of '91), constructing his portrait through their conversations and her subsequent reflections. Such a prismatic approach indeed celebrates Bowles's obliquity as a subject. But then, Millicent Dillon is herself "...in search of a different kind of knowing--one that is consonant with secrecy, one that ... is more akin to the knowing one has of a character in a work of fiction." That unique teasing out of the truth makes You Are Not I an exploration of the form, biography, itself.
Bowles was born on Long Island. As a child he leaned toward musical composition and short story writing. In young adulthood, he would study with Aaron Copland, and later, mingle in Paris with the likes of Gertrude Stein, who advised him to journey to Morocco with Copland to work on music. He married Jane (in 1938); she had had affairs with women only; he'd had bisexual attachments. Paul continued his involvement with avant-garde music; Jane struggled with her novel, Two Serious Ladies. As he helped her, his old love of fiction was triggered, and in 1949, he published The Sheltering Sky, which became an international bestseller. After Jane Bowles's death, Paul's work life receded. It would be Bertolucci's film of The Sheltering Sky (1987) that delivered Bowles back into the public eye.
By risking subjectivity, placing herself firmly in the "process" of biography, Dillon becomes unwilling to make absolute statements about her subject. An annoying cacophony ensues--of impressions, of contradictory and elliptical conversations, the contents of which refuse to be assigned significance. But it's not entirely annoying, for the utter foreignness of Bowles's world flashes through. Along with the accounts of the continuous smoking of cannabis and cigarettes, we're given vivid glimpses of a uniquely bohemian life, carved out of exile.You Are Not I has everything--the romance of the far away; on- the-scene reporting of a place at once sensuous and creepy. It's a guide for those intrigued both with the form of biography and with the life of the writer who would come to fear going out in public; who needed to smoke kif (cannabis) to relieve his almost continuous anxiety; who "abhorred directness." And it is nothing less than a quest to solve some fundamental mystery about the self, as if Millicent Dillon got entangled in a Paul Bowles story and is compelled by the force of the narrative events to ride them through to there exhilarating, perhaps fatal, finish.
From Library Journal
Dillon, perhaps best known for her biography of Jane Bowles (A Little Original Sin, LJ 6/1/81), might easily have titled her latest effort You and I. Rather than focusing on Bowles's life, she uses her memoir to examine her relationship with the expatriate novelist-composer and to ruminate on the nature of literary biography. As a result, the reader learns more about Dillon and the craft of biography than about Paul Bowles. Dillon's analysis of her association with Bowles is generally intelligent and interesting, as are her comments on the biographer's art. As such, this memoir will appeal most to those interested in understanding the complex relationship between biographers and their subjects. Readers interested primarily in Bowles's life and times should consult Bowles's autobiography, Without Stopping (LJ 3/1/72), or Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno's An Invisible Spectator (LJ 3/1/72).?William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNYCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, Perry Meisel
Using the atmosphere of Tangier to advantage, Dillon lights the chilly Bowles from a number of angles.
Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Edmund White
...a maddening, exhilarating, category-defying "portrait" of Paul. She dispenses with the biographical summary of his life and achievements in the first few pages and moves on to something altogether different: a record of her usually hapless efforts to pry something out of Bowles, whether it be an insight into his own works, acknowledgment of his feelings or just a simple recognition of Dillon's existence.
The Washington Post Book World, Michael Upchurch
[N]othing has conveyed Bowles's rhythms of mind and quirks of temperament as well as his own prose and compositions--until now.... unexpectedly funny, disarmingly intimate and usefully disorienting ... A pleasure to read.... You Are Not I undoubtedly will become a treasured primary source for future Bowles biographers.
From Kirkus Reviews
This jumbled but ever readable account of the expatriate composer and author is not so much a biography as a meditation on the biographical process and its pitfalls. Anticipating the death of Paul Bowles, the last of the Tangiers giants, a full-scale literary industry is beginning to gear up. Bowles himself has never been a particularly prolific author, but each work of fiction, from The Sheltering Sky to the shortest of his short stories, arrived with a resounding fullness to it. A world so complete, so considered, that each work feels like a life's oeuvre. There's an elusive archetypal quality to his work that seems to mediate between the noumenal and phenomenal, as if these classic philosophic distinctions were almost resolvable. Like his work, Bowles seems to be just beyond full understanding, a passive acquiescent personality who can't say no, but is very good at avoiding anything uncomfortable. He is particularly elusive when Dillon (who edited The Portable Paul and Jane Bowles as well as a volume of Jane Bowless letters) attempts to tease out the deeply autobiographical elements of his work: ``Hadn't he always been in the process of escaping? Escaping into another room, escaping across borders into another country, escaping into regions within himself, escaping into others, escaping into his characters, even as they too are escaping.'' Dillon here has thrown over the traditional biographical method in favor of a free-form approach, part interview, part reminiscence, part autobiography. Based largely on hundreds of hours spent with Bowles, it's a fascinating mix that doesn't quite gel, although there are flashes of real insight. The autobiographical elements are overplayed, although such elements as the arrival of a second, rival biographer and Dillon's sense that she is trapped in a Bowles novel are so intriguing, one excuses their irrelevance. (15 b&w photos) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Michael Upchurch, Washington Post
"Unexpectedly funny, disarmingly intimate and usefully disorienting....Dillon's prose is spare and supple, and her offbeat approach to her "portrait' works like a charm....The service Dillon has done Bowles and his admirers is rare and welcome. Where previously we've had only freeze-frame shots of him, now we can see him in action, growing 'transparent, opaque, and transparent again,' as Dillon puts it."
Book Description
The famously enigmatic writer-composer Paul Bowles is the subject of Millicent Dillon's unforgettable new book. Her portrait of the chameleonlike artist is much more than an account of Bowles's life, however. It is also a meditation on biography that questions the biographer's role, the subject's credibility, and the very nature of "truth" in the telling of a life. Millicent Dillon first met Paul Bowles in Tangier in 1977, when she was writing a biography of his wife, the author Jane Bowles, who died in 1973. Dillon returned to Morocco in 1992 to work with Bowles on a book about his own life. In Bowles's book-lined apartment often crowded with visitors, Dillon observes the magnetism the aging artist exerts on anyone who comes into his circle. Bowles talks of his difficult childhood and of his grief over Jane's long illness, of exile, dreams, and madness. He is charming and evasive with Dillon, generous and devious. As the book unfolds, Dillon's own reflections and concerns surface alongside details of Bowles's daily life, his physical condition, his interactions with others. Her portrait of the artist is seen simultaneously with her construction of that portrait, and in a kind of literary legerdemain we are able to observe Dillon on the biographical canvas along with Bowles and his deceased wife. Author of the international bestseller The Sheltering Sky and numerous other works, as well as an acclaimed composer, Paul Bowles has had an immensely rich creative life. Millicent Dillon seems to have been destined to write this unconventional biography of the artist, and the result is wonderful, disturbing, and strangely compelling, like Paul Bowles himself.
From the Back Cover
"Less a biography than a meditation on the curious nature of biography and on the even more curious nature of Paul Bowles. Brilliantly done, and intensely interesting." (Alice Adams) "[I love the Paul Bowles biography.] A seriously innovative biography about a fascinating literary figure, an exotic locale, the haunting ghost of Jane Bowles, and an endearing and important biographer. Any of these ingredients would be enough to recommend it; altogether, a brilliant book." (Diane Johnson) "I am impressed by the honesty, lucidity, and maturity in every sentence. This stunning pas de deux by two wary, relentlessly intelligent people is a delicious reading experience." (Phillip Lopate, author of Portrait of my Body and Art of the Personal Essay) "Millicent Dillon brilliantly manages to turn her difficulties with the notorious elusiveness of Paul Bowles, and of Tangiers, into the most revealing account ever given of his personality and his achievements. It's a fascinating, exhilirating book." (Richard Poirier)
About the Author
Millicent Dillon's published works include fiction and nonfiction as well as numerous short stories. She is the editor of The Portable Paul and Jane Bowles (1994), Out in the World: Selected Letters of Jane Bowles, 1935-1970 (1990), and A Little Original Sin. Millicent Dillon lives in San Francisco.
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