Paul Bowles on Music.(Book Review)

Paul Bowles on Music. Edited by Timothy Mangan and Irene Herrmann. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. [xviii, 292 p. ISBN 1417508124. $34.95.] Index, bibliography.

Whether he wanted it or not, fame has found Paul Bowles (1910-1999). For some his reputation rests squarely on his provocative short stories and novels, particularly The Sheltering Sky, a best seller in 1950 that was adapted for film in 1990 by Bernardo Bertolucci. For others, Bowles is best known as the eccentric American expatriate whose flat in postwar Morocco drew such visitors as Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and Gore Vidal. Those who remember Bowles primarily for his earlier musical activities are fewer but have steadily increased in number since the mid-1980s. They will be glad to greet the appearance of Paul Bowles on Music, edited by Timothy Mangan (critic for the Orange County Register) and Irene Herrmann (lecturer in music at the University of California, Santa Cruz and executrix of the Bowles estate).

The collection reprints over 160 of the more than 400 articles Bowles wrote on musical topics between 1935-46, prefaced by Mangan's introduction sketching out the circumstances of Bowles's career. These writings appeared almost exclusively in Modern Music (edited by Minna Lederman) and the New York Herald Tribune, where he gained his positions through the influence of Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson. Cleanly edited and anthologized chronologically, the volume includes all of Bowles's twenty-two articles for Modern Music (not including some early translations) and selections from his voluminous output as reviewer for the Tribune (1942-46), together with two of his three essays for Mademoiselle and his sole musical contribution to the surrealist magazine View. The sheer number of reprints from the Tribune make it valuable in documenting New York's concert life as well as Bowles's critical opinions. This same dual focus informs what may be the volume's most important section: a nine-page interview conducted by Herrmann in 1999, shortly before Bowles's death, and preceded by its own introduction (which might profitably have been combined with the introduction to the volume as a whole). The interview offers not only Bowles's firsthand impressions of Wanda Landowska and Walt Disney's Fantasia, but also his insights on the advantages and disadvantages of being a composer-critic, and his recollection of such practical matters as the salary and schedule for reviewing assignments. In these ways, Paul Bowles on Music substantially complements the existing scholarship on this period of his life, especially the work of Gena Dagel (see especially "A Nomad in New York: Paul Bowles 1933-48," American Music 7, no. 3 [Fall 1989]: 278-314).

By bringing together so many articles from the Tribune, Paul Bowles on Music will save researchers many long hours at the microfilm reader; however, those few who wish to see the articles in their original contexts may be frustrated by the absence of page numbers in the bibliographic material. (This information can be found in Jeffrey Miller's Paul Bowles: A Descriptive Bibliography [Santa Barbara, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1986].) More surprisingly, the editors have chosen to omit any listing of the articles by title, preferring purely chronological headings. A complete table of contents, while admittedly cumbersome, would have been beneficial for anyone in search of a particular article or pursuing a research topic that is not easily linked to the proper names included in the index. The index gives excellent and accurate reference to compositions and individuals--from Abd El Wahab and Ernst Bacon all the way down to the WQXR Quartet and Efrem Zimbalist. It is more limited and a bit idiosyncratic in guiding readers toward larger or more abstract concepts. While the entries on "Film music" and "Jazz" yield useful results, the absence of cross-references necessitates a certain amount of browsing before one locates "North Africa: music of," or realizes that one must consult "Mexico: popular music of: regional music of," "Music, Mexican" and "Music, popular: of Mexico; recordings of" in order to read all the relevant material. Perhaps more than most such collections, then, this one encourages and sometimes requires ...