Reflections on exile and other essays / Edward W. Said.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Said, Edward W.

Contributor:

Gotham Book Mart Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Convergences (Cambridge, Mass.)

Convergences

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Politics and literature.

Literature, Modern--20th century--History and criticism--Theory, etc.

Literature, Modern.

Politics and culture.

Criticism--Political aspects.

Criticism.

Literature, Modern--20th century--History and criticism.

Penn Provenance:

Gotham Book Mart (former owner) (Gotham Book Mart Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xxxv, 617 pages ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2000.

Summary:

This Long-Awaited Collection of literary and cultural essays by Edward W. Said, the first since Harvard University Press published The World, the Text, and the Critic in 1983, reconfirms what no one can doubt -- that Said is the most impressive, consequential, and elegant critic of our time -- and offers further evidence of how much the fully engaged critical mind can contribute to the reservoir of value, thought, and action essential to our lives.

As in the title essay, the widely admired "Reflections on Exile," the fact of his own exile and the fate of the Palestinians have given both form and the force of intimacy to the questions Said has pursued. Taken together, these essays -- from the famous to those that will surprise even Said's most assiduous followers -- afford rare insight into the formation of a critic and the development of an intellectual vocation. Said's topics are many and diverse, from the movie heroics of Tarzan to the machismo of Ernest Hemingway to the shades of difference that divide Alexandria and Cairo. He offers major reconsiderations of writers and artists such as George Orwell, Giambattista Vico, Georg Lukacs, R. P. Blackmur, E. M. Cioran, Naguib Mahfouz, Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Walter Lippmann, Samuel Huntington, Antonio Gramsci, and Raymond Williams. Said makes a strong and eloquent attack on what he calls "aestheticized powerlessness," a habitual stance of many in the academy. Most of the key debates in the humanities over the last thirty years are taken up in this book, and a number of them are given definitive treatment here.

Contents:

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

2. Sense and Sensibility / R. P. Blackmur, Georges Poulet, E. D. Hirsch 15

3. Amateur of the Insoluble / E. M. Cioran 24

4. A Standing Civil War / T. E. Lawrence 31

5. Arabic Prose and Prose Fiction After 1948 41

6. Between Chance and Determinism: Lukacs's Aesthetik 61

7. Conrad and Nietzsche 70

8. Vico on the Discipline of Bodies and Texts 83

9. Tourism among the Dogs / George Orwell 93

10. Bitter Dispatches from the Third World 98

11. Grey Eminence / Walter Lippmann 105

12. Among the Believers / V. S. Naipaul 113

13. Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies, and Community 118

14. Bursts of Meaning / John Berger, Jean Mohr 148

15. Egyptian Rites 153

16. The Future of Criticism 165

17. Reflections on Exile 173

18. Michel Foucault, 1927-1984 187

19. Orientalism Reconsidered 198

20. Remembrances of Things Played: Presence and Memory in the Pianist's Art / Glenn Gould 216

21. How Not to Get Gored / Ernest Hemingway 230

22. Foucault and the Imagination of Power 239

23. The Horizon of R. P. Blackmur 246

24. Cairo Recalled: Growing Up in the Cultural Crosscurrents of 1940s Egypt 268

25. Through Gringo Eyes: With Conrad in Latin America 276

26. The Quest for Gillo Pontecorvo 282

27. Representing the Colonized: Anthropology's Interlocutors 293

28. After Mahfouz 317

29. Jungle Calling / Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan 327

30. Cairo and Alexandria 337

31. Homage to a Belly-Dancer / Tahia Carioca 346

32. Introduction to Moby-Dick 356

33. The Politics of Knowledge 372

34. Identity, Authority, and Freedom: The Potentate and the Traveler 386

35. The Anglo-Arab Encounter / Ahdaf Soueif 405

36. Nationalism, Human Rights, and Interpretation 411

37. Traveling Theory Reconsidered 436

38. History, Literature, and Geography 453

39. Contra Mundum / Eric Hobsbawm 474

40. Bach's Genius, Schumann's Eccentricity, Chopin's Ruthlessness, Rosen's Gift 484

41. Fantasy's Role in the Making of Nations / Jacqueline Rose 493

42. On Defiance and Taking Positions 500

43. From Silence to Sound and Back Again: Music, Literature, and History 507

44. On Lost Causes 527

45. Between Worlds 554

46. The Clash of Definitions / Samuel Huntington 569.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0674003020

OCLC:

44669434