The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site

PAUL BOWLES: LITERARY FRIENDS, PART THREE

Brion Gysin, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, John Hopkins, Ira Cohen

Although Paul Bowles was loathe to be considered a Beat writer and not particularly an admirer of the Beats' writings, he did inspire several of the major Beat Generation writers including Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs to go to Morocco. Writer Iain Finlayson explains this point in his 1992 book Tangier: City of the Dream: "Especially bothersome is the insistence of some literary critics, reviewers and and gossips who identify him as the 'cult author of the Beat Generation', as though he gave birth to Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Gysin, Corso and the others. The latest such description had occurred in the May 1987 edition in the French magazine Actuel. He takes trouble to limit the implications. 'It's wrong,' Bowles declares.' I was never a Beat writer. To describe me as a Beat writer is purely ignorant.'"

In late 1953, William Burroughs moved to Tangier, a city he would later dubb the Interzone in his book The Naked Lunch. Paul Bowles saw Bill Burroughs regularly during the two-year period from 1955 to 1956. In 1957, Jack Kerouac arrived in Tangier to visit with Burroughs and help him type various manuscripts, staying only one month. Kerouac was soon followed by Allen Ginsberg, accompanied by his friend Peter Orlovsky (Ginsberg was snubbed by Jane Bowles) and finally Alan Ansen. In June 1961, Gregory Corso, another important Beat Generation figure arrived in Tangier. Corso, along with William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, stayed at the Villa Muniria, a guesthouse with a small garden and a terrace with beach views, not far from the Boulevard Pasteur.

The painter and writer Brion Gysin first met Jane Bowles and later Paul Bowles in Paris in 1938. They became reacquainted with Gysin again in Paris during the spring of 1950, and the Bowleses invited Gysin to visit them in Tangier. He arrived in Tangier in July 1950, staying for several months as a houseguest of Paul and Jane Bowles in their small house in the upper medina.

Also shown here are photographs of the writers and novelists Truman Capote, Gore Vidal and John Hopkins, and the Beat poet, writer and photographer Ira Cohen and his son Raphael Aladdin Cohen.


William S. Burroughs		Allen Ginsberg

Brion Gysin

The painter and writer Brion Gysin first met Jane Bowles, and later Paul Bowles, in Paris in 1938, where the Bowleses had spent some time during their lengthy honeymoon travels. They encountered Gysin again in Paris in the spring of 1950, when Paul Bowles invited him to visit them in Morocco. In July 1950 Gysin arrived in Tangier, staying as a guest for several months in Jane and Paul Bowles's small house near Place Amrah in the upper medina. Paul Bowles introduced Brion Gysin to Mohamed Hamri, an 18-year-old illiterate smuggler, who was born in Ksar-el-Kebir, and who had travelled by train to Tangier. Gysin decided to help turn Hamri away from a life of petty thievery, and bought Hamri his first paints and taught him painting techniques. Hamri was Gysin's boy friend as well as an artistic protégé. Soon after they first met, they shared a bedroom on the second floor at Jane and Paul Bowles' tiny house. Unfortunately, while Paul Bowles was away on a trip, Hamri stole some of Bowles' personal belongings, including the suit he wore at his wedding to Jane, all of which ended up in a Tangier flea market. The last straw occurred when Hamri also stole an expensive new radio. This caused a rift between Bowles and Gysin and they did not speak with each other for a few months. When Bowles's chauffeur Mohammed Temsamany and Ahmed Yacoubi confronted Hamri, Gysin abruptly moved to a cottage on the Marchan. Gysin and Bowles soon had a reconciliation and they remained friends for many years thereafter.

In the summer of 1950, Brion Gysin made a memorable trip with Paul Bowles to a moussem (festival) which was held at a beach near Sidi Kacem, several miles outside of Tangier. Here Gysin first heard some particularly fascinating Moroccan Sufi trance music. Soon thereafter, Gysin learned from his close artist friend and protégé Mohamed Hamri that the musicians were from a small mountain village called Jajouka. Gysin eagerly went to the village with Hamri to hear and learn more about the music and musicians. Hamri's mother was born in Jajouka, but she later moved to nearby Ksar-el-Kebir. Hamri, on the other hand, was born in Ksar-el-Kebir, not in Jajouka, but as a child he spent some time visiting relatives in Jajouka and later lived there. In Brion Gysin's book The Process (New York: Doubleday, 1969), Hamri was made into a real-life character named Hamid.

It needs to be clearly pointed out that although Brion Gysin did at first spell and pronounce the name of the village as Joujouka, Gysin consistently in his later writings and references only used the now commonly accepted spelling of Jajouka for both the Master Musicians and the village of Jajouka. Likewise, originally William S. Burroughs had used and published articles about the Master Musicians of Joujouka, but later consistently changed his spelling to Jajouka. William Burroughs endorsed only the Master Musicians of Jajouka and their leader Bachir Attar. In a letter Burroughs wrote in November 1994, he makes it absolutely clear that he recognized only the Master Musicians of Jajouka led by Bachir Attar as the "rightful Master Musicians", and Burroughs further stated that he regarded Bachir Attar as the "sole rightful inheritor of the mantle of Leader of the Master Musicians of Jajouka". In other words, not "Joujouka". Read this significant letter signed by Burroughs on the documents page of the official Master Musicians of Jajouka site. Perhaps the confusion in spelling first began with the illiterate Mohamed Hamri's pronunciation of the village as Jou-jou-ka. With the help of his American-born wife Blanca Nyland, Hamri later published his version of legends from this tiny village and its ancient Master Musicians in a book entitled Tales of Joujouka (Santa Barbara, California: Capra Press, 1975).

Unfortunately, Irish outsiders―people who were persona non grata in Bowles' home in Tangier and who have repeatedly slandered Paul Bowles in their numerous semi-hysterical and often illiterate rantings on the Web―have turned their Brion Gysin, Jajouka and Joujouka confusion into a so-called "controversial" matter with babblings and smears against Bachir Attar and the real Jajouka musicians on various blogs that are clearly designed to be conduits of misinformation and disinformation. Brion Gysin, in his later years, used the preferred spelling of Jajouka for the name of the village itself and for the group of Master Musicians (led today by Bachir Attar). And Paul Bowles, who first heard the music at a moussem he attended in 1950 with Brian Gysin, unwaveringly supported only The Master Musicians of Jajouka and the group's rightful leader today, Bachir Attar. Enough said.

Mohamed Hamri did indeed have a role to play by bringing his friend Brion Gysin to the tiny village of Jajouka, Morocco, and later Gysin introduced his friend Brian Jones to the Master Musicians and his recording brought this music to the attention of the West. However, although Hamri was an accomplished artist and painter (his calling card read "Hamri, the painter of Morocco"), he became a source of trouble for the musicians under the leadership of Bachir Attar. Hamri himself was never a musician, and at the time of the Brian Jones' 1968 recording, the Master Musicians were led by Bachir Attar's father, Hadj Abdesalam Attar. (When Hadj Abdesalam Attar died in 1981, his son Bachir became the leader of the Master Musicians of Jajouka and he is the acknowledged leader of the group today.)

Brian Jones recorded music from Jajouka in July 1968 and an LP album was released by the Rolling Stones two years after Brian Jones' death in 1971. At the time of the 1968 recording of The Pipes of Pan, the Master Musicians were led by Bachir Attar's father Hadj Abdesalam Attar. In 1995, The Rolling Stones decided that The Master Musicians of Jajouka led by Bachir Attar should be granted the rights and full permission to re-release Rolling Stones' lead guitarist Brian Jones' s original recording of the Pipes of Pan and the spelling was corrected to Jajouka and a new album cover was designed. For further details, read the July 1996 eight-page letter written by Jajouka producer Joel Rubiner which reveals significant and overlooked facts about Mohamed Hamri's bullying tactics and negative influences on the Master Musicians in 1972 on the official Web site of the Master Musicians of Jajouka in the documents section.

In 1954, Gysin managed a popular Tangier restaurant, the 1001 Nights, located in a wing of the Menebhi palace on the Marshan. Hamri was the cook, and Gysin hired the musicians from Jajouka (Zahjouka) to perform and serve during dinners. The restaurant permanently closed in January 1958, when Gysin was fired by Mary Cooke, one of the restaurant's several financial backers, and Gysin left Tangier and first moved to London and eventually to Paris.

In Paris, Gysin moved into a cheap, unnamed, 42-room hotel frequented by writers and artists, later referred to as "The Beat Hotel", located at 9, rue Git-le Coeur on the Left Bank or Latin Quarter. Its rooms were dimly lit and without telephones or carpets. Gysin lived at this hotel in Paris for a number of years. In Paris, Gysin also began a series of collaborations with William Burroughs and Gregory Corso. In the 1950s Gysin and mathematician Ian Sommerville co-invented and constructed the first Dreamachine.

Jane Bowles, Joseph A. McPhillips III, William Burroughs, Unidentified, Paul Bowles: Tangier, 1963.

(Left to right) The mathematician Ian Sommerville (who worked with Brion Gysin on the Dreamachine in the 1960s), writers William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Bowles (holding the camera), and Gregory Corso at the villa El Muniria, Tangier, July 1961 (Photograph copyright © by the Allen Ginsberg Trust and used with permission)

Gore Vidal

Writer and novelist Gore Vidal was an occasional visitor to Paul Bowles in Tangier. Vidal's introduction to a 1979 reissue of Bowles's collected stories sparked a revival of interest in his writings. Vidal wrote about Bowles: "His short stories are among the best ever written by an American.... As a short story writer, he has had few equals in the second half of the twentieth century."

Truman Capote

The American writer and novelist Truman Capote with Jane Bowles at El Farhar, a small hotel on the Old Mountain that was run by Ellen and Winthrop Buckingham. Sidi Masmoudi, Tangier, 1949. Among Capote's best-known works is In Cold Blood.

In 1978 Capote wrote an introduction to Jane Bowles's My Sister's Hand In Mine.

John Hopkins

John Hopkins was educated at Hotchkiss and in 1960 he graduated from Princeton. Afterwards, Hopkins began to travel, first throughout South America, then to Europe and eventually to Africa and Morocco. After arriving in Tangier in 1962, Hopkins taught for one year at The American School of Tangier. In Morocco his friends included Paul and Jane Bowles, Joe McPhillips, Marguerite McBey, David Herbert, Tessa Codrington, Claude Nathalie Thomas, Tennessee Williams, William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Alfred Chester, Mohammed Mrabet and others. During his 17 years in Morocco, Hopkins became a writer and travelled extensively throughout the country. Soon after his 1979 marriage to Ellen Ann Ragsdale, Hopkins and his wife moved to England and settled in Oxfordshire.

In addition to The Tangier Diaries: 1962-1979 (1998) and The South American Diaries, 1972-1973 (2008), John Hopkins is the author of five novels: The Attempt (1967), Tangier Buzzless Flies (1972), The Flight of the Pelican (1984), In the Chinese Mountains: A Novel of Peru (1990) and All I Wanted Was Company (1999).

Ellen Ann Ragsdale with Paul Bowles, her parents, and Malcolm Forbes, the billionaire publisher of Forbes magazine, who owned Palais Mendoub on the Marshan. Forbes spent about $2.5 million on his 70th birthday celebration in August 1989, attended by over 800 celebrity guests and held at his palace in Tangier. This photograph was taken in June 1979, at the time of Ellen Ann Ragsdale's wedding to writer and novelist John Hopkins at Tangier's Saint Andrew's Church.

Ira Cohen

In 1961, Ira Cohen travelled on a Yugoslavian freighter to Tangier, where he lived four years until 1965. Cohen produced and published the one single issue of Gnawa, a magazine that introduced several works of Brion Gysin, William Burroughs and Harold Norse. Cohen also produced Jilala, an LP album of trance music performed by a sect of dervishes and recorded by Paul Bowles. In 1986, Ira Cohen returned to Tangier, and visited the city again in 1990.

In this early-1960s picture, Paul Bowles and Ira Cohen sit at the Café Central in the Soco Chico in the medina of Tangier.

Robin Maugham

Robin Maugham, a nephew of W. Somerset Maugham, was a part-time resident of Tangier. Among Robin Maugham's writings are The Wrong People (London: Heinemann, 1970; preface by Cyril Connolly), which is set in Tangier.

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