You Are Not I

Writer-composer Paul Bowles is the subject of this biography. Millicent Dillon's portrait is more than an account of his life though - it is also a meditation on biography which questions the biographer's role, the subject's credibility and the very nature of "truth" in the telling of a life. The author first met Bowles in Tangier in 1977, when she was writing a biography of his wife, the author Jane Bowles who died in 1973. Dillon returned to Morocco in 1992 to work with Bowles on a book about his own life, observing the magnetism the ageing artist exerts on anyone who comes into his circle. She talks of his difficult childhood and of his grief over Jane's long illness, of exile, dreams and madness. As the book unfolds, Dillon's own reflections and concerns surface alongside details of Bowles's daily life, his physical condition, his interactions with others. Her portrait of the artist is seen simultaneously with her construction of that portrait, allowing the reader to observe Dillon on the biographical canvas along with Bowles and his deceased wife.