Paul Bowles

For the English soccer player, see Paul Bowles (foot- Tangier was Bowles home for the remainder of his life.
baller).
He came to symbolize American expatriates in the city.
Paul Frederic Bowles (/bolz/; December 30, 1910
Paul Bowles died in 1999 at the age of 88. His ashes
are buried near family graves in Lakemont Cemetery in
upstate New York.

1 Life
1.1 19101930: Family and education
Paul Bowles was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York
City as the only child of Rena (ne Winnewisser) and
Claude Dietz Bowles, a dentist. His childhood was materially comfortable, but his father was a cold and domineering parent, opposed to any form of play or entertainment, feared by both his son and wife. According
to family legend, he had tried to kill his newborn son by
leaving him exposed on a window-ledge during a snowstorm. The story may not be true, but Bowles believed
it was, and that it encapsulated his relationship with his
father.[1] Warmth in his childhood was provided by his
mother, who read Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan
Poe to him it was to the latter that he later attributed his
own desire to write stories, such as The Delicate Prey,
A Distant Episode, and Pages from Cold Point[2]
Bowles could read by the time he was three and within
the year was writing stories. Soon, he wrote surrealistic
poetry and music.[3] In 1922, at age eleven, he bought
his rst book of poetry, Arthur Waley's A Hundred and
Seventy Chinese Poems. At age seventeen, he had a poem,
Spire Song, accepted for publication in Transition. This
literary journal based in Paris served as a forum for leading proponents of modernism Djuna Barnes, James
Joyce, Paul luard, Gertrude Stein and others.[4] His interest in music also dated from his childhood, when his father bought a phonograph and classical records. (Bowles
was interested in jazz but such records were forbidden
by his father.) His family bought a piano, and the young
Bowles studied musical theory, singing, and piano. When
he was 15, he attended a performance of Stravinsky's The
Firebird at Carnegie Hall, which made a profound impression: Hearing The Firebird made me determined to
continue improvising on the piano when my father was
out of the house, and to notate my own music with an increasing degree of knowing that I had happened upon a
new and exciting mode of expression.[2]

Paul Bowles

November 18, 1999) was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. He became associated with
Tangier, Morocco, where he settled in 1947 and lived for
52 years to the end of his life.
Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New
York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the
University of Virginia before making several trips to Paris
in the 1930s. He studied music with Aaron Copland, and
in New York wrote music for theatrical productions, as
well as other compositions. He achieved critical and popular success with his rst novel The Sheltering Sky (1949),
set in what was known as French North Africa, which he
had visited in 1931.

In 1947 Bowles settled in Tangier, Morocco, and his wife

Jane Bowles followed in 1948. Except for winters spent in
Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon) during the early 1950s, Bowles entered the University of Virginia in 1928, where
1

his interests included T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land,

Prokoev, Duke Ellington, Gregorian chants, and the
blues. He also heard music by George Antheil and Henry
Cowell. In April 1929 he dropped out without informing his parents and sailed with a one-way ticket for Paris
and no intention of returning not, he said later, running
away, but running toward something, although I didn't
know what at the time.[3] Bowles spent the next months
working for the Paris Herald Tribune and developing a
friendship with Tristan Tzara.[5] By July he returned to
New York and took a job at Duttons Bookshop in Manhattan, where he began work on an unnished book of
ction, Without Stopping (not to be confused with his later
autobiography of the same title).
At the insistence of his parents, he returned to studies
at the University of Virginia, but left after one semester
to return to Paris with Aaron Copland, with whom he
had been studying composition in New York.[3] It was
during the autumn of 1930 in Paris that Bowles began
work on his own rst musical composition, the Sonata
for Oboe and Clarinet, which he nished the following
year. It premiered in New York at the Aeolian Hall on
Wigmore St, 16 December 1931. The entire concert
(which also included work by Copland and Virgil Thomson) was panned by New York critics.[6] (Bowles rstknown composition was completed earlier in Berlin: an
adaptation as piano music of some vocal pieces by Kurt
Schwitters.)[7]

1.2

19311946: France and New York

LIFE

literary gures of New York throughout the 1940s. Paul

Bowles also worked under Virgil Thomson as a music
critic at the New York Herald Tribune. His light opera
The Wind Remains, based on a poem by Federico Garca Lorca, was performed in 1943 with choreography
by Merce Cunningham and conducted by Leonard Bernstein. His translation of Sartre's play Huis Clos (No
Exit), directed by John Huston, won a Drama Critics
Award in 1943.
In 1945 Bowles began writing prose again, beginning with
a few short stories including "A Distant Episode". His
wife Jane, he said, was the main inuence upon his taking
up ction as an adult, when she published her rst novel
Two Serious Ladies (1943).[12]

1.3 19471956: Early years in Tangier

In 1947 Paul Bowles received a contract for a novel from
Doubleday; with the advance, he moved permanently to
Tangier. Jane joined him there the next year. Bowles
commented
I was a composer for as long as I've been a
writer. I came here because I wanted to write
a novel. I had a commission to do it. I was sick
of writing music for other people Joseph
Losey, Orson Welles, a whole lot of other people, endless.[13]
Bowles traveled alone into the Algerian Sahara to work
on the novel. He later said, I wrote in bed in hotels in
the desert.[14] He drew inspiration from personal experience, noting years later that Whatever one writes is in
a sense autobiographical, of course. Not factually so, but
poetically so.[15] He named the novel The Sheltering Sky,
from a song, Down Among the Sheltering Palms, which
he had heard every summer as a child.[16] It was rst published by John Lehmann in England in September 1949
after Doubleday rejected the manuscript.[17]

In Paris, Bowles became a part of Gertrude Stein's literary and artistic circle. On her advice he made his rst
visit to Tangier with Aaron Copland in the summer of
1931.[8] They took a house on the Mountain above Tangier Bay. Bowles later made Morocco his full-time home,
and it inspired many of his short stories.[9] From there he
returned to Berlin, where he met British writers Stephen
Spender and Christopher Isherwood. (Isherwood was reportedly so taken with him that he named a character Bowles commented,
Sally Bowles in his novel after him.) The next year,
I sent it out to Doubleday and they refused
Bowles returned to North Africa, traveling throughout
it. They said We asked for a novel. They
other parts of Morocco, the Sahara, Algeria, and Tunisia.
didn't consider it a novel. I had to give back
In 1937 he returned to New York. Over the next decade
my advance. My agent told me later they called
he established a solid reputation as a composer, collabothe editor on the carpet for having refused the
rating with Orson Welles, Tennessee Williams and othbook only after they saw that it was selling
ers on music for stage productions, as well as orchestral
fast. It only had to do with sales. They didn't
pieces.
bother to read it.[18]
In 1938 he married Jane Auer, an author and playwright. It was an unconventional marriage: their intimate relationships were with people of their own sex, but
they maintained close personal ties with each other.[10]
Bowles has frequently been featured in anthologies as a
gay writer, but during his life, he always regarded such
typecasting as both absurd and irrelevant.[11] After a brief
sojourn in France, the couple were prominent among the

A belated rst American edition by New Directions Publishing appeared the following month.
The plot follows three Americans: Port, his wife Kit and
their friend, Tunner, as they journey through the Algerian desert, culminating in the death of Port and the descent into madness of Kit. The reviewer for Time magazine commented that the ends visited upon the two main

1.4

19571973: Moroccan music and translation

characters seem appropriate but by no means tragic,

but that Bowles scores cleanly with his minor characters:
Arab pimps and prostitutes, French ocers in garrison
towns, [and] a stupidly tiresome pair of touristsmother
& son.[19] Playwright Tennessee Williams, in The New
York Times, commented that the book was like a summer
thunderstorm, pulsing with interior ashes of re.[20]
The book quickly rose to the New York Times best-seller
list, going through three printings in two months.[21]

3
nialism. The UK edition (Macdonald) was published in
January 1957.
While Bowles was concentrating on his career as a writer,
he composed incidental music for nine plays presented
by the American School of Tangier. The Bowles couple
became xtures of the American and European expatriate scene in Tangier. Visitors included Truman Capote,
Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal. The Beat writers Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Gregory
Corso followed in the mid-1950s and early 1960s. In
1951, Bowles was introduced to the Master Musicians
of Jajouka, having rst heard the musicians when he
and Brion Gysin attended a festival or moussem at Sidi
Kacem. Bowles described his continued association with
the Master Musicians of Jajouka and their hereditary
leader Bachir Attar in his book, Days: A Tangier Journal.

In 1950 Bowles published his rst collection of short

stories. Titled A Little Stone (John Lehmann, London,
August 1950), it omitted two of Bowles most famous
short stories, "Pages From Cold Point" and "The Delicate
Prey. British critic Cyril Connolly and writer Somerset
Maugham had advised him that if they were included
in the collection, distribution and/or censorship diculties might ensue.[21]:22 The American edition by Random
House, The Delicate Prey and Other Stories (November In 1952, Bowles bought the tiny island of Taprobane, o
1950) did include these two stories.
the coast of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). There he wrote
In an interview 30 years later, Bowles responded to an ob- much of his novel The Spiders House, returning to Tangservation that almost all of the characters in The Delicate ier in the warmer months. He returned to Sri Lanka most
Prey were victimized by either physical or psychological winters.
violence.[22] He said:
Yes, I suppose. The violence served a
therapeutic purpose. Its unsettling to think
that at any moment life can are up into senseless violence. But it can and does, and people
need to be ready for it. What you make for
others is rst of all what you make for yourself. If Im persuaded that our life is predicated upon violence, that the entire structure
of what we call civilization, the scaolding that
weve built up over the millennia, can collapse
at any moment, then whatever I write is going to be aected by that assumption. The
process of life presupposes violence, in the
plant world the same as the animal world. But
among the animals only man can conceptualize violence. Only man can enjoy the idea of
destruction.[23]

1.4 19571973:
translation

Moroccan music and

In 1957 Jane Bowles suered a mild stroke, which

marked the beginning of a long and painful decline in
her health. Her condition preoccupied Paul Bowles until Janes death in 1973.

During the late 1950s, Morocco achieved independence.

With a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and sponsorship from the US Library of Congress, Bowles spent
the months of August to September 1959 traveling
throughout Morocco with Christopher Wanklyn and Mohammed Larbi recording traditional Moroccan music.[25]
From 19591961, Bowles recorded a wide variety of music from the dierent ethnic groups in Morocco, including the Sephardic Jewish communities of Meknes and
Essaouira.[26] The majority of these recordings are being
transferred to the digital medium at George Blood Audio
He set his second novel, Let It Come Down (John and Video in Philadelphia.
Lehmann, London, February 1952), in North Africa,
specically Tangier. It explored the disintegration of an During these years, Bowles also worked at transAmerican (Nelson Dyar), who was unprepared for the en- lating Moroccan authors and story-tellers, including
counter with an alien culture. The rst American edition Mohamed Choukri, Ahmed Yacoubi, Larbi Layachi (unby Random House was published later that same month. der the pseudonym Driss ben Hamed Charhadi), and
Mohammed Mrabet.
Bowles set his third novel, The Spiders House, (Random
House, New York, November 1955) in Fez (immediately In the autumn of 1968, invited by friend Oliver Evans,
prior to Moroccos gaining independence and sovereignty Bowles was a visiting scholar for one semester at the Enin 1956). In it he charted the relationships among three glish Department of the San Fernando Valley State Colexpatriates and a young Moroccan: John Stenham, Alain lege, (now California State University, Northridge. He
Narrative Writing and the Modern EuMoss, Lee Veyron, and Amar.[24] Reviewers noted that taught Advanced
[27]
ropean
Novel.
the novel marked a departure from Bowles earlier ction
in that it introduced a contemporary political theme, the In 1970 Bowles and Daniel Halpern started the literary
conict between Moroccan nationalism and French colo- magazine, Antaeus, based in Tangier. It featured many

MUSIC

new authors, such as Lee Prosser, as well as more established authors such as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Daniel
Halpern and others. Bowles work was also published, including his story Afternoon with Antaeus, some fragments of an unnished novel by his wife Jane Bowles,
along with excerpts from The Summer House. Antaeus
was published until 1994.

leading the Eos Orchestra.[33] A related symposium on

Bowles work and interview were held at the New School
for Social Research.

In the summers of 1980 and 1982, Paul Bowles conducted writing workshops in Morocco at the American
School of Tangier (under the auspices of the School of
Visual Arts in New York). These were considered successful. Among several students who have become successful authors are Rodrigo Rey Rosa,[28] the 2004 Winner of the Miguel ngel Asturias National Prize in Literature, and Mark Terrill.[29] In addition, Bowles designated Rey Rosa as the literary heir of his and Jane Bowles
estates.[30]

Italian Hospital in Tangier at the age of 88. He had been

ill for some time with respiratory problems. His ashes
were buried in Lakemont, New York, next to the graves
of his parents and grandparents.

Visitors in 1998 reported that Bowles wit and intellect

remained as sharp as ever. He continued to welcome visitors to his apartment in Tangier but, on the advice of
his doctors and friends, limited interviews. One of the
last was an interview with Stephen Morison, Jr., a friend
teaching at the American School of Tangier at the time.
1.5 19741999: Later years
It was featured in the July/August 1999 issue of Poets &
Writers magazine. On June 6, 1999, Irene Herrmann, the
After the death of Jane Bowles on 4 May 1973 in Mlaga, executrix of the Paul Bowles Music Estate, interviewed
Spain, Bowles continued to live in Tangier. He wrote him to focus on his musical career; this was published in
regularly and received many visitors to his modest apart- September 2003.[34]
ment.
Bowles died of heart failure on November 18, 1999 at the

In 1985 he published his translation of a short story, The

Circular Ruins, by Jorge Luis Borges. It was collected
in a book of sixteen stories, all translated by Bowles,
called She Woke Me Up So I Killed Her. This Borges
story had previously been published in translations by
the three main Borges translators: Anthony Kerrigan,
Anthony Bonner and James E. Irby. Critics have noted
the dierences amongst these four translations. Bowles
version is in his typical prose style; it is readily distinguishable from the other three, which have a more conservative idiomatic form of translation.
In 1988, when Bowles was asked in an interview what his
social life was like, he replied, I don't know what a social
life is... My social life is restricted to those who serve
me and give me meals, and those who want to interview
me. When asked in the same interview how he would
summarize his achievement, he said, I've written some
books and some music. Thats what I've achieved.[31]
Bowles had a cameo appearance at the beginning and end
of the lm version of The Sheltering Sky (1990), directed
by Bernardo Bertolucci. Bowles music was overlooked
and mostly forgotten for more than a generation, but in
the 1990s, a new generation of American musicians and
singers became interested in his work again. Art song
enthusiasts savor what are described as charming, witty
pieces. [32] In 1994, Bowles was visited and interviewed
by writer Paul Theroux, who featured him in his last chapter of his travel book, The Pillars of Hercules.

2 Paul Bowles and Tangier

Paul Bowles lived for 52 of his 88 years in Tangier. He
became strongly identied with the city and symbolized
American expatriates. Obituary writers always linked his
life to his residency there.
When Bowles had rst visited Tangier with Aaron Copland in 1931, they were both outsiders to what they perceived as an exotic place of dierent customs. They were
not bound by any local rules, which varied among the
many ethnic groups. Tangier was a Moroccan and international city, a longtime trading center, with a population
made up of Berber, Arab, Spanish, French and other Europeans, speaking Spanish, French, Berber and Arabic,
and professing a variety of religions. Politically it was
under the control of a consortium of foreign powers, including the United States. Paul Bowles was entranced by
the citys culture. By his return in 1947 the city had of
course changed, but he still found it full of strangeness
and wonder. In 1955 anti-European riots erupted as the
people sought independence. In 1956 the city was returned to full Moroccan control.

3 Music

Bowles reputation as a composer was ultimately overshadowed by his writing. He studied with Aaron Copland. He wrote chamber music and incidental music for
the stage. The score of his 1955 opera Yerma is espeIn 1995, Paul Bowles made his nal return to New York, cially memorable and gets much radio-play. He collected
invited to a Paul Bowles Festival at Lincoln Center cel- Moroccan folk music. His compositions are being reebrating his music; it was performed by Jonathan Sheer released.

Bowles recording of Moroccan 6 Achievement and legacy

music
Paul Bowles is considered one of the artists to have shaped
20th-century literature and music.[38] In his Introduction to Bowles Collected Stories (1979,) Gore Vidal
ranked the short stories as among the best ever written
by an American, writing: the oor to this ramshackle
civilization that we have built cannot bear much longer
our weight. It was Bowless genius to suggest the horrors
which lie beneath that oor, as fragile, in its way, as the
sky that shelters us from a devouring vastness.[39]

He was a pioneer in the eld of North African ethnomusicology, making eld recordings from 1959 to 1961
of traditional Moroccan music for the US Library of
Congress.[35] The collection includes dance music, secular music, music for Ramadan and other festivals, and
music for animistic rituals. Bowles realised that modern
culture would inevitably change and inuence the practice of traditional music, and he wanted to preserve some
Critics have described his music, in contrast, as full of
of it.
light as the ction [is] of dark...almost as if the composer
Bowles commented on the political aspects of the practice
were a totally dierent person from the writer.[40] Durof traditional music:
ing the early 1930s, Bowles studied composition (intermittently) with Aaron Copland; his music from this period is reminiscent of Satie and Poulenc. Returning to
Instrumentalists and singers have come
New York in the mid-30s, Bowles became one of the preinto being in lieu of chroniclers and poets,
eminent composers of American theater music, producand even during the most recent chapter in the
ing works for William Saroyan, Tennessee Williams, and
countrys evolution the war for independence
others,[41] show[ing] exceptional skill and imagination in
and the setting up of the present regime each
capturing the mood, emotion, and ambience of each play
phase of the struggle has been celebrated in
to which he was assigned. Bowles said that such incidensong.[36]
tal music allowed him to present climaxless music, hypnotic music in one of the exact senses of the word, in that
it makes its eect without the spectator being made aware
The total collection of this recorded music is known as of it. At the same time he continued to write concert
The Paul Bowles Collection; it is archived in the US music, assimilating some of the melodic, rhythmic, and
Library of Congress, Reference No. 72-750123. The other stylistic elements of African, Mexican, and Central
Archival Manuscript Material (Collection) contains 97 x American music.[42]
2 track 7 reel-to-reel tapes, containing approximately
sixty hours of traditional folk, art and popular music,
one two box of manuscripts, 18 photographs, and a map,
In 1991 Paul Bowles was awarded the annual Rea
along with the 2 LP recordings called 'Music of Morocco'
Award for the Short Story. The jury gave the fol(AFS L63-64).[37]
lowing citation: Paul Bowles is a storyteller of the
utmost purity and integrity. He writes of a world
before God became man; a world in which men
and women in extremis are seen as components in
a larger, more elemental drama. His prose is crys5 Bowles translation of Moroccan
talline and his voice unique. Among living Amerauthors and others
ican masters of the short story, Paul Bowles is sui
generis.[43]
In the 1960s Bowles began translating and collecting
stories from the oral tradition of native Moroccan sto The Library of America published Bowles works
rytellers. His most noteworthy collaborators included
in 2002. (It prepares scholarly editions of AmeriMohammed Mrabet, Driss Ben Hamed Charhadi (Larbi
can literary classics and keeps them permanently in
Layachi), Mohamed Choukri, Abdeslam Boulaich, and
print.)
Ahmed Yacoubi.
He also translated writers whose original work was written in Spanish, Portuguese and French: Rodrigo Rey
Rosa, Jorge Luis Borges, Jean-Paul Sartre, Isabelle Eberhardt, Guy Frison-Roche, Andr Pieyre de Mandiargues, Ramon Gomez de la Serna, Giorgio de Chirico,
Si Lakhdar, E. Laoust, Ramon Beteta, Gabino Chan,
Bertrand Flornoy, Jean Ferry, Denise Moran, Paul Colinet, Paul Magritte, Popul Buj, Francis Ponge, Bluet
d'Acheres and Ramon Sender.

7 Notable works
In addition to his chamber and stage compositions,
Bowles published fourteen short story collections, several
novels, three volumes of poetry, numerous translations,
numerous travel articles, and an autobiography.

8 NOTES

7.1

Music

7.2

Fiction

7.3

Translations

7.4

Travel, autobiography and letters

1957 Yallah, text by Paul Bowles, photos by Peter

W. Haeberlin (travel)
1963 Their Heads are Green and Their Hands Are
Blue (travel)
1972 Without stopping (autobiography)
1990 Two Years Beside The Strait (autobiography)

Let It Come Down 1998, Requisite Productions,

Zeitgeist Films, pub. 72 minutes, not rated.
this lm is likely the denitive portrait of the author late in life. Directed by Jennifer Baichwal, includes footage of the nal meeting between Bowles,
William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg which took
place in 1995 in New York. 72 minutes
Night Waltz 2002, Owsley Brown Film of the music of Paul Bowles, with Phillip Ramey and an Interview with Jonathan Sheer, conductor of the Eos
Orchestra. 77 minutes

8 Notes

1991 Days: Tangier Journal (autobiography)

[1] Carr, Virginia Spencer. Paul Bowles: A Life. Evanston:

Northwestern UP, 2009, p. 1.

1993 17, Quai Voltaire (autobiography of Paris,

1931,1932)

[2] Virginian Spencer Carr, Paul Bowles: An Introduction,

University of Delaware Special Collections

1994 Photographs How Could I Send a Picture

into the Desert?" (Paul Bowles & Simon Bischo)

[3] Obituary for Paul Bowles, New York Times, 19 November 1999

1995 In Touch The Letters of Paul Bowles (edited

by Jerey Miller)

[4] Allen Hibbard, Paul Bowles: A Biographical Essay,

Paul Bowles website

7.5

Editions

[5] Seidner, David. Paul Bowles, BOMB Magazine Fall,

1982. Retrieved on [March 6, 2013]
[6] Paul Bowles Music, Edited by Claudia Swan, p.43

7.6

Film appearances and interviews

Paul Bowles in Morocco (1970), produced and directed by Gary Conklin 57 minutes
Paul Bowles": South Bank Show London Studios
(1988), produced by ITV, directed by Melvyn Bragg,
54 minutes
In 1990 Bernardo Bertolucci adapted The Sheltering
Sky into a lm in which Bowles has a cameo role and
provides partial narration. 132 minutes

[7] Bowles letter of 9 June 1931 to Edouard Roditi, Berlin,

In Touch: The Letters of Paul Bowles
[8] Paul Bowles, University of Delaware Library: Special
Collections Department
[9] Book Factory, Life and Works
[10] Holland, Patrick (2002). Bowles, Paul, glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and
Queer Culture. Retrieved June 12, 2008.
[11] Philip Ramey, A Talk With Paul Bowles, Paul Bowles
website

Things Gone and Things Still Here 1991, Directed

by award winning BBC Filmmaker Clement Bar- [12] Carr.
clay. This lm tries to decode the world of Paul
Bowles in a one-hour documentary. Chicago Film [13] Warnow, Catherine; Weinreich, Regina (1993) [1988],
Paul Bowles: The Complete Outsider, in Caponi, Gena
festival winner.
Paul Bowles The Complete Outsider 1993, by
Catherine Hiller Marnow and Regina Weinreich 57
minutes.
Halfmoon 1995, three stories by Paul Bowles,
Frieder Schlaich and Irenve von Alberti. First Run
Features, 91 minutes
Halbmond1995, German version of Halfmoon,
Frieder Schlaich and Irenve von Alberti. First Run
Features, 90 minutes[44]

Dagel, Conversations with Paul Bowles (interview), pp.

2145.
[14] McInerney, Jay (September 1985), Paul Bowles in Exile,
Vanity Fair
[15] Seidner. , BOMB Magazine
[16] Bowles, Paul, Without Stopping: An Autobiography, p.
275.
[17] Bowles, Paul, Without Stopping: An Autobiography, p.
292.

[18] McInerney, Jay (1993) [1985], Paul Bowles in Exile,

in Caponi, Gena Dagel, Conversations with Paul Bowles
(interview), p. 188.

9 References/further reading
9.1 Biographies and memoirs

[19] Time, December 1949.

[20] The New York Times, December 4, 1949.
[21] Miller, Jerey, Paul Bowles: A Descriptive Bibliography.
[22] Paul Bowles, The Paris Review Interviews, p. 190.
[23] Paul Bowles: The Art of Fiction, The Paris Review 81
(67), Fall 1981.
[24] dustwrapper info, The Spiders House (rst ed.), New
York, United States: Random House, November 1955.
[25] The Rif to Music, Their Heads are Green and Their
Hands are Blue (Random House, 1963), pp. 97 to 141

Paul Bowles: 2117 Tanger Socco, Robert Briatte

(1989), ISBN 2-259-02007-0 The rst biography of
Paul Bowles (in French)
An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles,
Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno (1989)
You Are Not I: A Portrait of Paul Bowles, Millicent
Dillon (1998)
Paul Bowles: A Life, Virginia Spencer Carr (2004),
ISBN 0-684-19657-3

[27] Without Stopping (Putnam, 1972): p. 368

Isherwood, Bowles, Vedanta, Wicca, and Me, Lee

Prosser (2001), ISBN 0-595-20284-5

[28] Jerey Gray, Placing the Placeless: A Conversation with

Rodrigo Rey Rosa, North Carolina State University

Paul Bowles, Magic and Morocco, Allan Hibbard

(2004), ISBN 978-0-932274-61-8

[29] Pinstripe Fedora, Issue #3

February House, Sherill Tippins (2005), ISBN 0618-41911-X

[26]

[30]
[31] Paul Bowles: The Complete Outsider, Interview with
Catherine Warnow and Regina Weinreich/ 1988, in Conversations with Paul Bowles, ed. Gena Dagel Caponi,
1993, p. 217
[32] Art Song of Williamsburg
[33] Jonathan Sheer & the Eos Orchestra
[34] The Last Interview with Paul Bowles, University of California Press
[35] The US Library of Congress Recordings were inaugurated
to act as a repository for ethnographic documentation appealing to folklorists and cultural documentarians working
in this country and in foreign lands as well. Folklife Center
News, Spring 2003, page 5
[36] [Page 1 of a 9-page booklet contained within the double
LP Music of Morocco, AFS L63-64)]
[37] Collections & Research Services: The Archive of Folk
Culture
[38] Biographies: Paul Bowles, University of California,
Berkeley Library,
[39] Gore Vidal, Introduction to The Collected Stories, 1979,
reprinted 1997.
[40] Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno, An Invisible Spectator: A
Biography of Paul Bowles, (1999)

Paul Bowles by his Friends, Gary Pulsifer (1992),

ISBN 0-7206-0866-X
Second Son: an autobiography, David Herbert
(1972), ISBN 0-7206-0272-6
The Sheltering Sky, (movie edition) Bertolucci and
Bowles (1990), ISBN 0-356-19579-1
Here to Learn, Mark Terrill (2002), ISBN 1891408-29-1
Yesterdays Perfume,Cherie Nutting with Paul
Bowles (2000), ISBN 0-609-60573-9
Tangier Love Story, Jane Bowles, Paul Bowles and
Me, Carol Adman (2014), ASIN B00NMM642G

9.2 Literary criticism of Paul Bowles

Paul Bowles: Romantic Savage, Gena Dagel Caponi
(1994), ISBN 0-8093-1923-3
Paul Bowles: The Inner Geography, Wayne Pounds
(1985), ISBN 0-8204-0192-7

[41] University of Delaware Library: Paul Bowles Collection

Paul Bowles: The Illumination of North Africa,

Lawrence D. Stewart (1974), ISBN 0-8093-0651-4

[42] Paul Bowles, Biographical Dictionary of American

Composers.

Paul Bowles: Twaynes Authors Series, Gena Dagel

Caponi (1998), ISBN 0-8057-4560-2

[43] Rea Award for the Short Story

The Fiction of Paul Bowles: The Soul is the Weariest

Part of the Body, Hans Bertens (1979), ISBN 906203-992-8

[44] Paul Bowles - Halbm"ond. IMDB. Retrieved 19 December 2015.

10

9.3

EXTERNAL LINKS

Published interviews with Paul Bowles 10.3 Interviews with Paul Bowles

Conversations with Paul Bowles, Gena Dagel Caponi More interviews on the ocial Paul Bowles website
(1993), ISBN 0-87805-650-5
Jerey Bailey (Fall 1981). Paul Bowles, The Art of
Desultory Correspondence, Florian Vetsch (1997),
Fiction No. 67. Paris Review.
ISBN 3-9520497-7-8
A Distant Episode: In Tangier with Paul Bowles.
Poets & Writers Magazine. July/August 1999: 36
39.
9.4 Catalog and archive editions on Paul

Bowles
Paul Bowles: A Descriptive Bibliography, Jerey
Miller (1986), ISBN 0-87685-610-5
Paul Bowles on Music, edited by Timothy Mangan
and Irene Herrmann (2003), ISBN 0-520-23655-6

9.5

Other References

The Dream at the End of the World: Paul Bowles and

the Literary Renegades in Tangier, Michelle Green
(1991) ISBN 0-06-016571-5
Paul Bowles: Le Reclus de Tanger, Mohamed
Choukri (1997)
Stars in the Firmament: Tangier Characters 1660
1960, David Woolman (1998) ISBN 1-57889-0683
The Tangier Diaries, Johns Hopkins (1998) ISBN
93-227-4501-0

Clips of interviews with Bowles from the documentary Paul Bowles in Morocco
Paul Bowles, A Conversation with Bruce Due
(Bruce Due, May 1992)
NewMusicBox: "Paul Bowles meets with Ken Smith
and Frank J. Oteri" (December 1, 1999). Paul
Bowles in conversation with Frank J. Oteri on January 1, 1998.
Stranger on a Strange Shore (Gaither Stewart, Critique magazine, October 2000).
BOMB Magazine interview with Paul Bowles by
David Seidner (Fall, 1982)

10.4 Assessments
Paul Bowles Tangier and Fez, Mohamed Elkouche
(from Paul Bowles Tangier and Fez: The Agony of
Transition from Colonial to Post-colonial Times, in
Urban Generations: Post-Colonial Cities, Mohamed
V University, Rabat, 2005.

10.5 Reviews and obituaries

10

External links

10.1

Ocial website

paulbowles.org: The Authorized Paul Bowles Web

Site

10.2

Writing and music

Paul Bowles Collection at the Harry Ransom Center

at the University of Texas at Austin
Paul Bowles Online Exhibit, University of Delaware
Paul Bowles audio and music web published on the
Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine project archive at
Ubuweb
Music of Morocco: The Paul Bowles Recordings for
the American Folklife Collection

Review of The Sheltering Sky, TIME magazine,

5 December, 1945
Review of Let It Come Down, Critique magazine.
Review of The Spiders House, New York Times,
1955
Review of Up Above the World, New York Times,
1966
New York Times obituary, 19 November 1999
Manchester Guardian obituary, 19 November 1999
BBC World obituary, 19 November 1999

11
11.1

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

Text

Paul Bowles Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bowles?oldid=704582488 Contributors: Leandrod, Infrogmation, Pit~enwiki,

Lexor, Jahsonic, Lquilter, Deisenbe, Jebdogdaddy, Hyacinth, VeryVerily, Ed g2s, Bcorr, Francs2000, Twang, Bearcat, UtherSRG, JackofOz, Widsith, Dbenbenn, BKLisenbee, Vfp15, Gamaliel, Guanaco, Mboverload, Khalid hassani, Gyrofrog, Quite, HamYoyo, D6, Rich
Farmbrough, Zenohockey, Philip Cross, Hgsippe Cormier, Emerman, Alai, Larry Dunn, Cbdorsett, Jburnette, Graham87, MWaite,
Noirish, Rjwilmsi, Koavf, Billycuts, Lockley, Peripatetic, Tarc, Husky, FayssalF, FlaBot, Oliver Chettle, Avalyn, Gdrbot, BarbD, Ebayjay,
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135

11.2

Images

File:Paul_Bowles.jpg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/de/Paul_Bowles.jpg License: Fair use Contributors:

[1] Original artist: ?
File:Wikiquote-logo.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Wikiquote-logo.svg License: Public domain
Contributors: ? Original artist: ?

11.3

Content license

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0