NY, Ecco, (1991). The first American edition of Bowles's Tangier journal from the years 1987-1989. Bowles had never kept a regular journal until he was asked to do so by Daniel Halpern for an issue of Antaeus devoted to writers' journals and notebooks. The time period coincided in part with the filming of the movie adaptation of Bowles's novel, The Sheltering Sky, and the journals track not only the daily mundane events of life but a raft of celebrity visits, as well as the occasional bits of shocking Moroccan violence, of the sort that informed Bowles's own novel. Bowles had always been, in the words of Gore Vidal, "famous among those who were famous," and this journal provides evidence of that. This is a unique copy, signed by Bowles (six times) and by 18 other members of Bowles's cast of characters (some more than once), including: Mick Jagger, Patricia Highsmith (author), Claude-Nathalie Thomas (Bowles' French translator), Mohammed Mrabet (Moroccan writer and painter whose stories Bowles translated), Rodrigo Rey Rosa (Guatemalan writer whose works Bowles translated), Buffie Johnson (artist, longtime friend of Paul and Jane Bowles), Gavin Lambert (British author and biographer), Abdelwahab El Abdellaoui (Moroccan student and friend), Abdelouahaid Boulaich (Bowles' assistant), Steve Diamond, Kenneth Lisenbee, Cherie Nutting (photographer and friend), Bachir el-Attar (of the Master Musicians of Jajouka), Gloria Kirby (lifelong Tangier resident and benefactor of the American Legation there, including creating the Paul Bowles Room), David Herbert (British socialite, "The Queen of Tangier"), Mercedes Guitta (owner of Guitta's, a restaurant frequented by Bowles), Gavin Young (British author and journalist), and Phillip Ramey, a composer and close friend of Bowles who gathered the signatures over a ten-year period and who appears several times in the text himself. A unique volume, which locates Bowles in the matrix of artists, celebrities and friends who had surrounded him for nearly a half century at that point. It is unlikely there is any other single book or document that so clearly and extensively provides a view of the rich assortment of individuals who made up Bowles's social and artistic circle. Near fine in a near fine dust jacket with a bit of fading to the spine lettering. [#030688] SOLD