Jun 20, 2013 - Sale 2319

Sale 2319 - Lot 13

Price Realized: $ 3,840
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
OF JANE: "I AM SAD, BUT ONLY FOR THE FIRST STROKE AND THE YEARS OF SUFFERING..." BOWLES, PAUL. Archive of Signed Correspondence to John B.L. Goodwin. 13 Typed Letters Signed, 8vo, most one page, rectos only; 4 Autograph Letters Signed; 1 Autograph Postcard Signed; few pieces of unsigned ephemeral matter, else Signed "Paul" or "Paul B." Vp, 1957-91
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John Goodwin was an American novelist, poet, painter and collector. This archive gives a compelling glimpse into Bowles's personal and professional life over the course of thirty-plus years and is a moving testament to the long term, firm friendship between the two. Bowles's peripatetic inclinations are well known, and the letters bear addresses from such far-flung locales as Mombasa, the Canary Islands, Ceylon [Sri Lanka], Bangkok, Fez, California (during a short-lived teaching stint he found unsatisfactory), and his long time home base in Tangier.
In one letter, Bowles discusses his loving but often difficult marriage with Jane Bowles, including her deteriorating health and his relationship with her family, and admits to forging letters in Jane's name to her mother at her father's repeated requests ("I loathe the idea of perpetrating such a hoax"). Also in this letter is a rumination about his endeavors as a creative writer and the subconscious: "And novels, of course, are also dreams, the stretch nylon sort that can be extended and extended in time without breaking, (I think the longer they stretch the stronger they get) but still dreams, where one has the freedom one can never have in actuality, and for that reason infinitely preferable to live in." TLS: 13 May 1958.
About Jane's death (ten days earlier) in Spain he writes: "When I arrived she was in a coma. I spent the afternoon with her and went back to the hotel. As I was getting ready to to go out for dinner the telephone rang; it was the Mother Superior, to say that Jane had just died. It was Friday night, and she had been unconscious since Monday night, when the stroke had come. I am sad, but only for the first stroke and the years of suffering it brought her. If only the last one had come several years ago when she wanted it so badly." TLS, 13 May 1973.
Many notable personalities are mentioned in these letters, including Tennessee Williams, Malcolm Forbes, Gore Vidal, Lillian Hellman, Francis Bacon, William Burroughs ("Have you read The Naked Lunch? Ahmed brought me a copy Burroughs had given him in Paris." ALS: 28 January 1960), and many others. A later note references the Bernado Bertolucci film adaptation of his novel The Sheltering Sky, wherein Bowles attempts to articulate his disappointment: "I'm not sure what single fact I objected to most. Probably Malkovitch [sic]. But there were so many faults that it's hard to choose." ALS: 6 June 1991.
It seems clear from these letters that Bowles had no professional rivalry with Goodwin that allowed his famous reserve to be diminished somewhat and conveys a not often seen vulnerability. An evocative collection of Bowles's unguarded letters to a dear friend, that includes frank accounts of his experiences with drugs ("Finally discovered kif in Bangkok...of Madras strength"), his wife Jane, the pains and pleasures of travel, later health complaints, and his all-consuming work as a creative writer. An excellent sampling of letters by a significant, and somewhat furtive, post-war American novelist, poet and cultural avatar.