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Yesterday's Perfume: An Intimate Memoir of Paul Bowles | 
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| Author: Cherie Nutting
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Category: Book
List Price: $75.00
Buy New: $1.26
You Save: $73.74 (98%)
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Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 959812
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1st
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.4
Dimensions (in): 11.3 x 10.1 x 1
ISBN: 0609605739
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780609605738
ASIN: 0609605739
Publication Date: November 21, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
The formidable charm of Paul Bowles radiates from every page of this unconventional memoir, which recalls Cherie Nutting's friendship with the expatriate American writer-composer during the last 13 years of his life. Nutting layers together text (her narrative, his journal extracts and unpublished writings) and photographs (of Bowles, his friends, and various significant objects) in a collage-like format. This impressionistic approach is highly appropriate to Bowles (1910-99), whose first published work appeared in a surrealist magazine, and who remained an avant-garde innovator in music and literature for half a century. Although 40 years his junior, Nutting has similar interests: she fell in love at age 10 with Morocco, his adopted homeland; and, when she read his best-known novel, The Sheltering Sky, in the 1970s, "the book meant everything" to her. Inspired by recurring dreams, she wrote to Bowles in 1985 and explained that "it was in my destiny that we should meet"; he responded with an invitation to visit him in Tangier. Her photos show a radiantly handsome old man, while her reminiscences of kif smoking, rambles through the Moroccan landscape, and pronouncements like "the illicit bouquet that smelled of yesterday's perfume" create a dreamy atmosphere. Readers who are disinclined to this sort of stargazing will find comic relief in a running subplot that involves the house that's being built for Nutting by Bowles's friend Mohammed Mrabet, who extracts substantial sums of money from both of them, gets angry whenever his plans are questioned, and takes a long time to complete the structure. Readers who are attuned to the special sensibility that's expressed in Bowles's life and work will find it evocatively captured here. --Wendy Smith
Product Description
Fifteen years ago, Cherie Nutting returned to Morocco. She had first visited it as a child with her mother, and the images of mystery and the desert had stayed with her, fueled over the years by accounts of expatriate life and by the literature created there. In Tangier again, she met the most famous of the expatriates and author of the classic The Sheltering Sky. Cherie became a friend of Paul Bowles and part of his circle. Over the years, the friendship deepened and widened.
Yesterday's Perfume is a memoir of that friendship and of Cherie's love of Morocco. She had unparalleled access to Paul, and recorded, journal-like, their conversations and the events of everyday life. Interwoven among Cherie's narrative are bits and pieces of Paul's previously unpublished writings -- diarylike fragments, retellings of dreams, little stories -- a sharp counterpoint in his inimitable voice.
Unlike most memoirs, Yesterday's Perfume is blessed with a wealth of extraordinary images. Cherie has created a visual record of their friendship, capturing intimate moments, making formal portraits, recording the comings and goings of celebrities and friends. And here, too, the dialogue with Bowles continues, for Paul has jotted down his reactions in the borders and on the prints.
Several other friends have contributed to these pages, Peter Beard, Ned Rorem, and Bruce Weber among them. But key is the collaboration of Cherie and Paul. Together they have created a touching portrait of friendship and a road map to the mind of an artist.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A POIGNANT MEMOIR OF PAUL BOWLES December 20, 2001
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
Paul Bowles' collaboration with the photographer Cherie Nutting was a very special endeavor. It was his last writing before his death in November 1999. This hardcover book is beautifully produced, and Mr. Bowles himself actually handwrote some of the text and wholeheartedly participated in it. He relied on the artistic ability of his friend to produce--over a period of many years--such quality photos of himself and those around him. This is a 'must have' book for any afficionado of Paul Bowles. I highly recommend it. It is inconceivable to me why anyone would write a negative review, but perhaps those are the unfortunate and jealous souls who were not included.
 Who is this woman? August 6, 2001
Paul Mallamo (Denver, Colorado)
8 out of 12 found this review helpful
Cherie Nutting somehow attached herself to Paul Bowles and took lots of photographs. Many of these are of herself in various gauzy poses. We also get the inside story in the form of her dreamlife. "Memoir" indeed, but who cares? What does all this have to do with Paul Bowles, especially the version that created the books and music? Toward the end of this volume we realize how lonely and confused Mr. Bowles was, and how ripe for an opportunistic Ms. Nutting. I don't know exactly what to call this thing, but the Bowles name would more correctly appear in it as a footnote.
A Rich Feast For the Senses December 17, 2000
Mike Fitzgerald (Chicago)
7 out of 13 found this review helpful
This is an untypical book about an untypical person. Just as the photographs of the Western and Southwestern landscape by Ansel Adams evoke the majesty of nature, so do the photographs of Cherie Nutting well represent the life and surroundings of the author Paul Bowles. The Bowles mystique is spread throughout the land. Here in Chicago respected Tribune columnist Jon Anderson and political and real estate consultant Phil Krone were among Bowles' friends and admirers. In a sense Nutting's volume pierces through the myth that Bowles was a reclusive hermit. In fact he was a very social and convivial man who balanced his life between the discipline of hard work that any craft requires, and the conduct of life as a traveler, not only through geography but minds as well. In a very lighthearted and elegiac way this is what Ms. Nutting captures.
A really poor book.... December 12, 2000
16 out of 22 found this review helpful
I was loooking forward to this book, hoping it would be about Paul, whom I knew fairly well and whose work I much admire. But it's not primarily about Paul; it's about Ms. Nutting and her silly fantasies. This book is sheer narcissism, an ego-trip par excellence. And Ms. Nutting's photos aren't all that good either. Why anyone would pay $75 ($60 on Amazon) for this nonsense is beyond me. Here are the same old stories (about Cherifa and Jane, etc.) told better elsewhere (i.e. in the biographies.) There's unattractive cattiness here as well -- for example the mean reference to the number of letters Paul may or may not have written to Debra Winger. Finally there's little perception into Paul's behavior -- the passive-aggressive way he manipulated everyone (especially the marginal people) around him. Paul Bowles was a superb writer and a fascinating man...but he was also a complex human being with plenty of faults and flaws. Unfortunately there's nothing here but empty idolatry.
Today's Banquet December 9, 2000
Philip Steele Krone (Chicago, Illinois United States)
9 out of 14 found this review helpful
Yesterday's Perfume is a veritable banquet of tastes and sensations as well as an honest and intimate tribute to the late Paul Bowles.Cherie Nutting truly loved "Pablo" as she refers to him, and her photos reflect her affection and reverence. In his last year of life Bowles spent considerable time preparing observations and comments for this book to both make it more marketable and to demonstrate his affection for Cherie Nutting. This is a very handsome book. Its photographs are rich in symbolism as well as substance. For those who are interested in Bowles, this book will be most satisfying indeed.
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