~weather, I turn first to Jane Bowles.

, Two Serious

24 ° O_lTl"l may 2001 

BY ERNIE MCLEOD

Jane Bowles (1917-1973) was a
queer writer in every sense of the
word. Though married to the writer
and composer Paul Bowles, she, like
he, explored same-sex relationships

on and off the page. Known for her,

fiendish and self—deprecating wit, she
sometimes called herself “Crippie the
Kike Dyke,” referring to her lame leg,
her Jewishness and her lesbianism.
Her lifetime’s work, collected in a
single volume titled My Sister iv Hand
in ll/Iine, is queer not so much for its
content but for its defiance of conven-
tion. Her sensibility skews the world
and hands it back to the reader afresh.
I think of her writing as a tiny, strange
delicacy, one you either can’t get
enough of or will find unsuited to
your taste buds. Perhaps because she

could never be considered‘ main-.

stream, she’s been described as a
“writer’s writer’s writer.” But, odd as
her work is, it’s never inaccessible or
pretentious.

When seeking language that will
delight me through any kind of mental

Maybe it’s because her sen-
tences teeter magically
between tragedy and
farce? Take this one
froirn-~ hermlost
famous’ work,

Ladies: “Miss
Goering felt as
uneasy as one
can feel listen-
ing to parade
music in a quiet
room.” While I
can’t say I ’ve actually
listened to parade music
in a quiet room, I sure do

 

know that feeling. Just as I know the
contradictory impulse described in
this sentence: “She was torn between
an almost overwhelming desire to bolt
out of the room and a sickening com-
pulsion to remain where she was.”
Bowles’s characters are walking para-
doxes, never quite at peace with what
the “normal” world is dealing them.

After her marriage to Paul Bowles,
Jane spent most of her adult life in
Tangier. Their circle of friends and
lovers included other expatriate
artists, as well as Moroccan natives.
Bowles’s longest extramarital affair
was with a Moroccan woman named
Cherifa, a “wild girl” uniformly
despised and feared by everyone
around Jane. Though writing never
came easily to Jane 4 she said she
hated it but was interested in nothing
else aside from the people she loved,
it became nearly impossible after a
series of strokes beginning when she
was forty. Some believed that Cherifa
had poisoned her.

The last five years of her life were

‘“Oh, I think this is
terribly, terribly gay,’
said Miss Goering.
‘This rainbow and this
sunset and all these ,

people iabbering away i
like magpies. Don't you
think it's qay?’"

 

Open Seven Days
q 8,63-8326

spent in psychiatric hospitals in Spain.
Though Paul Bowles continued to be
productive after Jane’s death, it was
said much of his writerly inspiration
died with her-.

Because Bowles’s output was so
limited, it’s possible to read her entire
oeuvre in a couple of days. It’s an oeu-

' vre that deserves repeated readings,

however, particularly the novel, Two
Serious Ladies," and the spookily
hilarious story, Camp Cataract, which
features “a stocky blond waitress”
named Beryl whose “dogged attach-
ment” to the oblivious Harriet should
resonate with anyone prone to awk-
ward, unrequited crushes.

Delineating plot in Bowles’s work
is pointless. The one given is that on
every page you will be surprised.
Bowles herself said she never knew
what was going to happen next in her
writing, that it was “‘as if the reader
and I were finding out together.”’ Or,
as one of the characters in, Two
Serious Ladies, says: “‘What makes
me happy I seem to

“My Sister’s Hand in Minge:ii:The Collected Works of Jane Bowles”

catch out of the sky with both hands; I
only hold whatever it is that I love
because that is all I can really see.’”
Reading Bowles is indeed like hold-
ing your hands up to the sky and
catching the queerly unexpected.

Further Reading:

The Dream at the _.End
of the World: Paul
Bowles and the Literary
Renegades in Tangier
by Michelle Green.

A Little Original Sin:
The Life and Work of
jane Bowles
by Millicent Dillon.

    
 
 
 

  ‘“My cousin
used to tell me ,
how queer you were.
u I think, though, that
you can make friends
I more quickly with T
  queer‘people.;Orelse
you don't make T  
friends with them at
all -—- one way or th
other!" , T

1. RAG AND BONE by Michael Nava

2. THE FRONT RUNNER (Triangle Classic Edition)
by Patricia Nell Warren

3. THE GIRLS: SAPPHO GOES TO HOLLYWOOD by Diana McLellan

 4. QUEER FEAR: GAY HORROR F|CTl
5. UNDERTOW by Amy Schutzer
6. THE WORLD OF NORMAL BOYS by K. M. Soehnleln
7. THE FEMME’S GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE by Shar Rednour
8. THE PENIS BOOK by Joseph Cohen I E
9. LOSING MATT SHEPARD by Beth Loffreda

10. JAMES MERRILL: COLLECTED POEMS, A
Edited by J. D. McC|atchy and Stephen Yenser

ON, Edited by Michael Rowe

 
 
 
 
 
 
   
   
   
 
  
 
  

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