JohnnyV
Apr 18, 2006, 10:50 PM
Below, in blue, is another bizarre snippet from the world of literary criticism. An article about Juan Goytisolo, a Spanish writer. Notice how the reviewer, Fernanda Eberstadt, calls him a "homosexual" and then mentions that his greatest love is a woman????
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Considered by many to be Spain's greatest living writer, Goytisolo is in some ways an anachronistic figure in today's cultural landscape. His ideas can seem deeply unfashionable. For him, writing is a political act, and it is the West, not the Islamic world, that is waging a crusade. He is a homosexual who finds gay identity politics unappealing and who lived for 40 years with a French woman he considers his only love. "I don't like ghettos," he informed me. "For me, sexuality is something fluid. I am against all we's." The words most commonly used to describe his writing are "transgressive," "subversive," "iconoclastic."
For much of the last 25 years, Goytisolo has lived in a kind of Paul Bowlesian exile in an old house in Marrakesh's medina. In Morocco, he has been able to indulge his passion for Muslim culture — a passion that includes a scholarly interest in Sufi theology, the finer points of Arabic and Turkish grammar and a self-confessed predilection for working-class Arab men. His choice might seem to have further isolated him from the contemporary fray. Yet in Europe and Latin America, Goytisolo (pronounced goy-tee-SO-lo) remains a leading public intellectual, celebrated enough to have appeared as himself in Godard's recent film "Notre Musique." In the 90's, he made a documentary series called "Al Qibla" ("The Direction of Mecca"), which introduced Spanish viewers to various aspects of Islamic civilization. His political essays, denouncing the official neglect that led to last November's rioting in Paris suburbs, the corruption and tyranny of Arab governments or what he sees as the pernicious influence of Christian evangelism on American foreign policy, appear in Europe's most prestigious newspapers. When he was already well over 60, Goytisolo continued to report from behind the lines in war-torn Chechnya and conducted interviews with Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip.
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Considered by many to be Spain's greatest living writer, Goytisolo is in some ways an anachronistic figure in today's cultural landscape. His ideas can seem deeply unfashionable. For him, writing is a political act, and it is the West, not the Islamic world, that is waging a crusade. He is a homosexual who finds gay identity politics unappealing and who lived for 40 years with a French woman he considers his only love. "I don't like ghettos," he informed me. "For me, sexuality is something fluid. I am against all we's." The words most commonly used to describe his writing are "transgressive," "subversive," "iconoclastic."
For much of the last 25 years, Goytisolo has lived in a kind of Paul Bowlesian exile in an old house in Marrakesh's medina. In Morocco, he has been able to indulge his passion for Muslim culture — a passion that includes a scholarly interest in Sufi theology, the finer points of Arabic and Turkish grammar and a self-confessed predilection for working-class Arab men. His choice might seem to have further isolated him from the contemporary fray. Yet in Europe and Latin America, Goytisolo (pronounced goy-tee-SO-lo) remains a leading public intellectual, celebrated enough to have appeared as himself in Godard's recent film "Notre Musique." In the 90's, he made a documentary series called "Al Qibla" ("The Direction of Mecca"), which introduced Spanish viewers to various aspects of Islamic civilization. His political essays, denouncing the official neglect that led to last November's rioting in Paris suburbs, the corruption and tyranny of Arab governments or what he sees as the pernicious influence of Christian evangelism on American foreign policy, appear in Europe's most prestigious newspapers. When he was already well over 60, Goytisolo continued to report from behind the lines in war-torn Chechnya and conducted interviews with Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip.