Paul (Frederick) Bowles - Childhood and youth, Later years, Selected works

Writer and composer, born in New York City, New York, USA. The son of a dentist (whom he never forgave for working so hard on his teeth), he went to Paris in the late 1920s and had his poetry published in Transition. After studying with Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson, he composed theatre music, film scores, and opera in the 1930s–1940s. He married the writer Jane Bowles in 1938. His first novel, The Sheltering Sky (1949), dealt with expatriate travellers in non-Western lands, the theme of much of his later fiction. Settling in Tangier, Morocco (1952), he collected and translated much Moroccan folklore while becoming something of a cult figure for the international literary set.

Childhood and youth

Bowles was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York City to Rena (née Rennewisser) and Claude Dietz Bowles, where his father was a dentist, and spent his childhood at 108 Hardenbrook Avenue, then 207 De Grauw Avenue, and later 34 Terrace Avenue. His mother read Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe to him as a child, and Bowles made notebooks of writing and drawing throughout his childhood.

Bowles entered the University of Virginia in 1928, where his interests included T. Throughout the next decade, Bowles composed a good body of music including sonatas, song cycles, and music for stage productions (including Doctor Faustus directed by Orson Welles, the orchestration for George Balanchine's Yankee Clipper at Lincoln Kirstein's request), and also made early recordings of North African music.

In 1938 he married author and playwright Jane Auer (Feb. 22, 1917 - May 4, 1973), and after a brief sojourn in France they were prominent among the literary figures of New York throughout the 1940s, with Paul working under Virgil Thomson as a music critic at the New York Herald Tribune. His light opera The Wind Remains, based on a poem by García Lorca, was performed in 1943 with choreography by Merce Cunningham and conducted by Leonard Bernstein. The subsequent year, he received an advance for a novel, and began writing The Sheltering Sky, which quickly rose to the New York Times best-seller list when published by New Directions. During the following decade Bowles wrote many of his best prose works. In Morocco, Bowles concentrated on writing novels, short stories and travel pieces, and wrote incidental music for nine plays presented by the American School of Tangier. Prominent literary friends visited Paul and Jane Bowles in Tangier beginning in the late 1940s, including Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal. In 1952 Bowles bought the tiny island of Taprobane, off the coast of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where he wrote much of his novel The Spider's House, returning to Tangier in the warmer months.

In 1961, Bowles began tape-recording and translating works of Moroccan authors and story-tellers including stories by Mohamed Choukri, Ahmed Yacoubi, Larbi Layachi (under the pseudonym Driss ben Hamed Charhadi), and Mohammed Mrabet. Oddly, Bowles spent one term at the English Department of the San Fernando Valley State College, (now California State University, Northridge) in 1968, lecturing on existentialism and the novel.

Bowles was a longtime friend of the Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks.

Later years

After the death of Jane Bowles in 1973 in Málaga, Spain, Bowles continued to live in Tangier, writing and receiving visitors to his modest apartment. In 1995 Paul Bowles made a rare and final return to New York for a festival of his music at the Lincoln Center and a symposium and interview held at the New School for Social Research.

Paul Bowles died of heart failure at the Italian Hospital in Tangier on November 18, 1999 at the age of 88.

Selected works

Besides being a composer and novelist, Bowles published fourteen short story collections, three volumes of poetry, numerous translations, and books of travel writing and autobiography.

Music

1931 Sonata for Oboe and Clarinet 1937 Yankee Clipper, ballet 1941 Pastorela, ballet 1944 The Glass Managerie, play 1946 Cabin, words by Tennessee Williams, music by Paul Bowles 1946 Concerto for Two Pianos 1947 Sonata for Two Pianos 1949 Night Waltz 1953 A Picnic Cantata 1955 Yerma, opera 1979 Blue Mountain ballads, words by Tennessee Williams, music by Paul Bowles.

Novels

1949 The Sheltering Sky 1952 Let It Come Down 1955 The Spider's House 1966 Up Above the World 1991 Too Far From Home

Collections of short stories

1950 A Little Stone 1950 The Delicate Prey and Other Stories 1959 The Hours after Noon 1962 A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard 1967 The Time of Friendship 1968 Pages from Cold Point and Other Stories 1975 Three Tales 1977 Things Gone & Things Still Here 1979 Collected Stories, 1939-1976 1982 Points in Time 1988 Unwelcome Words: Seven Stories

Poetry

1933 Two Poems 1968 Scenes 1972 The Thicket of Spring 1981 Next to nothing: collected poems, 1926-1977

Translations

Among his life's accomplishments were translations of stories from the oral tradition of native Moroccan storytellers including Mohammed Mrabet, Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi (Larbi Layachi), Abdeslam Boulaich, and Ahmed Yacoubi. Bowles spent five weeks in 1959 recording 'andaluz' as well as traditional Berber tribal music while traveling around Morocco.

1964 A Life Full Of Holes, by Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi (Larbi Layachi) 1968 Love With A Few Hairs, by Mohammed Mrabet 1968 The Lemon, by Mohammed Mrabet 1970 M'Hashish, by Mohammed Mrabet 1974 The Boy Who Set the Fire, by Mohammed Mrabet 1976 Look & Move On, by Mohammed Mrabet 1976 Harmless Poisons, Blameless Sins, by Mohammed Mrabet 1979 Five Eyes, by Abdeslam Boulaich, Mohamed Choukri, Larbi Layachi, Mohammed Mrabet, and Ahmed Yacoubi

Travel writing and autobiography

1957 Yallah, text by Paul Bowles, photos by Peter W. an autobiography

Film appearances and interviews

Paul Bowles in Morocco (1970), produced and directed by Gary Conklin In 1990 Bernardo Bertolucci adapted The Sheltering Sky into a film in which Bowles plays the narrative voice.