| The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site |
LITERARY FRIENDS, Part Four
Paul Bowles translated stories and writings by five Moroccan writers shown in the photographs below. The most famous of these writers is Mohamed Choukri, as well as the storyteller and artist Mohammed Mrabet. Paul Bowles thought that Choukri was an excellent writer, and he closely collaborated with him on various translations of his works, including Choukri's first book, published in English as For Bread Alone. That book is a candid autobiography of Choukri's difficult early life. In French the title is Le Pain nu. The Moroccan artist Ahmed Yacoubi was a constant companion and protégé of Bowles, who took him on trips to Europe, America, various countries in Africa, Ceylon, India, Turkey and Japan. There is a complete biography of Ahmed Yacoubi and his gallery exhibitions on this site. Though Bowles made translations of some of Yacoubi's writings, including a play, Ahmed Yacoubi is predominantly known for his abstract paintings, some of which are in various museums and private art collections. The brilliant English painter Francis Bacon, who lived and painted in Tangier beginning in 1955, taught Yacoubi oil painting techniques at his kasbah studio. (Throughout the 1960s and 70s Bacon periodically lived and painted in Tangier, where his friends included Paul Danquah, Peter Pollock and others. Bacon also painted in the top floor studio of Martin Soames' villa at the bottom of the the Mountain.) |
|
Abdeslam Boulaich |
Mohamed Choukri (Biography, obituary and selected bibliography of Choukri's literary works.) |
Larbi Layachi (Driss ben Hamed Charhadi) Larbi Layachi was born in 1937 in the tiny village of Menarbiyaa, which is fifty miles west of Bab Taza, in northern Morocco; he moved to Tangier in 1940. In 1961, he met Paul Bowles, who taped and translated A Life Full of Holes from the Moghrebi. He moved to the United States in 1964 and died in California in 1986 (?). |
Mohammed Mrabet (Biography and works) |
Ahmed Yacoubi (Biography of Ahmed Yacoubi and list of exhibitions of his paintings; see also Ahmed Yacoubi as Painter by Paul Bowles.) |
|
Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) |
|
Patricia Highsmith wrote 20 novels and seven collections of stories, which often dealt with psychological intrigue and murder. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, written in 1950, became an immediate success and was made into a brilliant 1951 film by Alfred Hitchcock. In 1955 Highsmith wrote another novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley, considered one of the greatest crime novels of the twentieth century and which was filmed several times. Highsmith's favorite film version of The Talented Mr. Ripley was the 1960 French-language Plain Soleil, with the actor Alain Delon portraying her character Tom Ripley in the role of a handsome, young psychopath who charms his way into the lives of a young playboy and his girlfriend, and then impersonates his friend after murdering him. The English film version is called Purple Noon. The most recent remake of The Talented Mr. Ripley was released in 1999, with the leading roles by Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. Patricia Highsmith visited Paul Bowles on a number of occasions, staying in Jane Bowles's former apartment in the Immeuble Itesa in Tangier. Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas on January 19, 1921. She graduated from Barnard College in New York with a degree in English in 1942 and where she also mastered Greek and Latin. Highsmith later studied at Columbia University, before making her first trip to Europe in 1949. She moved permanently to Europe in 1963, living and writing at various times in England, Italy and France, and in 1982 Highsmith settled in Tegna, Switzerland, near Lucerne. She died in a hospital in Locarno on February 4, 1995, at the age of 74. |
Christopher Isherwood |
| The writer Christopher Isherwood first met Paul Bowles in Berlin in the early 1930s, and later visited Paul and Jane Bowles in Tangier in 1955. In late 1968 and early 1969, Paul Bowles was a frequent guest at the Santa Monica, California home of Christopher Isherwood and his longtime friend, the photographer and artist Don Bachardy. |
| Don Bachardy |
|
One of Don Bachardy's 1968 drawings of Paul Bowles The photographer and artist Don Bachardy painted a portrait and drew several sketches of Paul Bowles in California in 1968. (This image is Copyright © 1968 by Don Bachardy and is used with his permission. Reproduction and use is prohibited.) |
| Mario Vargas Llosa and Claudio Bravo |
|
The Chilean painter Claudio Bravo (center) entertains Paul Bowles and the world-renowned Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa (right) at his Tangier estate, during the summer of 1996. Standing: composer Phillip Ramey. Paul Bowles wrote an introduction to the book Claudio Bravo: Paintings and Drawings (Abbeville Press, 1997; Rizzoli, 2005), which illustrates many of Claudio Bravo's masterpieces. After Mario Vargas Llosa ran an unsuccessful 1990 campaign for the presidency of Peru, he moved to England, where he lives with his wife Patricia in London. His official Web site is: www.mvargasllosa.com. (Photograph is Copyright © 1996 by Kenneth Lisenbee) |
Claudio Bravo's estate on the Old Mountain in Tangier |
| Claudio Bravo's Portrait of Paul Bowles |
|
The portrait of Paul Bowles by Claudio Bravo is on display at The American School of Tangier. A copy is in the Paul Bowles Room in the Tangier American Legation Museum in the Medina. (This photograph is Copyright © by Claudio Bravo; use and reproduction is prohibited.) |
|
Jeffrey Miller
|
|
Jeffrey Miller and Paul Bowles in Tangier Jeffrey Miller is the founder and director of Cadmus Editions Publishers and the editor of In Touch: The Letters of Paul Bowles and Paul Bowles: A Descriptive Bibliography. |
Part One; Part Two; Previous (Part Three); return to galleries listing.
All content herein is Copyright © 2008, PaulBowles.organd the Estate of Paul Bowles and Jane Bowles and by other copyright holders as indicated. By accessing this Web site, the official Paul Bowles and Jane Bowles Web site, you agree to all Terms and Conditions of Use and agree not to use, in any manner, any photographs, written, audio, or video materials herein. All rights reserved.