Today, December 30, marks the anniversary of the birth the great writer and composer, Paul Bowles (1910-1999)
Long time in the making, we are thrilled to announce the (re)launching of an extensive new web-site – www.paulbowles.org – dedicated to this important, indeed crucial, figure.
Web-master Rodrigo Rey Rosa, in a brief note, informs us:
Paul Bowles is an iconic American writer and composer known for his passion for world cultures. The website allows the visitor to get acquainted with his unique creative force. His work drew the admiration of writers such as Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Patricia Highsmith, Gertrude Stein, William Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg. Composers like Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and Leonard Bernstein as well as other younger and avant-garde artists were enthusiastic about his music.
The different sections of which the site is composed are carefully curated, including a chronology with links to publications of his novels, short stories and travel writings – which are mostly in print – to his musical scores, and to relevant archival materials. Other sections show photographs of and by Paul Bowles, a catalogue of his personal library, and recordings of Moroccan story tellers he collaborated with.
Navigating the website, you can listen to samples of the music Bowles composed during the first half of his life – works for piano, songs, orchestral pieces, incidental music for the theater and film – and you can also discover the very last music he produced, when he was already in his eighties, working on a synthesizer. You can hear a very rare sample of “musique concrète” dating from the late 1950s, and from this time you can also hear a selection of the recordings of Moroccan music he collected traveling across Morocco.
You can read samples of his rare autobiographical texts, of his writings on music, and see some of his travel photography.
We hope this collaborative effort among enthusiasts of Mr Bowles’s work will prove to be a >esource for scholars of Paul Bowles and enthusiasts of his work for years to come.
Allen Ginsberg on Paul Bowles (from the web-site):
from a letter to Jack Kerouac, May 31, 1957
“Paul Bowles arrived three weeks ago and came calling, with (Ahmed) Yacoubi, who is a young, handsome, good humored Arab about twenty-five, sits in Paris Cafe relaxing in sports shirt bought in India and whistles at girls. Bowles laid on us some Tanganyika T and said Kenya was armed starving concentration camp for natives. Peter (Orlovsky) and I been over visiting his place and all very friendly, he took me out to escargot and talked about Gertrude Stein and we went over his house and (Alan) Ansen fell asleep on the couch at 3 AM and he played Indian music on tape and rolled huge bombers and talked medicine with Bill….Bowles wears nylon suits and is very intelligent and sounds like Bill Keck (sic), tho’ he’s small and has nervous stomach and Bill is going to teach him opium and he has blonde close hair…”
“…Gave Bowles my last copy (of Howl). He’s been very nice, dug the poetry, still follows little magazines where he can get them. Add him perhaps to your list —next time you send out a list of works. He isn’t sinister; his life is safe and rather comfortable; but I suspect he would like to make it on wilder greater level. He reads WCW (William Carlos Williams) and would maybe order Kora In Hell
very nice