{"id":5609,"date":"2010-12-30T08:38:51","date_gmt":"2010-12-30T12:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=5609"},"modified":"2010-12-30T08:50:20","modified_gmt":"2010-12-30T12:50:20","slug":"paul-bowles-100","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/paul-bowles-100\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Bowles @ 100"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Paul Bowles<\/strong> was born today, 30 December, 100 years ago. Composer, poet, novelist, short story & travel memoir writer, translator, Bowles was a core figure of the 20th century nomad \u2014 expatriate as they said back then \u2014 community. Having settled in Tangier after 1947 he became what the Tunisian writer Albert Memmi called “an immobile nomad.” But few writers have better described the fate of the modern tourist who is not a traveller, and that realm the “ugly American” finds him\/herself in psychologically and psychically. Someone should reprint Eric Mottram 1976 little monograph on Bowles, very accurately entitled Staticity and Terror<\/em>. The novels have stood the test of time, as have the short stories, in the main. I have a soft spot for The Spiders House<\/em>, maybe his ‘straightest’ novel, and that may be because of a shared admiration for the city of F\u00e8s. It is also important to remember that Bowles brought a number of Moroccan writers (from oral or written literary backgrounds) to the attention of a wider world via his translations and support, especially Mohammed Mrabet, Mohammed Choukri and Larbi Layachi .Today in his honor, I’ll listen to some of Bowles’ Pastorelas and concerts (those for two pianos, my favorites). And here is a very early poem of his, written at 17:<\/p>\n

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HERE I AM\r\n\r\nWhen I am here I shall not mind\r\nI shall merely murmur:\r\nIf no one comes and sees me here it will be all right\r\n\r\nHere it is hard to believe that anything is free\r\nCome let us lapse into freedom\r\nLet all these things become less than dust\r\nLet me not think at all ever\r\nLet these things come close together\r\nLet everything be slow and soft\r\nLet the wind blow over the roof at noon\r\nLet everything be soft here because there is no dust\r\nLet anything except what is coming come\r\nThat is the way I always have felt\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paul Bowles was born today, 30 December, 100 years ago. Composer, poet, novelist, short story & travel memoir writer, translator, Bowles was a core figure of the 20th century nomad \u2014 expatriate as they...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[908,39,42,64,66],"tags":[914],"class_list":["post-5609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebration","category-deserts","category-essays","category-literature","category-maghrebi-literature","tag-paul-bowles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5609","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=5609"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5616,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5609\/revisions\/5616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}