ISBN 7206 1254 3
Hardback
Illustrated
216mm x 138mm
432pp
Non-fiction/Essays/Travel
£18.95
Available

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Paul Bowles: A Life

Virginia Spencer Carr

Virginia Spencer Carr travelled to Morocco in 1989 to interview the American writer Paul Bowles for a biography of Tennessee Williams. When she asked Bowles, one of the most private of artists, to sign a copy of a recently published biography of him (Invisible Specator), the author exclaimed, ‘Does this book have anything to do with me?’ Later Gore Vidal suggested that Spencer Carr postpone her work in order to write a life of Paul Bowles instead.

Following an offer of ‘no strings attached’ cooperation from Bowles and a new two-book contract from her US publisher, she began to write.

Twelve years and thirteen trips to Morocco later, Carr has delivered a biography that she was able to read aloud to Bowles shortly before his death. Gathering a wealth of information about Bowles’s youth, his writing, his music, his marriage with Jane Bowles and his sexual relationships, this compelling and erudite biography is the definitive account of an extraordinary life.

Paul Bowles was born in 1910. He grew up in New York and at a young age embarked upon an artistic journey all over the world. He studied music with composer Aaron Copland, befriended a generation of artists including Gertrude Stein, Allen Ginsberg and W.H. Auden, and married the writer Jane Auer (later known as Jane Bowles). He composed music for plays and films, wrote poetry, short stories and novels including The Sheltering Sky. He captured the imaginations of American counter-culturalists when he took up residence in Morocco where he remained until his death in 1999. His writings are today recognized as some of the most original and powerful of the twentieth century.

For more information about Paul Bowles please visit the official Paul Bowles Website.

‘It was Bowles's 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky, a story of drifting souls and lost identities, that attracted a new generation of American rebels to the shores of North Africa . . . What is engaging about Virginia Spencer Carr’s biography however is how she portrays the procession of his lovers - Aaron Copland, Tennessee Williams, Virgil Thompson, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal - and captures the ebb and flow of relationships. She is good on his
strange, sad relationship with [Jane] Auer, and on how he saw the connection between music and fiction.’ - Independent

‘Good to have a memento, something that reminds us of this enigmatic, dignified figure.’ - Evening Standard

'Fleshing out (as it were) Bowles's private life is a useful contribution, and Carr's book has other good things in it. Her research was prodigious, her reading of Bowles's personality seems acute and she quotes him to good effect.' - The Washington Post

'With its courtly air of decadence and a cast that includes W.H. Auden, William Burroughs and Truman Capote, Spencer Carr's biography reads like a memento of a vanished era of literary bohemianism' - Financial Times

'...a writer of honed, even harsh, originality...The proto-hippy who thought, "if it's the Third World it must be wonderful" matures into someone who learns a lot about North African culture and can see what is awful as well as what is beautiful there...' - Daily Telgraph

'His willpower was as formidable as his talents ...This carefully constructed persona- charming, graceful, stoical, impassive- concealed some red-hot magma beneath its tranquil crust.' - The Spectator

'Paul Bowles collaborated with Virginia Spencer Carr on this biography in the final years of his life...she has succeeded in producing a thoroughly readable and consistently interesting account of his twin careers as composer and writer. The chapters devoted to his unusual childhood and youth are especially rich. His father, Claude, was a dentist who displayed an additional talent for paternal sadism, while his mother, Rena, was fond of the occasional, cruel practical joke. It’s a miracle he became reconciled to them in middle age. Carr covers his marriage to Jane Auer and his friendships with Aaron Copland, Gertrude Stein and Cocteau, among other luminaries.' - Sunday Times

Praise for the author’s previous work:

The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers
‘Sensitive, balanced, authoritative . . . A work of prodigious research and unblinking honesty.' - New York Times
‘Carr's biography is full, sympathetic, and frank. She knows Carson McCullers's life and work inside out.’ - Newsweek
‘Admirable . . . Offers the best picture we are likely to get of an almost incomprehensibly neurotic personality.’ - New Yorker

Doss Passos: A Life
‘Fascinating. It gives us a clearer sense than ever before of what a bizarre personal life lay behind his bitter views of public life . . . Thanks to Carr's stylishly-written, fact-crammed biography, it is now possible to put together a more plausible explanation of Dos Passos's political odyssey.’ - New York Times Book Review
‘The virtues of this biography result largely from Carr's carefully establishing the facts of Dos Passos's visible progress through the world . . . The figure who emerges is thoroughly human and is a sensible and likable and even admirable person.’ - Washington Post

VIRGINIA SPENCER CARR holds the Chair in English at Georgia State University. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in Atlanta USA.