Bowles, Paul; Choukri, Mohamed; Lambert, Gavin (Williams, Tennessee)

Tennessee Williams in Tangier

Santa Barbara, CA: Cadmus Editions, 1979. First Edition. Softcover in Stiff Wrappers. (Miller A34a). “Choukri’s book describes a close encounter of the third kind. Hearing that Tennessee Williams had been sighted in Tangier in the summer of 1973, he immediately decided to investigate this famous visitor from the large and remote planet America. (A few years previously, when Jean Genet landed in Tangier, Choukri spotted and interviewed him, but the spatial distance between them was far less, for the Moroccans and French have not been strangers since the turn of the century). Choukri was a young-old Moroccan of 38 that year, and had recently written the story of his life. “For Bread Alone,” translated by Paul Bowles, recounts the most desperate, squalid, poverty-stricken childhood and adolescence imaginable; and then how Choukri at the age of 21 created a future for himself as writer and teacher by learning to read and write. But imagine, in spite of his resolutely acquired sophistication, the distance between Choukri and Tennessee. // By the end, a genuine affection has grown up between them, and it touches because it’s so transitory. “Perhaps we’ll meet again one day,” Tennessee says with a goodbye hug, before his spaceship takes off. (Perhaps they never will). Most of their meetings have been haphazard and unplanned—in the street, at a café, at Paul Bowles’ apartment—but Choukri’s impressions have a remarkable coherence. Like so many Moroccans, he is a natural storyteller; incidental characters and local atmosphere (Tangier café life, a dreadful apartment that Tennessee is offered, a bureaucratic trauma at the post office) are described with seemingly casual precision; and Choukri’s account of Tennessee’s touchdown during two weeks of a Tangier summer achieves its effect by the collecting of moments, the compiling of fragments, by sympathy growing out of curiosity.” (from Introduction by Gavin Lambert). As the sections culled from Lambert's Introduction (quoted above) surely attest to, this work of memoir-biography by Mohammed Choukri (1935-2003) is an absolute must-read for all those interested in basically any of the figures whose legacy this book even remotely relates to. Whether you're here for new visions of Bowles' Morocco, have a fondness for the lyrical, Southern Gothic stylings of Williams, or perhaps you are a Burroughsian interested in Choukri for whatever tangential relations he may have to the literary and artistic legacy of the vaunted Interzone--you're in for a treat, and Choukri's slim volume of memoir-reportage delivers. Softcover in first issue, semi-stiff beige over-wraps & publisher's delicate glassine jacket; 1/1300 copies, yet increasingly scarce as of late. From the collection of Erin Black Matson, the late artist-poet who, along with her then-husband the acclaimed poet & educator Clive Matson, was a member of the Beat Generation as it morphed into the hippie counterculture during the 1960s. The Matsons were colleagues & protégés (in lifestyle as well as literature) of Herbert Huncke, Bonnie & Ray Bremser, Diane di Prima et al. Book in fine condition with only moderate shelf-wear to fine-edges & corners, & a few tiny exhibits of rubbing, spotting/browning to front, back covers & spine. Publisher's delicate glassine jacket in near fine condition with moderate-to-pronounced shelf-wear, modest exhibits of tiny chipping at select spots along fine-edges & corners; a few diffuse, modest exhibits of spotting/browning (varying in size; see photos) at certain places along front, back covers & spine. Near Fine. [Item #4961]

Price: $30.00