:::From Publishers Weekly:::

Thanks to the British schools that the eminent Columbia University literary and cultural critic Said attended as a boy in Cairo, he learned more about 18th-century British property law than he did about the Islamic equivalent in his own part of the world. As an adult, he re-educated himself with a fierce intensity, although, as these 46 essays make clear, he now retains a certain affection for canonical figures and institutions, even as he celebrates an astounding range of learning. Said (Culture and Imperialism; Orientalism; Out of Place: A Memoir) views all of culture through the lens of "historical experience," emphasizing how feminism, ethnic and minority experience, and nationalism have broken tradition's grip on literature. Rather than put aside the canonical writers he was raised on, however, he "re-situates" them instead within their own histories. Given his keenly penetrating and original cast of mind, it is not surprising that Said's personal pantheon of heroes includes those who blur the line between criticism and creation, among them Foucault, Nietzsche, Gramsci, Barthes, Adorno and John Berger, not to mention pianist Glenn Gould, composer and conductor Pierre Boulez and filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo. But his greatest hero is Joseph Conrad, for Conrad found trouble everywhere; if there is savagery in Africa and Asia and Latin America, there is just as much in the great capitals of Europe. This wide-ranging and brilliant collection is a fitting tribute to one of our leading scholars, who has changed the way we look at Western culture.

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:::From Booklist:::

For more than a third of a century, Columbia University professor Said has written insightfully about literature, culture, and the Middle East. This volume gathers nearly 50 essays, most on literary subjects, although Said also addresses philosophy and history, the arts and current events. Writers considered include Merleau-Ponty, Conrad, Nietzsche, Vico, Foucault, Hemingway, Blackmur, Mahfouz, and Melville, but Said also discusses Bach and Fidelio, analyzes the Tarzan stories and films, and offers an "Homage to a Belly Dancer." Several essays, including "Orientalism Revisited," deal with responses to Said's 1979 book, while the title essay probes the personal and literary impact of this quintessentially twentieth-century experience. The collection includes book reviews and polemics, appreciations of a specific artist or thinker, and efforts to synthesize the "larger picture." Said's wide-ranging intellect and breadth of knowledge make this collection a demanding read, appropriate for libraries serving patrons interested in serious literary, philosophical, and political criticism. Mary Carroll

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:::Table of Contents:::

Introduction

1. Labyrinth of Incarnations: The Essays of Maurice Merleau-Ponty

2. Sense and Sensibility

On R. P. Blackmur, Georges Poulet, and E. D. Hirsc

3. Amateur of the Insoluble

On E. M. Cioran

4. A Standing Civil War

On T. E. Lawrence

5. Arabic Prose and Prose Fiction after 1948

6. Between Chance and Determinism: Lukàcs's Aesthetik

7. Conrad and Nietzsche

8. Vico on the Discipline of Bodies and Texts

9. Tourism among the Dogs

On George Orwell

10. Bitter Dispatches from the Third World

11. Grey Eminence

On Walter Lippmann

12. Among the Believers

On V. S. Naipaul

13. Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies, and Community

14. Bursts of Meaning

On John Berger and Jean Mohr

15. Egyptian Rites

16. The Future of Criticism

17. Reflections on Exile

18. Michel Foucault, 1927-1984

19. Orientalism Reconsidered

20. Remembrances of Things Played: Presence and Memory in the Pianist's Art

On Glenn Gould

21. How Not to Get Gored

On Ernest Hemingway

22. Foucault and the Imagination of Power

23. The Horizon of R. P. Blackmur

24. Cairo Recalled: Growing Up in the Cultural Crosscurrents of 1940s Egypt

25. Through Gringo Eyes: With Conrad in Latin America

26. The Quest for Gillo Pontecorv

27. Representing the Colonized: Anthropology's Interlocutors

28. After Mahfouz

29. Jungle Calling

On Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan

30. Cairo and Alexandria

31. Homage to a Belly-Dancer

On Tahia Carioca

32. Introduction to Moby-Dick

33. The Politics of Knowledge

34. Identity, Authority, and Freedom: The Potentate and the Traveler

35. The Anglo-Arab Encounter

On Ahdaf Soueif

36. Nationalism, Human Rights, and Interpretation

37. Traveling Theory Reconsidered

38. History, Literature, and Geography

39. Contra Mundum

On Eric Hobsbawm

40. Bach's Genius, Schumann's Eccentricity, Chopin's Ruthlessness, Rosen's Gift

41. Fantasy's Role in the Making of Nations

On Jacqueline Rose

42. On Defiance and Taking Positions

43. From Silence to Sound and Back Again: Music, Literature, and History

44. On Lost Causes

45. Between Worlds

46. The Clash of Definitions

On Samuel Huntington

Notes

Credits

Index