WITHOUT STOPPING: An Autobiography

A distantly interesting retrospective of that jack-of-all-arts, itchy nomad attracted by torpid and desolate out of the way spots, aesthete who touched on many walks of music, writing, theater, films, in transit from one place to another where he never settled for very long with and without his wife Jane (who called him ""gloompot"" and could only stand him for short periods) and many other luminaries -- beginning with the Surrealists in Paris and Stein and Miro and Cocteau, and all along the way -- Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal and Peggy Guggenheim and Isherwood and Ginsberg. After a very ordinary childhood where he grew up listening to the echoing ""It's not natural for a child,"" he entertained himself with a private cosmos and the diaries in which he wrote and drew. ""Without Stopping"" was an early title he has appropriated here and it is symptomatic of the years spent in Tangier (a most frequent point of return), South America, New Mexico, Ceylon (where he bought an island), and back again. Writing his autobiography he found an ""ungratifying occupation"" since in his ""tale"" there was no struggle. ""I hung on and waited."" Indeed it is unexpectedly low-toned and matter-of-fact with none of the scratchy intensity of his novels. Many people and places catch the eye but the man -- and surely he exists -- is altogether impermeable.