Paul Bowles: A Life by Virginia Spencer-Carr
Ask a literature student “Who was Paul Bowles?” and you’ll likely hear “a well-respected American expatriate writer who lived much of his life in Morocco and whose works draw upon the material he gathered both from the locals and other expatriate artists with whom he came in contact”.
If you ask a music student and you might hear the same thing with the word “composer” substituted for “writer”.
Ask a lesbian/gay studies student and you’ll perhaps hear he was “the bisexual husband of author Jane Bowles (also bisexual). Jane was greatly under-appreciated in her lifetime” (perhaps because of her limited output — one novel and one play). Additionally, Jane was plagued by alcohol problems and other neuroses and died relatively young.
Jane and Paul Bowles
Paul at the piano
By contrast, Paul lived long enough to befriend the author, Virginia Carr. She drew out of him the details of his and Janes’s fascinating lives as they played out across multiple art forms and locales.
For a sample of Paul’s music — showing his typical rhythmic and jazzy style — click here.
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