Paul Bowles
Paul Frederick Bowles (born December 30, 1910 in Jamaica, Long Island , New York City , † November 18, 1999 in Tangier ) was an American writer , composer and translator .
Life
Paul Frederick Bowles was born the only child of conservative parents, the father was a dentist. His literary and musical talent became apparent early on: some of his poems were published in France as early as 1929. He then left the University of Virginia , where he studied music, to travel to Europe. On his return he devoted himself again to studying music.
Bowles first traveled to Tangier in 1931 and was fascinated by the city and its people. Back in the United States, he earned his living as a composer for chamber and theater music and wrote theater reviews. In 1937 he met Jane Auer , a 20-year-old budding writer. The following year the two married, although Jane had previously only had lesbian relationships while Bowles was bisexual. Soon they both went their own way in the sexual area, but remained close friends and supported each other in their artistic work.
His career began with Jane Bowles' first novel, Two Very Serious Ladies, which received very different reviews of critics. Paul Bowles began to write himself and published short stories from 1945. While Jane was working on her second novel, Bowles went to Tangier in 1947 to write his first novel there. Along the way, the short story Pages from Cold Point emerged, which inspired the beat movement of the 1950s and 1960s to such an extent that it made Bowles one of its role models.
In 1948 Jane followed him to Tangier. Through other authors such as Truman Capote , Tennessee Williams , William S. Burroughs , Jack Kerouac , this city temporarily became a Mecca for writers.
In 1949 his first novel The Sheltering Sky (dt. The Sheltering Sky ), which was a great success. Extensive trips to Sri Lanka, India, Spain and Morocco including the Sahara followed, which resulted in further stories and books. He also worked on an opera.
His wife suffered a stroke in 1957 and became addicted to alcohol, tablets, epileptic seizures and increasing mental confusion. When she died in Málaga in 1973 , Bowles was with her. He, who had always looked after her during her illness, wrote during this time, among other things, the stories Song of the Insects, Midnight Mass, the novels So May He Fall, The Spider House and his autobiography Without Stopping. To Autobiography ("Restless. Memories of a Nomad"). He supported Moroccan authors by encouraging them - such as Mohamed Choukri - to write. Choukri's autobiography The Bare Bread was translated into English by Bowles, as was Driss ben Hamed Charhadi's A Life Full of Pitfalls. He also translated the works of the Swiss adventurer and author Isabelle Eberhardt . In 1981 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .
In 1990, Bernardo Bertolucci's film Heaven over the Desert was based on Bowles' novel. The writer made two brief guest appearances on the film but was not happy with the overall result.
Bowles died in 1999 in the Italian hospital in Tangier.
effect
As a child, Bowles has grappled with the hidden abysses of American society, which many of his stories and novels are about. The permanently ailing mother, with whom he had a love-hate relationship, and his puritanical-authoritarian father, whom he hated without exception, pushed him into a dream world in which he could "live out" his fantasies.
His literary work is characterized above all by an openness that was probably unique in its time, but at least shocking for the general public. Bowles' characters are often uprooted, deeply sick and self-seeking figures. As a short story writer, Paul Bowles was one of the most important authors in American literature in the second half of the 20th century.
Works
In addition to his novels and musical compositions, Bowles published fourteen volumes of short stories, three volumes of poetry, numerous translations, several travelogues and an autobiography.
music
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fiction
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Translations
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Travel reports, autobiography and letters
- 1957 - Yallah , text by Paul Bowles, photos by Peter W. Haeberlin (travel report)
- 1963 - Their Heads are Green and Their Hands Are Blue (travelogue)
- 1972 - Without stopping (autobiography)
- 1990 - Two Years Beside The Strait (autobiography)
- 1991 - Days: Tangier Journal (autobiography)
- 1993 - 17, Quai Voltaire (Autobiography of Paris, 1931, 1932)
- 1994 - Photographs - “How Could I Send a Picture into the Desert?” (Paul Bowles & Simon Bischoff)
- 1995 - In Touch - The Letters of Paul Bowles (edited by Jeffrey Miller)
Editions
- 1984 - Paul Bowles Selected Songs (edited by Peter Garland)
- 1993 - Too Far from Home (edited by Daniel Halpern) ISBN 0-88001-295-1
- 1994 - The Portable Paul and Jane Bowles (edited by Millicent Dillon)
- 1995 - Paul Bowles: Music (edited by Claudia Swan) ISBN 0-9648083-0-7
- 2000 - The Paul Bowles Reader (Peter Owen) ISBN 0-7206-1091-5
- 2001 - The Stories of Paul Bowles (Ecco) ISBN 0-06-621273-1
- 2002 - The Sheltering Sky, Let It Come Down, The Spider's House (Daniel Halpern, ed. Library of America ) ISBN 1-931082-19-7
- 2002 - Collected Stories and Later Writings (Daniel Halpern, ed. Library of America ) ISBN 1-931082-20-0
- 2010 - Travels: Collected Writings, 1950–1993 (Mark Ellingham, ed. Sort Of Books, London ) ISBN 978-0-9560038-7-4
Ethnomusicology
- Music of Morocco from the Library of Congress. Recorded by Paul Bowles in 1959 . Dust to Digital, 2016. 4 CD.
Appearances in films and interviews
- Paul Bowles in Morocco (1970), produced and directed by Gary Conklin , 57 minutes
- Paul Bowles : South Bank Show London Studios (1988), Production: ITV , Director: Melvyn Bragg , 54 minutes
- In 1990, Bernardo Bertolucci adapted The Sheltering Sky for the film Sky Over the Desert , in which Bowles made a cameo and acts as the narrator. 132 minutes.
- Things Gone and Things Still Here , 1991, directed by award-winning BBC filmmaker Clement Barclay . The film aims to decipher the world of Paul Bowles in a one-hour documentary. Chicago Film Festival winner.
- Paul Bowles The Complete Outsider , 1993, by Catherine Hiller Marnow and Regina Weinreich , 57 minutes.
- Halfmoon , 1995, four stories by Paul Bowles, Frieder Schlaich and Irenve von Alberti . First Run Features, 91 minutes (German version half moon , 90 minutes)
- Let It Come Down , 1998, Requisite Productions, Zeitgeist Films, 72 minutes. Portrait of the author in his late life Directed by Jennifer Baichwal , contains material from the last meeting of Bowles, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, which took place in New York in 1995. 72 minutes.
- Night Waltz , 2002, a film by Owsley Brown about the music of Paul Bowles, with Phillip Ramey and an interview with Jonathan Sheffer , conductor of the Eos Orchestra . 77 minutes.
Secondary literature
- Robert Briatte: Paul Bowles 2117 Tangier Socco. Editions Plon, Paris 1989.
- Robert Briatte: Paul Bowles: One Life. Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg, 1991. ISBN 3-499-12911-6
- Gena Dagel Caponi: Paul Bowles: Romantic Savage . Southern Illinois University, Carbondale 1994.
- Millicent Dillon: You Are Not I: A Portrait of Paul Bowles . University of California Press, Berkeley 1998.
- Michelle Green: The Dream at the End of the World: Paul Bowles and the Literary Renegades in Tangier . HarperCollins, New York 1991.
- Allen Hibbard: Paul Bowles: A Study of the Short Fiction . Twayne, New York 1993. ISBN 0-8057-8318-0
- Richard F. Patteson: A World Outside: The Fiction of Paul Bowles . University of Texas Press, Austin 1987.
- Jens Rosteck : Jane and Paul Bowles: Life without stopping . Goldmann, Munich 2005.
- Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno: An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles . Grove Press, New York 1989.
- Virginia Spencer Carr: Paul Bowles: A Life . Scribner, New York 2004. ISBN 0-684-19657-3
- Lawrence D. Stewart: Paul Bowles: The Illumination of North Africa . Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale 1974.
- Elke Stracke-Elbina: The Short Stories by Paul Bowles, 1939–1990 . Georg Olms Verlag, Hildesheim, Zurich and New York 1995. ISBN 3-487-09991-8 (= English and American texts and studies 8)
Web links
- The Authorized Paul Bowles Web Site (English)
- Literature by and about Paul Bowles in the catalog of the German National Library
- Paul Bowles in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- University of Delaware, Special Collections Department: Paul Bowles (English)
- Paul Bowles at Discogs (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Members: Paul Bowles. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed February 17, 2019 .
| personal data | |
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| SURNAME | Bowles, Paul |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Bowles, Paul Frederick |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American writer and composer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 30, 1910 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | New York City , New York , United States |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 18, 1999 |
| Place of death | Tangier , Morocco |