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This insightful critical biography shows us an Edward Said we did not know. H. Aram Veeser brings forth not the Said of tabloid culture, or Said the remote philosopher, but the actual man, embedded in the politics of the Middle East but soaked in the values of the West and struggling to advance the best European ideas. Veeser shows the organic ties connecting his life, politics, and criticism. Drawing on what he learned over 35 years as Said's student and skeptical admirer, Veeser uses never-before-published interviews, debate transcripts, and photographs to discover a Said who had few inhibitions and loathed conventional routine. He stood for originality, loved unique ideas, wore marvelous clothes, and fought with molten fury. For twenty years he embraced and rejected, at the same time, not only the West, but also literary theory and the PLO. At last, his disgust with business-as-usual politics and criticism marooned him on the sidelines of both. The candid tale of Said's rise from elite academic precincts to the world stage transforms not only our understanding of Said—the man and the myth—but also our perception of how intellectuals can make their way in the world. \"This is a brave book, written with gusto—a student from Edward Said’s early days at Columbia cuts through the myth and puts together the ‘real maestro,’ with respect, sympathy and meticulous attention to detail.\"— Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak , Columbia University \"The most engaging study of Edward Said now available, this book traces Said’s progress from highbrow denizen of the Ivy Leagues to a gritty intellectual on the world stage. It also gives an inside portrait of Said, from a one-time student who knew him for thirty-five years, depicting Said’s habits of mind, charisma, and contradictions. With a seemingly encyclopedic grasp of Said’s work, Veeser also writes with panache, offering his own example of creative criticism .\"— Jeffrey J. Williams, Co-editor of The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism \"At last, a critic has come along with the cunning, candor, and brilliance to pluck out the heart of the mystery of Edward Said. A mesmerizing read—and unlikely to be surpassed .\"— James Shapiro, Columbia University 　 \"The late Edward Said is often pictured as a passionate fighter for radical causes. But in this provocative and eminently readable book, H. Aram Veeser reveals a Said who was far more divided than anyone thought.\"— Gerald Graff , author of Clueless in Academe 　 \"Part biography, part memoir, part analysis and even part critique, Veeser's book is a fitting medium for addressing the life and work of a man whose achievements and aspirations far exceeded what could be contained in any one category or even series of categories. No one who knew Said will doubt the attribution of charisma—and those who didn't will get a good sense of it from this book. \"— David Simpson, University of California, Davis \"Veeser has written an absolutely splendid hybrid of a book: part intellectual biography, part personal reminiscence, part homage, and part scholarly critique. As insouciant in its observations as Edward Said was in his person, Veeser’s book treats Said’s Princetonian polish as a central element of his thought and not simply as elegant haberdashery. Said’s outsized scholarly ambition and rhetorical cleverness are more than matched in Veeser’s pithy account by his unpredictability and penchant for self-contradiction, all of them hallmarks of the charismatic hero who refuses to play by the rules that govern common mortals. We desperately need just this sort of informed, critical, and yet balanced approach to our intellectual stars, rather than the hagiography so often demanded and supplied. Said, oppositional critic to the bitter end, deserves no less.\" —Vincent P. Pecora, University of Utah \"… Vesser (City College of New York) has written a beautifully crafted examination of the legacy of the renowned Palestinian literary critic, who died in 2003.\" – B. A. McGowan, Moraine Valley Community College (CHOICE Feb. 2011) Introduction Chapter I: The Charisma of Edward Said Chapter 2: Beginning Again Chapter 3: Emergence Chapter 4: Academostardom Chapter 5: Secular Criticism Chapter 6: Rhetoric and Image Chapter 7: On Stage Chapter 8: Later Visions Chapter 9: Marquee Intellectual Chapter 10: Political Roughhouse Chapter 11: Dropping the PLO Chapter 12: Said in History H. Aram Veeser is Associate Professor at The City College of New York. He is coauthor of Painting Between the Lines (2001), and editor of The New Historicism (1989), The New Historicism Reader (1994), Confessions of the Critics (1996), and The Stanley Fish Reader (1999). Besides his work as a writer and critic, Veeser pursues outside interests that range from drawing and painting to motorcycling and competitive rowing.

This paper may anger Said traditionalists since I argue here that Said was a globalizing capitalist. Said--unlike some of his academic peer group, who critiqued him--accepted capitalism as the primary engine of globalization. The worldliness of his literary theory has closer ties to globalized capital than have race-and-identity postcolonial theories of globality. Said's worldliness is a family inheritance from Said's father, a mover and a shaker who internationalized a branch of trade in Egypt and made tons of money there. Unlike his son Edward, the senior Said had no interest in politics or the liberation of Palestine. Nonetheless, his interest in global networks of trade was decisive in forming his son's interest in global networks of ideas, power, and opinion. Looking at the young Said's formation, one has to wonder: How could a spoiled, rich, only son of a patriarchal family emerge as an edgy pioneer of liberationist energies and radical theories?

(Serres 2007) Serres concludes this story in a way that makes me think that parasites are a little bit like literary critics. Since he does not eat like everyone else, he builds a new logic. [...]that is what para means: \"standing off to the side.\" Driving this point home, Volpone confesses, I gain No common way; I use no trade, no venture; I wound no earth with plowshares, fat no beasts To feed the shambles; have no mills for iron, Oil, corn, or men to ground them into powder; I blow no subtle glass, expose no ships To threat'nings of the furrow-facèd sea; I turn no moneys in the public bank, Nor usure private. William Germano confirmed the unpredictable not to say chaotic disorientation that parasitic interference tends to cause: \"I do remember going to the fax machine and picking up the day's pile of faxes and seeing a course adoption for bell hooks' Teaching to Transgress in a course in an economics department.

The forum responders cover a lot of ground. All of those who took part in producing the book will be excited and edified by the probity of the insights presented by these four outstanding theorists and scholars. Sharon O'Dair writes that the star system favoring the theorists in the volume is an effect of neoliberal capitalism and must be deplored, opposed, and replaced. Aaron Jaffe writes that the volume is a grotesque private reunion of people who failed create a younger generation. Here, Veeser conveys his gratitude to some professors for their interventions of his book The Rebirth of American Theory and Criticism.

Dominique Edde, a journalist who contributes to Le Monde and other venues, has also written novels and published a book of interviews with a psychoanalyst. Her book that I am reviewing here, Edward Said: His Thought As a Novel; first published as Edward Said: Le roman de sa pensee, 2017), compellingly novelizes her own life's intersections with life of the renowned literary-cultural public intellectual, Edward Said. Most interesting as a limitcase of supercharged relationships between acolyte and mentor, this book can be read as a less-than-usually-repressed account of the way one electrifying person can irrevocably change another person's career, perceptions, and life itself. Edde has already written one novel (Kite, 2003) that presents her relationship with Said in roman a clef style. She also has patterned much of her reading and pursuit of musical interests along lines suggested by Said's own preferences. She opens with the tantalizing vow: \"There are many reasons why my attempts to write a book about him [Said] have failed in the last ten years.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) Discourse and Ideology If one disregards author Daniel Varisco's first aim in this book, namely, critiquing Edward Said's paradigm-busting Orientalism, then one can affirm that his second aim is ably fulfilled, for his book indeed presents a colorful and often enjoyable compendium of what might be called pretheoretical writing on the Middle East. [...]denying the essential point of Orientalism and rejecting its method provide Varisco with an enabling blindness that allows him to develop something like a late medieval florilegium of fanciful and delightful quotations and summaries. Said's premises in Orientalism repel and anger Varisco. \"Because of what Said chooses to highlight in texts, the ability of individual scholars to think, reflect, and reform is negated\" (p. 300).