Charles Bowden
Charles Bowden was an American non-fiction author, journalist and essayist based in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
His journalism appeared regularly in Harper’s GQ, and other national publications. He was the author of several books of nonfiction, including Down by the River.
In more than a dozen groundbreaking books and many articles, Charles Bowden blazed a trail of fire from the deserts of the Southwest to the centers of power where abstract ideas of human nature hold sway — and to the roiling places that give such ideas the lie. He claimed as his turf "our soul history, the germinal material, vast and brooding, that is always left out of more orthodox (all of them) books about America" (Jim Harrison, on Blood Orchid ).
“I am by nature a person suspicious of the economic machine that feeds me. And yet I am a captive of that economic machine, and my mind is structured by its lessons and demands. I consume its wealth with zest. I drive a truck, watch a color television, and write on a computer, but I cannot overcome the feeling that these objects and the industrial culture that produced them are temporary things, a kind of fat beast feeding on the bounty of the earth that will starve to death within the next century, or at least be severely diminished.”
Charles Bowden
“Summertime is always the best of what might be.”
Charles Bowden
“I can't even produce a metaphor for the drug world anymore. I don't even like the phrase the drug world since the phrase implies a different world.”
Charles Bowden
“I don’t trust the answers or the people who give me the answers. I believe in dirt and bone and flowers and fresh pasta and salsa cruda and red wine. I don’t believe in white wine; I insist on color.”
Charles Bowden
“Being alive is gardening and cooking and birds and green and blue, at the very least.”
Charles Bowden
“I try to construct a theory of how a moral person should live in these circumstances, and how such a person should love.”
Charles Bowden
“There are two ways to lose you sanity in Juarez. One is to believe the violence results from a cartel war. The other is to claim to understand what is behind each murder.”
Charles Bowden
“Thirty or forty years from now, the American adventures into the bowels of the Middle East will be forgotten details of a bumbling imperialism. But what...is taking place all along the line will profoundly alter the future of the United States.”
Charles Bowden