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Paul Bowles was "only American existentialist"

NEW YORK, March 1( Reuters) Nov 18 - A veteran poet , novelist and composer Paul Bowles, described by his biographer as perhaps the only American existentialist, lived more than half his life in Morocco, where he wrote "The Sheltering Sky," the novel most closely identified with him despite his varied interests.

Bowles died of heart attack on November 18,1999 (Thursday) in the Italian Hospital in Tangier, Morocco He was 88. .Bowles was the author of scores of volumes of prose, poetry, essays and letters. He also created a niche of his in the field of music.

He studied music with American composer Aaron Copland in Paris in the 1930s and went on to produce a number of mostly orchestral pieces. Bowles wrote the music for the work of Tennessee Williams, including the score for "Summer and Smoke," and other American theatre productions in the 1930s and 40s.

Paul Frederick Bowles was born in Queens, New York City. He finished secondary school at age 16 and enrolled at an art school but quickly lost interest in art, he once wrote in a brief biography of himself for a publisher.

Then began a number of restless years for Bowles, who went to the University of Virginia, quit after half a year and set off for Paris, which also did not appeal for long. He walked around western Europe, then travelled the world, all the while writing and composing.

His travels took him back to the United States, to Berlin, then Morocco, Algeria and the Sahara Desert. He travelled to the West Indies, South America, Central America and Mexico and lived in Mexico for 4-1/2 years.

Before finally settling in Tangier in 1952, Bowles also visited South Africa, India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where he bought a small island.

Paul Bowles, born in New York City on December 30, 1910, travelled widely and left the United States for good at the age of 30 years i.e. in the 1940s, made his home in Tangier, Morocco, and concentrated on creative works.

"He's been regarded as the first, and may be the only, American existentialist," Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno, who wrote Bowles' biography "An Invisible Spectator," said in an interview published in the March 1991 Bloomsbury Review.

"He was one of the first American writers to really zero in on man alienated from himself. Therefore, man retreats into a landscape. Where Bowles is really best is in dealing with man and landscape."

This was one of the major themes in his first novel, "The Sheltering Sky," which came out in 1949. It explored the lives and character of disaffected Americans searching for revelation and romance in the North African desert after World War II. The book became a classic and was made into a movie of the same title by Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci in 1990.

His creative works included several other novels such as "The Delicate Prey" (1950), "Let It Come Down" (1952), "The Spider's House" (1955) and "Up Above The World" (1966).

He also published collections of short stories, travel writing, poetry and an autobiography "Without Stopping," which describes his meetings with many people pivotal to the Beat Generation.

Bowles also worked in collaboration with other authors, notably the Moroccan storyteller Mohammed Mrabet, translating works from Dharisian, the local Moroccan dialect.

He married writer Jane Auer (later Jane Bowles) in 1938. Theirs was an unorthodox marriage. Both were gay and had significant relationships with others during their marriage.

But they were intellectual soul mates and together drew a number of the cultural elite of their time to Morocco. Bowles' associations over the decades included such literary luminaries as Gertrude Stein, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs.

Jane Bowles died in Malaga, Spain, in 1973 in her mid-50s after many years of ill health.

Paul Frederick Bowles was born in Queens, New York City. He finished secondary school at age 16 and enrolled at an art school but quickly lost interest in art, he once wrote in a brief biography of himself for a publisher.

Then began a number of restless years for Bowles, who went to the University of Virginia, quit after half a year and set off for Paris, which also did not appeal for long. He walked around western Europe, then travelled the world, all the while writing and composing.

His travels took him back to the United States, to Berlin, then Morocco, Algeria and the Sahara Desert. He travelled to the West Indies, South America, Central America and Mexico and lived in Mexico for 4-1/2 years.

Before finally settling in Tangier in 1952, Bowles also visited South Africa, India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where he bought a small island.

Of his writing, biographer Sawyer-Laucanno said in the Bloomsbury Review interview: "Part of what's so unnerving about reading Bowles is that he writes in this absolutely precise terminology. The language in Bowles is not obscure, it's not difficult. To me, it's like cut crystal: every word is exactly the right word. It's a very conventional writing style, yet with the most unconventional things happening."

Another illustrious American author, Gore Vidal, said of Bowles: "As a short story writer, he has had few equals in the second half of the twentieth century."