Call Number:

MSS 0663

Repository:

University of Delaware Library Special Collections

Extent:

.3 linear foot (1 box)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

MSS 0663, Jennie Skerl Paul Bowles collection, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware.

Date:

1985-1997 (inclusive) and 1985-1988 (bulk)

Creator:

Skerl, Jennie

Form:

correspondence, Notes, Postcards, Transcripts, and Playbills

Abstract:

The Jennie Skerl Paul Bowles collection contains correspondence from Paul Bowles to American Beat scholar Jennie Skerl, as well as additional correspondence, notes, and transcripts of interviews about Bowles's life, work, and Tangier literary circle.

American Beat scholar Jennie Skerl served as the associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at West Chester University. She is also a founding board member and former President of the Beat Studies Association (founded December 2004). She met Paul Bowles in May 1985 when she visited his home in Tangier, Morocco, where he hosted "open-house" style social gatherings each evening. Skerl's publications include

William S Burroughs (1985), William S. Burroughs at the Front: Critical Reception, 1959-1989 (co-editor, 1991), A Tawdry Place of Salvation: The Art of Jane Bowles (1997), and Reconstructing the Beats (2004).

"Jennie Skerl." European Beat Studies Network. http://ebsn.eu/members/jennie-skerl/ (accessed February 19, 2013). Additional biographical material derived from the collection.

The Jennie Skerl Paul Bowles collection contains correspondence from Paul Bowles to American Beat scholar Jennie Skerl, as well as additional correspondence, notes, and transcripts of interviews about Bowles's life, work, and Tangier literary circle.

The collection contains eight letters and two postcards from Bowles to Skerl. The early letters indicate that Skerl had planned and completed a trip to Tangier during which she met Bowles and spent several evenings at his home, where she watched him entertain guests and informally interviewed him. The collection includes Skerl's notes of her recollections of these visits, which she had been required to compose after leaving Bowles's home, as he had declined to give formal interviews.

Also present in the collection is correspondence between Skerl and other individuals regarding Bowles and the Tangier literary circle. Correspondents include Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bowles biographer Gena Dagel Caponi, Ned Rorem, and Gore Vidal.

Copies of transcripts of interviews conducted by Caponi in preparation for

Paul Bowles: Romantic Savage (1994) are also included; the interviews were conducted between 1984 and 1987 with individuals who had known Paul and Jane Bowles personally: Aaron Copeland (1900-1990); Virgil Thomson (1896-1989); David Diamond (1915-2005); Maurice Grosser (1903-1986); and Oliver Smith (1918-1994). The collection also contains two items related to Jane Bowles: a playbill for a 1993 production of Jane Bowles' In the Summer House and the playbill insert which features several reminiscences about Jane Bowles by fellow artists and writers including Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs.