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

I found Jane Bowles completely fascinating. I knew a little about her husband Paul from various books about Morocco. But I had no idea how fascinating and tortured Jane was. At once a glorious friend and a complete basket case. A marvelous story teller and a hopelessly blocked writer. Expanding the notion of sexual attraction and conservatively trapped by her circumstances. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about a woman way ahead of her time.

I'm in the middle of this book, and I think that it's really well writtenand captures the often volatile and interesting Jane Bowles as goodas her short stories. No one like Jane.

Lost interest.

SUCH AN INTERESTING WOMAN AND GREAT ADDITION TO MY LIBRARY.

Research and writing is a 5 star but subject is 2 star, imho.As I read I was so struck by the similarities in Jane's life to Carson McCullers ( The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers ) - the originality of personality, the early alcoholism, the early strokes, the early death - really if you've read about one of them, then you don't need to read about the other, they seem that interchangeable. That may sound callous but reading about all this pointless self-destruction gets depressing.I think better than reading this, just read:  February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof in Brooklyn - then you'll get just a handful of Jane & Carson and a handful is all you need plus you get a bunch of others, some of whom are not so destructive.

It's hard not to appreciate the elbow grease Millicent Dillon put into assembling the facts of Jane Bowles's tumultuous life just a few years after her death in 1973. Dillon includes generous excerpts from Bowles's letters and interviews most of the major players in her circle. But I found myself wishing she'd take more of a stab at finding a larger interpretation or meaning to Bowles's career, working her into a wider context that would help make sense of her writing and her times. The roots of Bowles's desperate alcoholism, her fear of writing in the shadow of Paul's success, her original, highly unusual approach to sexuality & gender in a more stringent time and place, her tangled relationship with Judaism, her fascination with the culture (and women) of Tangier: Dillon touches on these topics, but her reluctance to take Jane's life on any terms other than the author's own, or those of her close-knit circle, give the biography a sad, claustrophobic feel: it seems like a lot of ink to spill on someone who spent much of her life searching for ways to avoid writing. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think Bowles would benefit from a biographer more plugged in to the academic world, someone familiar with contemporary issues in queer studies or gender theory or Jewish-American lit, to really bring Jane's achievement to life.

A little Original Sin is a superb biography of Jane Bowles, the child-woman whose outre lifestyle both energized and sometimes overshadowed her fiction. She and husband, composer Paul Bowles, manned an outpost of American bohemia in Morocco where they played host to such luminaries as Tennessee Williams, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Gore Vidal and Truman Capote.When she met Bowles in 1937, Jane was as-yet unpublished. She had been crippled in one knee by polio; he from the psychological abuse of a tyrannical father. It's possible that their marriage -- arranged to shock their families -- was never consummated. They do seem to have enjoyed a tender and childlike camaraderie. According to biographer Dillon, the two relished role-playing games. (A favorite plotline included a parrot whose single utterance, "bupple," became their pet name for one another.)Although Jane's literary reputation rests upon a slender body of work -- a novel, a play, and a collection of short stories -- her "originality" dazzled the likes of Gertrude Stein. Fragile, kittenish and indecisive, JB could also be a headstrong explorer and beguiling conversationlist. Ironically, it was the publication of her first novel, Two Serious Ladies, that encouraged her husband to write fiction. His own first novel, The Sheltering Sky, was a literary and commercial success. As Paul grew more productive, Jane became distracted by drink, drugs and an obsessive desire for an Arabic lesbian who milked her for cash and possibly poisoned her. Her decline is harrowing, but A Little Original Sin offers a tantalizing glimpse of ex-patriot life in the International Zone of Tangier in the 1950s as well as a trip into Jane's truly extraordinary mind.(If you enjoyed this book, check out JB's collected works in, My Sister's Hand in Mind. Farrar, Straus and Giroux Classics.)

She was a golden rebel, whose short and storied life was celebrated among the most eminent and glamorous of her time: Tennessee Williams, Libby Holman, Aaron Copeland, Truman Capote, Gertrude Stein and AliceB. Toklas, Leonard Bernstein, etc. Married to author Paul Bowles, she produced a small collection of work including the novel "Two Serious Ladies", her play "In the Summer House" and a book of stories, all characterized by her elliptical way of seeing things.