I saw a photo of Paul bowles in a men's fashion magazine the other day. It was part of a photo-essay on dressing gowns. There he sat with a cat. So apt, for a writer so feline-like. Whose sentences move across his prose with the grace and leanness of a street cat roaming the oneiric alleyways of a casbah looking for the kill.

Bridging the dandy with the beat, Bowles was a unique figure and a great writer of the twentieth century. He peeked behind the exotica of foreign settings to reveal dark and dangerous places, often leading to derangement and death, in a handful of novels and short stories that burn and dazzle with the intensity of ice-cold gems.

I saw this other photo too, with only the back of his head in view, and as a portrait it was beautifully true:

(The above image is copyright Cherie Nutting and resides on the authorized Paul Bowles site)