A Little Original Sin: The Life and Work of Jane Bowles

by Millicent Dillon

Tennessee Williams called Jane Bowles "the most important writer of prose fiction in modern American letters." John Ashbery said she was "one of the finest modern writers of fiction in any language," consistently producing "the surprise that is the one essential ingredient of great art." Here, available again, is the only biography of this powerful writer.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Literature

476 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Millicent Dillon was an American writer. She was born in New York City and studied physics at Hunter College. She also worked variously at Princeton University, Standard Oil Company, Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft, and Northrop Aircraft. In 1965, at the age of 40, Dillon enrolled in the creative writing program at San Francisco State University. Subsequently, she taught at Foothill College in Los Altos, California. She also worked at Stanford University for nearly a decade.
Millicent became a full-time writer in 1983. She is best known for her scholarly works on the American writers Jane Bowles and Paul Bowles. These include a couple of biographies and a collection of letters, as well as The Viking Portable Paul and Jane Bowles (1994) which Dillon edited. Besides these, she also wrote short stories, novels, and plays. Her novel Harry Gold (2000) was nominated for the PEN Faulkner Award. She won five O. Henry awards and also received a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Dillon is the mother of the author Wendy Lesser.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were more than a few odd things about Jane.

She fell off a horse at the age of 15 and broke her leg. Then she got TB - in her leg. Which wouldn't heal. So she was sent off to a Swiss sanatorium, where she learned French & continued her education in French, whilst her mother swanned about in Paris. The TB leg took two years to get a bit better - she was in traction most of the time - and then it didn't heal. So to alleviate the pain they fused her knee, so she had a stiff leg all her life.
The family were non-practicing Jews. She figured out she was gay quite quickly, and what with that and the leg, she was prone to calling herself "Crippie the Kike Dyke". Which is one of those things where it was okay for her to call herself that but probably, I'm guessing, not alright for someone else to call her that.

She married a gay guy called Paul Bowles. They gave the straight thing a fairly half-hearted go, but then they opted for staying married but being separate. They did love each other, in an unusual kind of way.



The Bowleses were kind of pre-beats even though Paul Bowles looked like Young Businessman of the Year 1949. (Sometimes Jane also looked like Young Businessman of the Year 1949. She liked men's attire.) They couldn't sit still. They had to be off somewhere exotic or in New York, one or the other. Eventually they decamped for Morocco and stayed there, falling in love with the locals and stoning themselves out of their brains on the local hashish. They were ill a lot.

This biography says Jane wasn't an alcoholic. On Wikipedia it says Jane was an alcoholic. Given the number of pages drinking takes up in this biography I'm going with Wiki.

She wrote a weird novel (Two Serious Ladies - one reviewer said that to try to explain the plot of this novel was to risk one's sanity), a weird play and six weird short stories.

That's it.

THE BROTHEL ANECDOTE

They were in Guatemala and Jane got to drinking with some students who expressed a desire to visit a brothel. Jane persuaded them to take her, she was curious. At the brothel, after they got there, a big guy with a pistol in his belt came in. He was the chief bodyguard of the dictator of Guatemala. He looked around the room and pointed to Jane and said "I want that one." Everyone said "No, that is a tourist." The big guy said "I want that one."
Now that's what I call a sticky moment.

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fairly detailed (423 pages) biography of the writer Jane Bowles, the wife of Paul Bowles, a composer and writer of "The Sheltering Sky" fame. She was an extraordinary character with a special sense of humor, a pixie that fascinated most people that knew her. Her life was not easy: she suffered from perennial writer's block and feelings of guilt and sin. In the end she suffered from a mental illness, possibly caused by a stroke, that made it necessary for her to leave her beloved Tangier for a psychiatric ward in Malaga where she eventually died. Her highly (but not universally) praised collected works were republished in 2005.

The biography's style is bland and factual but interesting because it includes a lot of source material: letters, quotations from witnesses that make the subject come alive.

[Kallie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this a second time, because the Dawn Powell diaries made me want to re-read about these Bohemian writers of New York, whom I have so much enjoyed over the years. More to say after I finish. I remember this bio as thorough and thoroughly generous toward the writer and her work and fascinated with both, as I am. I've since this review read Jane Bowles again. She imagined an alternate, surreal world and her characters never know where they may end up -- like real life, but most of us buffer the shocks and adjustments with habits, comforts physical and emotional . . . Jane didn't really do that. She lived on the edge and that cost her, in terms of comfort and 'success.' But she wasn't counting costs as much as most of us do. She is one of the least self-protective people in terms of writing and living that I know of. Of course, risks can be inward as well. An apparently conservative life may be nothing of the kind. But Jane took risks in life and in art. She probably had no choice and we tend to pathologize people like her now, labeling and prescribing all that away. I have to say, I think that has costs too.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tore through this wonderful biography, and could relay any number of reasons why I loved it, but mostly it has to do with how many almost unbearably charming anecdotes like the one below are to be found in its pages.

“While Tennessee Williams was visiting, he and Jane spent every afternoon at the beach. When he was ready to leave, he asked her what she would like as a present. ‘A leg of lamb,’ she said. Tennessee bought her the lamb as she'd asked. Then each day until she used it, she would go to the butcher’s where her lamb was being stored and say, ‘I would like to see my leg of lamb, please.’”

[Marina Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written. Jane’s life is mostly a sad story.

[Kallie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my second reading of Dillon's excellent, totally sympathetic biography, which gives us Jane Bowles in all her charming and sometimes maddening complexity. Bowles was a witty, one-off person whose voice (her actual voice and manner of speaking and sense of humor, as well as her writing voice) was part of what made her so uniquely lovable to many of the people Dillon interviews in her work. A person's voice -- the intonation and humor in a voice -- is nearly impossible to convey in words, so I began re-reading Two Serious Ladies while reading the bio. That helped, some. But Bowles' work is subtle, if so immediate it is kind of spooky, more of an experience than a conventional narrative. Comparisons to Kafka are apt, because the characters seem to find themselves in extreme, dream-like situations over which they have little control. (Even Paul Bowles was more conventional, and his stories are quite strange.) Jane Bowles required that she (in her life) and her characters (in her work) must expose themselves to experiences and situations they feared. Since Bowles herself was full of worry and fear, this is a constant test of courage that she sets herself and the characters in her novels, and it's no wonder she drank a lot though I agree with Dillon that she was not an alcoholic since she did not drink in order to feel less. She also had a strong sense of responsibility toward others, and felt it her duty to go to great lengths to help people she cared about (not a trait of alcoholics I have known). Kudos to Dillon for this work. She does what all biographers should do -- she loves her subject and all her faults and flaws. She accepts Jane Bowles for who she is and shares what she learns with her readers. I would read any biography she writes and will be looking for more of her work.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the reading front in my attempt to descend into the world of Alfred Chester I just finished Millicent Dillon's A Little Original Sin: The Life and Work of Jane Bowles (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1981). Its funny years ago when I began reading about the wonderful life of expats in Morocco I always came across stories about Jane Bowles but had never followed any of the texts back to her. Instead I was drawn in by the boys and their sexual escapades with Moroccan men. As I have aged, and my recent discovery of Alfred Chester has brought full circle back to those expats again, but now I am coming at them through the life of Jane (she has entered the pantheon of the monstres sacrés that roll around my head). There is something mesmerizing and inviting about the affect she had on everyone who knew her. Dillon's biography does a really good job, sometimes with too much detail of contextualizing her life and her work.

[Joey Comeau · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, along with "Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith" is one of the best biographies I've ever read. Compellingly written, and about a fascinating subject - Jane Bowles. A truly queer woman, and the author of Two Serious Ladies.

[Mary Shanley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jane Bowles was one of the great writers and personalities of the ex-patriate society in Tangier. She mingles with great authors and playwrights, composers and her Moroccan lover, Cherifa (who was rumored to have put black magic in her room, which contributed to her demise.)

[Lady R.E. Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I learned from this book:
Jane Bowles was quite a character. She suffered from chronic writer's block. She also liked pinball.

[Alison Young · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was too academic for me - a good biography should read like a good novel, not a plod through someone 's life and work. Quite frankly, I got bored with it.

[Sandra Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Jane's writing. She had an interesting life.

[Shawn Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well detailed account of a one of the most singular writers in recent history.

[Avery Cassell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Little Original Sin is an excellently written biography about the novelist, playwright, adventuress, and debauched dyke, Jane Bowles (b.1917 - d. 1973). I have a weakness for this era, wild women, and the Middle East, and this only fed into my obsessions. One of Jane's lovers was a butch Moroccan grain-seller, Cherifa. Jane was introduced to Cherifa by her bisexual composer husband, Paul Bowles (Paul eventually took up with his driver.) There were rumors that Cherifa was a witch and poisoned Jane to keep her under her spell...rumors that Jane encouraged. Read this book. Jane is an interesting writer and an important person in LGBTQ history.

[Iñaki Tofiño · Rating 1 out of 5]

INSOPORTABLE. No sé si ha sido el libro, la traducción o la pobre Jane Bowles, pero el libro me ha parecido una memez, una sarta de información sin sentido, de viajes, fiestas y enfermedades que echan para atrás a cualquiera.

[Jana]

A Life worth knowing about. Not easy being the partner of Paul Bowles who glided seamlessly through life with his great erudition, talent and charm, however, Jane might have been an even better writer than her husband in another circumstance?

[Pentimento · Rating 3 out of 5]

este tiempo estoy sumergido en la fascinante, agitada y tragica vida de esta dama y su compañero el gran Paul Bowles!

[Rod · Rating 4 out of 5]

i coveted this book. it took me to the almost invisible paths of a foreign world.

[Aránzazu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mis impresiones en: http://bibliomaniasydesvarios.blogspo...

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

A terrifically detailed bio of a very troubled, psychologically tortured 'artist'.
Ultimately, a tragic life of a somewhat self-destructive, toxic personality.

[Simon Bate · Rating 4 out of 5]

an interesting and strange life...good to read if you enjoy her few writings....and it must be nice to have a friend like Libby Holman who keeps sending you money !

[Emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

found this in the street and then read half, cool person