| Paul Bowles Contributor(s): Caponi, Gena Dagel (Author) |
|
 |
ISBN: 0805745602 ISBN-13: 9780805745603 Publisher: Twayne Publishers OUR PRICE: $62.37 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: October 1998 Annotation: In this interpretive biography of Paul Bowles, one of the most intriguing American expatriate writers and composers, Gena Dagel Caponi concentrates on defining Bowles's place in twentieth-century American culture. By exploring the motivations behind his life and work and examining the intricate connections between his emotional life and his literary, musical, and autobiographical creations, Caponi illuminates both Bowles's psychological development and the relationship between his personal idiosyncrasies and the intellectual currents of his time. Caponi draws upon extensive correspondence and interviews not only with Bowles himself but also with Ned Rorem, Gore Vidal, Aaron Copland, Christopher Isherwood, and Virgil Thomson to provide new insights into Bowles's work and his relationships with his wife, Jane; his editor at Random House, David McDowell; his London editors, John Lehmann and Peter Owen; and friends Charles Henri Ford, Ahmed Yacoubi, and Mohammed Mrabet. Through his work, Caponi shows, Bowles contributes as well as responds to such movements as modernism, antimodernism, mysticism, surrealism, and existentialism. His unique combination of nineteenth-century romanticism and twentieth-century existentialism allows him, in both his literature and his music, to focus on a major theme - the plight of the individual who is alienated from his or her culture and feels less than alive. Caponi notes how Bowles's work articulates various states of being along the continuum of existential insecurity, and she examines his negative romanticism, his fascination with primitive landscapes, and his belief that the imagination is perfect without intervention and corruption from civilization andits institutions. The author of The Sheltering Sky, one of the very few fully realized expressions of American existentialism, has lived the philosophy he writes about. Only a book that analyzes Bowles's emotional life in conjunction with his cultural and intellectual reality will be able to explain the complexities of his work. This is such a book. Gena Dagel Caponi teaches cultural and intellectual history and is the acting director of American Studies at the University of Texas, San Antonio. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | American - General - Literary Criticism | Women Authors - Literary Criticism | Children's & Young Adult Literature |
| Dewey: B |
| LCCN: 98034789 |
| Series: Twayne's United States Authors |
| Physical Information: 0.62" H x 5.77" W x 8.78" (0.79 lbs) 152 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Twaynes United States Authors Series presents concise critical introductions to great writers and their works. Devoted to critical interpretation and discussion of an authors work, each study takes account of major literary trends and important scholarly contributions and provides new critical insights with an original point of view. An Authors Series volumeaddresses readers ranging from advanced high school students to university professors. The book suggests to the informed reader new ways of considering a writers work. A reader new to the work under examination will, after reading theAuthors Series, be compelled to turn to the originals, bringing to the reading a basic knowledge and fresh critical perspectives. Each volume features:
|