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Paul Bowles: A Life
A revealing portrait of the author of The Sheltering Sky describes his childhood precocity; journeys throughout the world; relationships with such figures as Aaron Copland, Gertrude Stein, and Truman Capote; marriage to lesbian writer Jane Auer; voluntary exile in Morocco; drug addiction; political beliefs; and more. 25,000 first printing.
432 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
About the author
Virginia Spencer Carr
14 books6 followersVirginia Spencer Carr (July 21, 1929 – April 10, 2012) was an award-winning biographer of Carson McCullers, John Dos Passos and Paul Bowles.
Carr was also a college professor for more than 25 years at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia, and Georgia State University in Atlanta.
Carr was also a college professor for more than 25 years at Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia, and Georgia State University in Atlanta.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 12, 2024
it is intersting but do i know Bowles the writer better? a bit. Do i really get to know the person? mostly not.it remains an engima and that is the fault of a biographer. maybe he should remind a mystery. the best part of the book is the last few chapters. Bowles old, sick, lonley but suddenly very human. mostly because all the dirtty sex ( i am trying not to enlarge), the too much gossip disappeared. still one of the great writers and one of the few i go back to read their stories.
June 24, 2020
If you read this book you will learn about Paul Bowles. You will learn what he composed, wrote, reviewed and translated. You will learn whom he met and where he traveled. Unfortunately, with a few exceptions the book seems to be a series of facts. The exceptions are the book’s strong beginning, which is the description of Bowles’s childhood and the book’s end with a description of his death. The middle is like an annotated check list of his works, travel and acquaintances.
Bowles’s father is cruel with and without violence. Every utterance was a put down. He was rigid with rules like requiring Bowles chew his food 40 times before swallowing. Bowles was sometimes forced to spit food out to prove the chewing. His mother seems to be coping too. Fortunately there were relatives who provided outdoor summers in rural upstate New York. Cass shows his emotional life as a child and teen. He would not let anyone know how he felt. He would keep the pain and humiliation hidden.
Bowles says that he is passive and lets the world come to him. As Cass presents it, he meets this noted composer and then haplessly meets a published author. With an entre, he meets a playwright. Most young artists would yearn for such a network. It presumably results in work. You see him writing music for plays by Tennessee Williams and Arthur Koestler, reviewing for the New York Herold, translating for Jean Paul Sartre, (Bowles claims to have given “No Exit” its title), refusing an invitation to Yaddo and a getting a seemingly effortless publication of his first novel.
I don't buy that these are as serendipitous as Bowles (and Cass) would have us think. There are plenty of examples of his initiative. Through a friend he introduced himself to Aaron Copland, took lessons and seemed to push Copeland for a role in his musical development. He managed an introduction to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and used it. While a small piece of the story, p.100 has a hint at how this might work: he “saw no reason to finance the trip himself, he presented himself as a personal travel guide to a Wall Street stockbroker who wanted to spend several weeks Spain.” This is not what an observing bystander does.
Gig after gig is mentioned in passing with no detail. One example is Bowles’s receipt of a grant to record North African indigenous music. There has to be more from this experience than a note that there was trip to Washington for training, mention of two other team members and equipment problems in the field. What of the music? Was the study significant? Where is it today?
Jane Bowles is similarly described through strings of trips, writings, lovers and social engagements. The part on her death is typical of the book’s narrative style. You know of her illness and how she lost the will to live. Then she dies. The only info on this is an obituary and mention unmarked grave. You wonder who was there and much else, but why the unmarked grave? (You know she converted to Catholicism to be buried in the Spanish convent where she received medical care). Years later, as Bowles is dying he notes he chose the unmarked grave for her. There is no interpretation as to how or why.
Similarly, Bowles says he wants to be buried (not in a pet cemetery but) with his parents which gets you wondering since his father certainly earned his hate. Later you get the fuller picture when he is buried in a family plot in Glenora, NY with the aunts and uncles that gave him the best times of his childhood, as well as his parents. The "sort of tying up of the loose ends" of both Bowles's burials is characteristic of the unevenness of the book.
The author appears a few times at the end in the third person. The index worked. The pictures seem to be what is on hand. There is no good picture of Jane, none at all of Youcobi or others who feature in the book.
For those interested in Bowles, I recommend you look for another biography. I stayed with this due to the strong start and being unable to get to the library or a bookstore due to the virus. (Still resisting ebooks).
Bowles’s father is cruel with and without violence. Every utterance was a put down. He was rigid with rules like requiring Bowles chew his food 40 times before swallowing. Bowles was sometimes forced to spit food out to prove the chewing. His mother seems to be coping too. Fortunately there were relatives who provided outdoor summers in rural upstate New York. Cass shows his emotional life as a child and teen. He would not let anyone know how he felt. He would keep the pain and humiliation hidden.
Bowles says that he is passive and lets the world come to him. As Cass presents it, he meets this noted composer and then haplessly meets a published author. With an entre, he meets a playwright. Most young artists would yearn for such a network. It presumably results in work. You see him writing music for plays by Tennessee Williams and Arthur Koestler, reviewing for the New York Herold, translating for Jean Paul Sartre, (Bowles claims to have given “No Exit” its title), refusing an invitation to Yaddo and a getting a seemingly effortless publication of his first novel.
I don't buy that these are as serendipitous as Bowles (and Cass) would have us think. There are plenty of examples of his initiative. Through a friend he introduced himself to Aaron Copland, took lessons and seemed to push Copeland for a role in his musical development. He managed an introduction to Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and used it. While a small piece of the story, p.100 has a hint at how this might work: he “saw no reason to finance the trip himself, he presented himself as a personal travel guide to a Wall Street stockbroker who wanted to spend several weeks Spain.” This is not what an observing bystander does.
Gig after gig is mentioned in passing with no detail. One example is Bowles’s receipt of a grant to record North African indigenous music. There has to be more from this experience than a note that there was trip to Washington for training, mention of two other team members and equipment problems in the field. What of the music? Was the study significant? Where is it today?
Jane Bowles is similarly described through strings of trips, writings, lovers and social engagements. The part on her death is typical of the book’s narrative style. You know of her illness and how she lost the will to live. Then she dies. The only info on this is an obituary and mention unmarked grave. You wonder who was there and much else, but why the unmarked grave? (You know she converted to Catholicism to be buried in the Spanish convent where she received medical care). Years later, as Bowles is dying he notes he chose the unmarked grave for her. There is no interpretation as to how or why.
Similarly, Bowles says he wants to be buried (not in a pet cemetery but) with his parents which gets you wondering since his father certainly earned his hate. Later you get the fuller picture when he is buried in a family plot in Glenora, NY with the aunts and uncles that gave him the best times of his childhood, as well as his parents. The "sort of tying up of the loose ends" of both Bowles's burials is characteristic of the unevenness of the book.
The author appears a few times at the end in the third person. The index worked. The pictures seem to be what is on hand. There is no good picture of Jane, none at all of Youcobi or others who feature in the book.
For those interested in Bowles, I recommend you look for another biography. I stayed with this due to the strong start and being unable to get to the library or a bookstore due to the virus. (Still resisting ebooks).
March 3, 2025
Given VSC's previous book's I expected a little more. Her life of Carson McCluller's was full of rich details. This book isn't. "A Life" has a few interesting tid-bits but if you'd read Bowles' autobiography and his letters, this bio doesn't really add much. The real disappointment is the lack of literary analysis of the Bowles' three main novels: Spider House, Let it come down, and the sheltering skey. VSC probably gives those 3 novels 20 pages.
As for Bowles: Everyone seems to have respected Bowles and liked him and he worked or knew almost every famous literary/musical person in NYC and later Paris. Being a communist (Bowles callls himself a "Stalinist") in the late 30s and during WW2, made him a lot of powerful friends. Being Gay, plugged him into another strong network. And having a Jewish wife who was friends with several rich Heiresses didn't hurt either.
As a Communist, Bowles was 110 percent in favor of the USA getting into WW II (after June 22, 1941) but had no desire to fight. Labeled 4F, he seems to have convinced the draft board pyschiatrist he was unfit for service. Obviously, his being a member of the communist party and Gay, helped.
We get quite a bit of detail on his marriage to Lesbian Jane Auer. They two had an "open marriage" in more ways than one. While in Tangiers the two had separate bedrooms, separate toilets, separate friends, and separate live-in Morrocan lovers. Bowles traveled alone to various places, Jane did the same. However, Bowles stuck by Jane during her long illness and death 1957-1972). Almost 15 years. He outlived her by 27 years.
VSC really makes one thing very clear: Bowles loved cannabis - a lot. Maybe the constant intake of MJ after 1950, was responsible for the decline in his writing after Spider house.
As for Bowles: Everyone seems to have respected Bowles and liked him and he worked or knew almost every famous literary/musical person in NYC and later Paris. Being a communist (Bowles callls himself a "Stalinist") in the late 30s and during WW2, made him a lot of powerful friends. Being Gay, plugged him into another strong network. And having a Jewish wife who was friends with several rich Heiresses didn't hurt either.
As a Communist, Bowles was 110 percent in favor of the USA getting into WW II (after June 22, 1941) but had no desire to fight. Labeled 4F, he seems to have convinced the draft board pyschiatrist he was unfit for service. Obviously, his being a member of the communist party and Gay, helped.
We get quite a bit of detail on his marriage to Lesbian Jane Auer. They two had an "open marriage" in more ways than one. While in Tangiers the two had separate bedrooms, separate toilets, separate friends, and separate live-in Morrocan lovers. Bowles traveled alone to various places, Jane did the same. However, Bowles stuck by Jane during her long illness and death 1957-1972). Almost 15 years. He outlived her by 27 years.
VSC really makes one thing very clear: Bowles loved cannabis - a lot. Maybe the constant intake of MJ after 1950, was responsible for the decline in his writing after Spider house.
October 11, 2013
This biography, while it was informative, I was a little disappointed. I learnt some new information and facts, but this biography is so dry and perfunctory in the telling of what was an interesting life. The first half covers Bowles' early years and his music career as a composer. The second half is more interesting as it focuses on his writing.
June 23, 2023
This book is a worthy read of the life of Paul Bowles. I did not find Virginia Spencer Carr’s writing style in this book to be the most engaging. Even when talking about her interactions with Paul Bowles she writes in the 3rd person which creates a distance between author and reader. One learns much, in any event, about the life of Paul Bowles, and I am happy that J have read this book.
February 17, 2021
Having known nothing about Paul Bowles prior to reading this book, I still found it quite interesting to learn about this writer (and erstwhile composer) whose existence and work seem to have been forgotten. I don’t believe I’ve ever even heard Bowles mentioned in passing, but now I might just ask around to see if that’s just me being an ignoramus.
I really enjoyed reading about this now somewhat obscure artist’s life, his majoun and kif habits, his travels, his follies, his passions, and his victories. Bowles really lived an exciting life, and he lived it in unconventional ways. I feel like he’s fallen out of favour in the usual posthumous way, and is likely poised for a resurrection in academia or literary world. But maybe not. Still, he met with many luminaries and many of us would be jealous simply of that.
Other reviewers have noted the dryness of this text. The pacing is definitely a little uneven and the chronology sometimes seems a bit jerky as well. Still, I found it quite interesting and it did give some insights—especially about Bowles’ early years, his introduction to fiction and music, his automatic writing technique which was developed by meditative techniques his mother taught him, and of course his hatred for his father. Good stuff.
In addition to gaining an interest in reading Bowles’ works, especially the short stories, I learned about the author Arthur Machen whose disturbing and otherworldly novels I will certainly also be seeking.
I really enjoyed reading about this now somewhat obscure artist’s life, his majoun and kif habits, his travels, his follies, his passions, and his victories. Bowles really lived an exciting life, and he lived it in unconventional ways. I feel like he’s fallen out of favour in the usual posthumous way, and is likely poised for a resurrection in academia or literary world. But maybe not. Still, he met with many luminaries and many of us would be jealous simply of that.
Other reviewers have noted the dryness of this text. The pacing is definitely a little uneven and the chronology sometimes seems a bit jerky as well. Still, I found it quite interesting and it did give some insights—especially about Bowles’ early years, his introduction to fiction and music, his automatic writing technique which was developed by meditative techniques his mother taught him, and of course his hatred for his father. Good stuff.
In addition to gaining an interest in reading Bowles’ works, especially the short stories, I learned about the author Arthur Machen whose disturbing and otherworldly novels I will certainly also be seeking.
July 17, 2020
Informative and enjoyable. It covers Bowles's life, works, and encounters during a time period when so many Americans lived and created abroad. I'm always amazed at the interconnection between so many notable persons. In a way, it covers Bowle's life in the same manner he lived--without established purpose, flowing with events, and as a series of visits by people woven into his life.
December 8, 2018
*the surface of a life
November 4, 2010
Loved it and I loved the music more, its great to read about great gay guys from the 40's 50's & 60's and then listen to their music whilst reading on youtube ....
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September 24, 2014Virginia Spencer Carr (B.A. '59, Ph.D. '69)
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews