Paul Bowles
In the last ten years of Paul Bowles' life, Carr formed a close, personal friendship with the reclusive, expatriate writer and composer.
She originally met him when she traveled to Morocco in 1989 to interview him for a biography on Tennessee Williams that she was drafting (never completed).
During her visit with Bowles, she asked him to sign a copy of a recently published biography on him, An Invisible Spectator, which prompted Bowles to state: "Does this book have anything to do with me?" As a result of this comment, and the later suggestion by Gore Vidal to postpone her work on Williams' biography and instead write one on Bowles, Carr shifted gears and began work on what would become Paul Bowles: A Life.
Bowles agreed to offer Carr his no-strings-attached cooperation on the work. The result - after twelve years, and thirteen trips to visit Bowles in Morocco, and arrangements she made for his medical treatment in Atlanta - was that Bowles revealed in person and in letters tantalizing revelations to Carr about his life and the people with whom he'd associated. It was understood from Carr that she couldn't publish any of this information until he had died.
Carr was able to read aloud to Bowles her completed work shortly before he died in 1999.
Read more about this topic: Virginia Spencer Carr, Relationships With Those She Wrote About
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