Paul Bowles, Magic and Morocco

Book Description
Paul Bowles (1910-1999) was one of the most paradoxical literary talents of his century, a sophisticated New York writer and composer who lived a half-century in Morocco, a man who fled the western world that acclaimed him. Paul Bowles, Magic and Morocco is an extended homage, a memoir of a friendship, and an examination of more than a half-century's influence of North African magic on Bowles's sensibilities and fictions. Allen Hibbard, a scholar and close friend, situates Bowles with others like Conrad and Lawrence who lived a split existence, literally and metaphorically, divided between the modern and the primitive. With an extensive knowledge of the Middle East and North Africa, Hibbard weaves literary analysis and personal insight, thereby yielding a unique understanding of the effects of Moroccan culture upon Bowles's sensibility.


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"Those who visited Bowles in Tangier often thought of him as a sorcerer, magician, someone who could orchestrate the forces around him simply because he understood those forces so deeply and intuitively." In Paul Bowles, Magic & Morocco Allen Hibbard locates the sources of Bowles's creative genius by considering him a species of North African magician. This book presents a series of riffs on Bowles's acquaintance with North African customs and culture, other artists and writers affected by Morocco's mysteries, anthropological studies of magic in North Africa, connections between the modern and the primitive, the influence of Conrad and Lawrence on Bowles, Bowles's alchemical processes, the operation of magic in his literary work, the magical properties of drugs, sex and music, the improbable story of Alfred Chester and Paul Bowles, and Hibbard's own account of his pilgrimage to meet the Mage of Morocco. Hibbard combines his skills as a literary critic, extensive knowledge of Arab culture, and personal experiences with Bowles in Tangier to create a tour de force, contextualizing and explicating a half-century's influence of Arabe al Maghreb upon Bowles's sensibilities and writing. Motivated by friendship this homage to Bowles breaks loose from generic boundaries, moving from objective criticism, through memoir, to imaginative literature, with Hibbard addressing Bowles directly, speaking to him beyond the grave.


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