{"id":15910,"date":"2018-03-09T09:01:28","date_gmt":"2018-03-09T13:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=15910"},"modified":"2018-03-09T09:01:29","modified_gmt":"2018-03-09T13:01:29","slug":"juan-goytisolo-tangier-havana-and-the-treasonous-intellectual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/juan-goytisolo-tangier-havana-and-the-treasonous-intellectual\/","title":{"rendered":"Juan Goytisolo \u2013 Tangier, Havana and the Treasonous\u00a0Intellectual"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow! Two days in a row I’m reposting Arab Lit (in English)<\/em>. Today Marcia Lynx Qualey \u00a0brings up (& sends us to a dossier on) one of my very favorite Spanish-born Maghrebi-by-choice writers: Juan Goytisolo (5 January 1931 \u2013 4 June 2017), someone I had hoped to eventually meet \u2014 something that was unhappily not to be. In my library Goytisolo’s books do not stand on the Spanish Lit shelves, but on the North African shelves. I certainly agree with the following thought of Goytisolo’s, quoted by Hisham Aidi in his essay: \u201cI have always <\/span>believed that the role of the intellectual is the critique of \u2018your <\/span>own,\u2019 and the respect of the \u2018other,\u2019 and that is <\/span>the opposite of nationalism, which is about promoting \u2018us\u2019 and <\/span><\/span>rejecting the \u2018other\u2019\u2014and if that is treason, then so be it<\/span><\/span>, que <\/span>as\u00ed sea<\/span>.\u201d Aidi’s criticism of Goytisolo’s stance re the Moroccan regime may sound a bit harsh, but I (grudgingly) have to agree with the main features of his analysis. But next time in Larache, I’ll most certainly visit the cemetery where Goysitoli lies buried \u2014 I know the way, having taken it to visit Jean Genet’s grave, next to which si Juan was buried last year.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n\n

Friday Finds:\u00a0<\/a><\/h2>\n

by mlynxqualey<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

\n

Episode 9 of Bulaq<\/a> — a podcast co-hosted by Ursula Lindsey (The Arabist) and M. Lynx Qualey (ArabLit), and produced by Issandr Amrani (The Arabist) — is about “Good Bad Reviews”:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Although the meat of the episode is around reviewing, it kicks off with a discussion of an article Hisham Aidi published on MERIP.<\/a>\u00a0The piece, on Juan Goytisolo, is subtitled “Tangier, Havana and the Treasonous Intellectual<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

It opens:<\/p>\n

For the past 25 years, every evening around sunset, an elderly man could be seen gingerly crossing the Boulevard Pasteur, Tangier\u2019s busy main thoroughfare. Shuffling toward the Grand Poste, he would walk slowly down the pavement to Caf\u00e9 Maravillosa. Regulars would stand up to shake his hand. \u201cMarhba<\/em>, Si Juan.\u201d Waiters would greet him, \u201cJa\u2019izat Nobel dyalna<\/em>, our own Nobel laureate,\u201d and set him up at a table with a pot of green tea. For the next two hours, a steady rotation of old acquaintances, students and tourists would stop by to chat or take a photo.<\/p>\n

This re-assessment of Goytisolo’s work is unflinching yet generous, and Aidi’s critical overview of the life and work of this Spanish writer — who spent much of his life in Morocco — is interlaced with elements of Aidi’s own story.<\/p>\n

Keep reading<\/strong>:\u00a0“Juan Goytisolo: Tangier, Havana and the Treasonous Intellectual<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Listen:<\/strong> Bulaq Episode 9<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow! Two days in a row I’m reposting Arab Lit (in English). Today Marcia Lynx Qualey \u00a0brings up (& sends us to a dossier on) one of my very favorite Spanish-born Maghrebi-by-choice writers: Juan...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,64,498],"tags":[1602],"class_list":["post-15910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intellectuals","category-literature","category-maghreb","tag-juan-goytisolo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15910"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15916,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15910\/revisions\/15916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}