Paul Bowles letters to Patrick Eddington

The American composer and author Paul Frederick Bowles was born in New York City on December 30, 1910. Bowles was published at age seventeen, abandoned college, and in 1929 began his life of travels with a trip to Paris, where he hoped to establish himself as a poet. Back in New York in 1930, he studied composition with Aaron Copland, whom he also accompanied to Yaddo, Paris, Berlin, and Tangier. With the support of Copland and Virgil Thomson, Bowles found work in New York writing incidental music and scores for ballet and theater. His successful career as a composer took off during the Depression with work for the Federal Theater Project (including music for Orson Welles's Horse Eats Hat) and the Federal Music Project. Bowles became one of the preeminent composers of American theater music, producing works for William Saroyan, Tennessee Williams, and others. In the 1990s, a resurgence of interest in Bowles's music spawned a number of major concerts and performances in the United States and Europe. In addition, a new generation of musicians has released several well received recordings of Bowles's compositions.

In 1938, Paul Bowles married the aspiring writer Jane Auer, who quickly achieved critical acclaim for her first novel, Two Serious Ladies (1943). Inspired by Jane Bowles's success and her dedication to writing, Bowles began his own career as an author, eventually surpassing his already successful reputation as a composer. Beginning in the 1940s, he produced numerous works of fiction, essays, travel writing, poems, autobiographical pieces, and other works. Among Bowles's best known fictional works are the novels The Sheltering Sky (1949), Let It Come Down (1952), The Spider's House (1955), and an early short story collection, The Delicate Prey and Other Stories (1950). A 1989 reprint of The Sheltering Sky and Bernardo Bertolucci's 1990 film version of the novel, starring Debra Winger and John Malkovich, revived international interest in Bowles, the writer.

Bowles is equally known as a prolific translator. He bestowed the title "No Exit" upon Jean-Paul Sartre's Huis Clos and his 1946 translation of that play remains the standard version for English language productions. During the 1940s, Bowles translated the poems and stories of a wide variety of European and Latin American authors. His translations have broadened readership of Guatemalan author Rodrigo Rey Rosa. Bowles translated several works related to North African culture and geography, and generously introduced and prefaced photographic collections, travel writing, and stories by other authors who share those interests.

Bowles was responsible for bringing several Moroccan storytellers to the attention of readers across Europe and America—most notably the stories of Mohammed Mrabet. Upon meeting Mrabet, Bowles became impressed with his unique power and skill as an oral storyteller in the North African tradition. Mrabet could not read or write, so Bowles dedicated himself to recording, transcribing, and translating Mrabet’s stories for readers. Mrabet’s stories have since been widely published, reprinted, and translated.

Paul and Jane Bowles spent much of their married life traveling throughout the world and in 1947 made Tangier, Morocco, their permanent home. During this time, Paul Bowles was the so-called “dean of American expatriate writers,” and many major figures in the world of letters and the arts frequently visited the Bowleses in Tangier. Jane Bowles died in 1973, and Paul Bowles continued to reside in Tangier until his death on November 18, 1999.

Miller, Jeffrey.Paul Bowles: A Descriptive Bibliography. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Black Sparrow Press, 1986.Sawyer-Lauçanno, Christopher.An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989.Davis, Stephen. “Mercury at 80.” The Boston Globe Magazine, March 4, 1990.

Utah-based artist and art teacher Patrick Eddington was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on January 7, 1953. He earned his BFA and Masters in Education from the University of Utah. Eddington created numerous etchings, prints, and paintings, some of which are now held in the Henry Miller Estate Collection and the Miriam Patchen Collection. Eddington was the co-owner and operator of the publishing company Green Cat Press, which focused on publishing literary broadsides as well as art prints He carried on extensive correspondence throughout his life with a staggering number of writers and visual artists. Eddington’s charming and persuasive letters convinced many to engage him in lengthy correspondences. Eddington was also a generous gift-giver, and was eager to forge connections among the writers and artists that he knew and admired. He died on March 26, 2016.

Utah’s Art Magazine website, “A Passion for Arts and Letters. And Cats. Remembering Pat Eddington.” April 5, 2016. (accessed August 10, 2017) http://artistsofutah.org/15Bytes/index.php/patrickeddington/ Information derived from the collection.