Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue

Bowles wrote a smooth, glinting prose well-suited to capturing the sensation of seeing an unfamiliar place for the first time. In the Foreword to this collection of essays written in the 1950s, he expresses the wish that every new place be as different as possible from the places he already knows—but what his writing makes clear is that wonder at the unfamiliar is less about the features of location and more about one’s mental furniture. Bowles' uncluttered perception bespeaks impartiality and a generosity of spirit that in a world of contentious identities looks very much like sagacity and sound judgment. Would that his observations on the diversity of Muslim cultures from sixty years ago held broader currency today.

Abdeslam is show more not a happy person. He sees his world, which he knows is a good world, being assailed from all sides, slowly crumbling before his eyes. He has no means of understanding me should I try to explain to him that in this age what he considers to be religion is called superstition, and that religion today has come to be a desperate attempt to integrate metaphysics with science. Something will have to be found to replace the basic wisdom which has been destroyed, but the discovery will not be soon; neither Abdeslam nor I will ever know of it.

Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale
Paper City Holyoke Dam Ale show less

Full review, complete with the odd bit of related multimedia embedding, is HERE.

Bellissima testimonianza sul Marocco frutto di appunti, riflessioni, pagine diaristiche di Bowles, in un arco di dieci anni, dal 1950 al 1960. L'amore per il Maghreb non è ispirato da alcun esotismo, né da gusto etnografico, piuttosto scaturisce dalla bellezza dei paesaggi e della cultura locale, dal rispetto per le genti a lungo sfiancate dal colonialismo e incomprese dal turismo di massa.

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Bowles-Leurs-mains-sont-bleues/52853

> Leurs mains sont bleues, de Paul Bowles. C’est la perpétuelle rencontre de l’inconnu à travers plusieurs voyages en des terres différentes : “Chaque fois que je me rends dans un endroit où je ne suis encore jamais allé, j’espère qu’il sera aussi différent que possible de ceux que je connais.“ Ed. Points.
—Nouvelles Clés, (6), Juin/Juillet/Août 1989, (p. 75)

> LEURS MAINS SONT BLEUES, de Paul Bowles. — « CHAQUE FOIS que je me rends dans un endroit où je ne suis encore jamais allé, j’espère qu’il sera aussi différent que possible de ceux que je connais déjà. Je présume qu’il est naturel, de la part d’un voyageur, de show more rechercher la diversité et que l’élément humain est ce qui lui donne le plus le sens des différences. Si les gens et leur manière de vivre étaient partout identiques, il ne servirait à rien de se déplacer d’un endroit à un autre. » C’est la philosophie du nomade Paul Bowles dont on reproduit ici les carnets de voyage. Collection : Quai Voltaire, 302 pages.
—Le devoir, 3 juin 1989 show less