The Pen and the Sword: Conversations with David Barsamian [Paperback]

Edward W. Said (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1994

Edward W. Said, noted author, professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and a Palestinian Christian raised in Jerusalem, is interviewed here on a range of subjects: from V.S. Naipaul's and Joseph Conrad's depictions of colonialism and empire in their novels; to the links between the Palestinian and South African struggles; to questions about the effectiveness of Yasser Arafat's leadership.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Through five interviews with the author of Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism, Alternative Radio director Barsamian provides an accessible, engaging introduction to Said's thoughts on topics from Jane Austen to Jerusalem. Said is forthright, even blunt, and he demonstrates a thrilling capacity for integrating culture and politics-discussing, for example, how Joseph Conrad understood imperialism but was unable to see possibilities for national independence movements. A sympathetic interviewer, Barsamian doesn't challenge his subject. The result is that the interviews are broad rather than deep and, occasionally, Said's responses reveal gaps in the interviewer's knowledge. In the most compelling interviews, "The Israel/PLO Accord: A Critical Assessment" and "Palestine: Betrayal of History," Said blasts the Israel-PLO accord as a humiliating surrender for the Palestinians. "There was Clinton, like a Roman emperor bringing two vassal kings to his imperial court and making them shake hands in front of him." Here Said also reveals his own role in attempted negotiations between the U.S., Israel and the PLO as far back as 1978, when Arafat refused to recognize Israel. As Said says of Arafat, "He could have gotten much better deals from the Americans and the Israelis in the 1970s and the 1980s, but he turned them all down."
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Edward Said's books include Orientalism; The Question of Palestine; and Culture and Imperialism. David Barsamian is the Director of Alternative Radio and is the author of Chronicles of Dissent: Interviews with Noam Chomsky.

Product Details

• Paperback: 180 pages
• Publisher: Between the Lines; First Edition first Printing edition (1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0921284950
• ISBN-13: 978-0921284956
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,345,816 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Introduces Said's Thought, October 13, 2000

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Chris (Washington state, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Pen and the Sword: Conversations with David Barsamian (Paperback)

This little book is about 170 pages and made up of about five interviews from between 1987 to 1994 with Edward Said, the leading Palestinian intellectual, interviewed by David Barsamian, the producer and host of "Alternative Radio," famous for his collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky.

Said discourses on, among other topics, the role of culture in shaping literature, the pro-imperialist inclinations of V.S. Naipaul, the simultaneous anti-imperialist and anti-liberation outlook of Joseph Conrad, why Albert Camus is portrayed as having been an anti-colonialist when he was, in fact, quite the opposite, Western stereotypes about Arabs, why it is possible to have an honest discussion of Israel's flaws in the Israeli media but not in the United States, and the decline of the American left. Occasionally, he gets, well, a bit recondite, but he is often very interesting and I like him very much.

But he is at his best when discussing the Palestinian movement and its leadership, Arafat and the PLO, with whom he was on close terms before the 1993 Oslo accords. The thoughts in this book are from when the "peace process" was in its infancy but not much has changed, in spite of all the new agreements and changes of government in Israel. He discuses the PLO leadership's corruption, opportunism, utter ignorance of the U.S., Israel and anything else outside the Arab world, preference for acceptance into the high society of Washington, London and Paris instead of attending to the grassroots struggles of their people. He points to Arafat's resistance to pressures for internal PLO democracy as the reason for his acceptance of the Oslo accords, which gave the PLO control over a portion of the Gaza strip, which has become an ubelievable hellhole as a result of deliberate Israeli policies (Israel's responsibility for its condition is never noted in the U.S. media, as Said notes), so Israel seized at the chance to give some of it to Arafat; and accepted the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories as "legal", allowed Israel to continue building in Jerusalem and expanding "greater Jeruslem" to include all of the central West Bank, expropriating and robbing Palestinians as they go about it, Israeli retaining complete control over the settlements, the Jordan valley, the water and all the other resources, the economic policies, and a veto over all decisions passed by the Palestinian parliament. Arafat's basic duties are to pick up garbage and arrest and punish all persons whom Israel thinks threaten its "security," a very elastic concept, that includes a great many non-violent persons.

It is this "limited autonomy" that the PLO leadership has said, and the quite honest and decent persons who repeat everything that they say, will eventually evolve into a genuine Palestinian nation. Of course, as Said says, it will probably evolve into a state, but only in the same sense that the bantustans of apartheid South Africa were a state for its black inhabitants. This has not been, of course, the version of events of the PLO leadership, Yossi Sarrid, Ehud Barak, Amos Oz, Anthony Lewis, "Peace Now," nor genuine supporters of the Palestinians who have been supporting the "peace process" for whatever reason. These latter brethren, Said notes, seem to have completely put in the back of their minds that the Israeli prime minister who signed the Oslo accords, Yitzhak Rabin, was a man who had helped ethnically cleanse Palestinians back in 1948, who directed the reign of terror against the Palestinians during the intifadah, who was conducting mass atrocities and housing expropriations of Palestinians at the time of the signing of the accords and immediately escalated them afterwards, who, in July 1993, bombed hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, including many Palestinians, towards Beirut, in order, as he told the Knesset to put pressure on the Lebanese government to bend to Israel's demands.

As Said says, the Labor party has been and is every bit as racist and oppressive towards the Palestinians as Likud, which lacks the sophistication and appearance of moderation of Labor that endears it to the Anthony Lewis-Daniel Schorr type liberals. Said has been somewhat isolated in Palestinian circles because of his opposition to the "peace process." Hopefully, for their own sake, in light of the current horrible events in the territories, they will start listening to them.