Paul Bowles: The Complete Outsider
July 21st, 2007
Incredibly engaging documentary about the writer’s writer, composer, traveler, expatriate, existentialist, kif connoisseur, husband to Jane Bowles, translator of Jean-Paul Satre, and friend of William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, W.H. Auden, and Gertrude Stein. First Run Features is releasing the DVD on July 24.
Paul Bowles: The Complete Outsider. Catherine Warnow and Regina Weinrich, 1994. ****
- Paul Bowles - Wikipedia
- Jane Bowles - Wikipedia
- The Authorized Paul Bowles Website
- The International Paul Bowles Society
- On YouTube, John Malkovich and Debra Winger have sex in the desert in a key scene from Bertolucci’s adaptation of The Sheltering Sky. In Italian.
The Left Bank Gang
May 3rd, 2007
You never know what you’re going to find at Jim Hanley’s Universe, the comic book store on 33th street with one of the best selections of European graphic novels in the city. Yesterday, I picked up a book by a Belgian artist who simply goes by Jason. The Left Bank Gang reimagines Paris in the 20s as a haven for expat comic book writers in the shape of animals. Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, Getrude Stein, James Joyce, Ezra Pound et al. get drunk, make plans for Pamplona, struggle with poverty and obnoxious tourists and discuss the finer points of narrative captions and where do all the erasers go? It’s very funny and endearing, and then the story spins into a fragmented noir. I’ll be looking for more of Jason’s deceptively simple work the next time I’m midtown. You can browse a few pages here.
Jason. The Left Bank Gang. Fantagraphics, 2006. ****
