Paul Bowles: A Life - Tapa dura

Fred Kaplan, author of "The Singular Mark Twain; " "Gore Vidal: A Biography; Dickens: A Biography; " and "Henry James, The Imagination of Genius: A Biography"How lucky Paul Bowles was to have such a devoted and talented friend and biographer as Virginia Spencer Carr, who now brings us the first biography of the whole life. She illumines many of the private and mysterious corners of Bowles's complicated relationships and secretive personality. She gives life and depth to the intricacies of his marriage and his affairs, to his passive individuality and his literary originality. Beyond it all, he is still an enigma, unexplainable, far from fully likable, but always fascinating in this portrait of one of our most exotically modern literary and musical geniuses.

It was Gore Vidal who suggested that Virginia Spencer Carr postpone her work on Tennessee Williams's biography in order to write the life of Paul Bowles, who was still alive at the time. Over a decade later Carr has written an erudite and compelling biography of Paul Bowles, the great American composer and writer. Born in 1910, Bowles grew up in New York and at a young age embarked upon an artistic journey that lead him all over the world - from Paris to Berlin, from Ceylon to Morocco. He studied music with composer Aaron Copland, befriended a generation of artists including Gertrude Stein and W.H. Auden, and married the writer Jane Auer. He composed music for plays and movies, wrote poetry, short stories and novels including THE SHELTERING SKY and THE DELICATE PREY. He captured the imaginations of American counter culturalists - both straight and gay - when he took up residence in Morocco, and began writing about it. Through years of research, extensive interviews and her friendship with Paul Bowles, Carr has gathered a great wealth of information about Bowles's childhood, his career, his marriage and his personal relationships. With her incredible depth of knowledge about, and intimacy with, Bowles and the details of his life, Carr has written an extraordinary biography of this most complex of American cultural icons.