Picnic Cantata

Notes on the Program

by Steven Blier

Paul Bowles was born in 1910 in Jamaica, Queens. He was drawn to literature from an early age; before he was ten he had already written some highly original stories and poems in a journal he kept. In high school, he was the poetry editor of the newspaper, and made a precocious literary debut in the March 1928 edition of Transition – the work of the 17-year-old Bowles was published alongside Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, André Gide, and other notables. A semester at the University of Virginia only proved to Bowles that he was wasting his time in school, and without telling his parents, he hopped a ship for Paris, where he spent several months experimenting for the first (but not the last) time with the life of an expatriate.

Until this point, Paul Bowles seemed headed for a career as a writer. Indeed, he is best known today for his novels, which have been rediscovered in the past few years – The Sheltering Sky even made it to the big screen, cast with John Malkovitch and Debra Winger. But Bowles’ career as a writer actually began during the middle years, after age 40. Until that point, he was gathering acclaim as a composer of concert pieces and songs, as well as incidental music to over twenty Broadway plays, including The Glass Menagerie.

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