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Easy's Chair - Tom Mcmurray's Blog

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Easy's Chair

Blog Posted:7/31/2010 2:51:00 AM
Remembering Paul Boweles and "Sheltering Sky"


Paul Bowles was an American expatriot writer, composer and translator who, with his wife, Jane, also a writer, eventually moved and settled in Tangier, Morocco in 1947. He had experienced some success with his poetry and assumed poetry would supplement his primary income from his other gift for musical composition. But on a visit to Paris in the early thirties he met the high-priestess of expatriot literati living in Europe, Gertrude Stein. Stein, who mentored the likes of Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Eliot and Pound had a critical eye for talent that has rarely been matched, if ever matched, in literary history. When she first read through Paul Bowle's portfolio of finished and in progress poetics, she said quite simply, "You sir, are not a poet, but I think you could be a novelist or short story writer with just a bit of tutelage."

Stein had such gravitas that Bowles gave up poetry right then and there. After another six or seven months living and learning in Paris he went back to the states to reconnect with his musical roots and began studies under Aaron Copeland while also sucessfully scoring several musical adaptations of plays including two by Tennesee Williams.

In 1947, after much restless travel around the world, he boarded a ship sailing for Morocco. He rented and eventually purchased a home in Tangier and was joined in 1948 by his wife, also a brilliant writer, Jane Bowles. He lived as an expatriot in that city for the next fifty-two years until his death in '99.

In 1949 he published his first novel the "Sheltering Sky" which was hailed by the critics as a masterpiece of American Literature and suddenly Paul Bowles was no longer an unknown, unpublished writer but the "Sheltering Sky" became, along with its author, a cult classic of almost mystical proportions. He also became, magically, the iconic expatriot leader to the new generation of writers and poets known as the 'beats.' Though media tried to define him as part of the beat movement he always rejected the label if not the actual writers and poets themselves.

Tangier and his home also became a destination for the great literati of his time like Tennesee Williams, William Burroughs, Jack Keroauc, Alan Ginsberg and Truman Capote. They all, from time to time, would gather to pay homage to their charismatic icon Paul Bowels while also partaking in the legendary gangha and other readily available hallucinogenic substances in Tangier at that time. Bowles said he did experience wonderful dreams but they were forgotten when the drugs wore off and he was unable to move while under their influence. Unlike William Burroughs and Alan Ginsberg, Bowles found no worthwile creative benefit to mind-altering drugs and rarely used them after his initial experimentation.

William Burroughs completed his classic novel "The Naked Lunch" while living with Paul and Jane Bowles for eight drug soaked months that finally required Alan Ginsberg to leave the states and join them in Tangier. He spent two months nursing Burroughs back to reality while also putting in order the fragmented sheets of Burrough's yellow legal pad sheets of paper which now contained the whole novel in random order strewn throughout the many corners of the Bowles second floor apartment where Burroughs was living. Somehow, Ginsberg accomplished both tasks with never a discouraging word from his literary guru, Bowles.

I wonder what Paul Bowles found in Tangier among the steaming, gleaming domes of mosques, narrow stone streets, the oscillating wail of call to prayer three times a day from microphoned towers throughout the glaring white city? Was it the strange, almost supernatural mystery of the Moroccon people themselves? Or simply a need to be a stranger in a strange and unfamiliar land? Did that fuel his creative genius grown restless and uninspired among the familiar of his native country? Did his visit to French North Africa in 1931 and his exposure to the vast emptiness of the infinite Sahara desert and her sky mark his soul with instructions to one day return and find the orientalist treasures of that land? We do not know but the horrible characters of the " Sheltering Sky" bring a psychological horror to hopelessness and isolation not seen since Bowles' great influence Edgar Allan Poe.

It is a remarkable novel that is always listed in the top one hundred novels ever written. It exists as a long and articulate poetic that somehow both affirms and denies the existence of the human soul with a disconnect that leaves the reader pale and chilled as the pages are turned toward the reality of human insignificance.



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Pettit Avatar
Robert
Pettit
Date: 2/22/2011 7:48:00 AM
Pleased to meet you. Checking out these blogs to get to know my fellow soupers better.
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Miller Avatar
Robert
Miller
Date: 8/6/2010 10:02:00 PM
Tom, I couldn't find a way to respond directly to your comments on "The Thomas Crown Affair" I think there should be a way to respond to comments. Thank you for your encouragement. Apparently you are quite prolific. That is only the second poem I have written in the last 25 years! The first "Trolly Folly" (from way back then) was posted on a whim and was then featured and received several encouraging comments which induced me to try my hand at it again. I confess I had never heard of a strophee before, I was just having fun. The comments I have received will perhaps encourage me to do this more often. Thanks
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A Avatar
Poet Destroyer
A
Date: 8/1/2010 5:29:00 PM
Very interesting reading,, Edger Allan Poe, is my all time influence,..p.d.
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Guzzi Avatar
Debbie
Guzzi
Date: 7/31/2010 8:22:00 PM
What a rich and informative blog! Thank you! Light & Love
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Dietrich Avatar
Andrea
Dietrich
Date: 7/31/2010 2:53:00 PM
A very educational blog you presented. I have not made the time for reading novels in such a long long time. Sheltering Sky sounds like something I would hope to read should I ever get back into the groove of reading novels again. LUv, Andrea
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Phyllis
Babcock
Date: 7/31/2010 11:19:00 AM
Thank you for all this info. It is always good to learn no matter how old we are. I do think he would have found it a very strange land indeed. Wonder if that kicked in his creativity-I guess it did. Have a great day. God Bless Phyl
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Sweetheart Avatar
Linda-Marie
Sweetheart
Date: 7/31/2010 6:35:00 AM
Appreciate this wonderful info Tom and very interesting facts to learn on this man... thankxxx for sharing this weekend.. with luv..
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