The Dream at the End of the World: Paul Bowles and the Literary Renegades in Tangier

Fleeing New York in 1947, Paul Bowles settled in raffish Tangier, a wellspring for his fiction. For ``extravagantly neurotic'' wife Jane, the Moroccan mecca was a place to explore forbidden impulses. She embarked on a lesbian affair with a Berber grain-seller, while Paul also took same-sex lovers. Arriving in 1954, William Burroughs lived in a mildrew-ridden male brothel and tried to kick his drug habit. In 1957 Burroughs lured his loyal literary supporters, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, to join his ``mad salon,'' as did painter Francis Bacon. Through the 1960s and early '70s, this haven for expatriates exerted its pull. Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Susan Sontag and Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton were among the city's visitors and residents. Then the dream died, though Paul Bowles stayed on even after his wife, diagnosed as psychotic, was committed to psychiatric hospitals in Spain. Green, a writer for People , captures Tangier's mood of surreal dislocation in a hypnotic narrative, a volatile mix of juicy gossip and literary history. Photos. First serial to Mirabella. (Aug.)