Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Convergences: Inventories of the Present) (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

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.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 656 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (February 19, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674003020
• ISBN-13: 978-0674003026
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.7 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #369,490 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars JARGON FREE HUMANISM, April 10, 2001

By	Futoshi J. Tomori (Baldwin Park, CA USA) - See all my reviews

I don't understand the rather vicious comments below. I think that when Said claims that he's an exile, he doesn't simply means it in the political sense but a state of mind or a state of being. It means to be skeptical, cultured, and intellectually rigorous. I think some of the essays shows what it means to be a humanist in the best sense of the word. I too see myself as an exile despite a totally different set of experiences and circumstances. With this book, Said offers us a complex personality as well as an thoughtful and sensitive way of looking at the world and living in it. It might just be a manifesto of sorts for exiles just like myself.

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exile, emigre, expat !, February 19, 2001

By A Customer

The UN estimates that one third of mankind today does not live in the cities where they were born. No one can give voice to these feelings of dislocation more than Edward Said, one of the most perceptive living cultural historians whose range of erudition is astonishing. In these essays published over the past thirty years, he discusses a remarkably diverse set of questions dealing with the literature of estrangement (Conrad), the confrontation between colonized and colonial and of course, many literary and cultural questions relating to the arab middle east. But, as the title essay shows, a theme runs through the whole book, how does one deal with living elsewhere when you cannot go back home because home does not exist anymore or even perhaps because it never existed. The psychological burden of such an estrangement is born with great fortitude, even welcomed as a necessary component of living in the world today. It generates resistance to the powers that be at the same time that it engenders engagement with the world. The essays are stimulating because Said gives voice to the discontent we all feel when confronted with the culture of conformism around us, whether it is the manufactured consensus produced by politics and media, or the corruption of our political language or the emphasis on entertainment in every aspect of life. He ends by discussing Huntington's Clash of Civilizations; Said shows emphatically that the nature of civilization is changeable and permeable instead of monolithic, as Huntington would have us believe. Said believes that his view, based as it is on deep scholarship is the only hope we have for peaceful and just future. Huntington's view is combative and is based on an "Us versus Them" approach, when in fact the more carefully you look the more of Us you see in Them and vice versa. Of all the essays this should be required reading for decision makers.

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The words of a truly original mind, February 17, 2001

By A Customer

This was my introduction to Edward Said and I found his writing a wonderful discovery even if I'm later to the game then most on this author. Perhaps academics have read Maurice Merleau-Ponty but he was new to me so when the first chapter started out I was a little put off. So I decided to scan the "Contents" and spied "Conrad and Nietzsche". Now I'd read comparisons before but never with as much originality as this essay by Mr. Said. I was hooked, and started picking and choosing my way through the familiar; T.E.Lawrence, Georgr Orwell, V.S. Naipaul, Hemingway. Some of the titles make you smile: "Through Gringo Eyes: With Conrad in Latin America", "How Not to Get Gored, On Ernest Hemingway." Familiar names but the author stands in a truly unique place as he takes on the topics. The insights make you stop to think. These essays should be read one by one and each savored before going on to the next. A great author doesn't merely repeat what you already know,causing you just to nod in agreement. Maybe you'll even modify some of your beliefs. At any rate you'll stop and think. Then start taking on some of the unfamiliar topics. For me this meant Tahia Carioca, Ahdaf Soueif, Eric Hobsbawn. And what a great way to end with "On Lost Causes", "Between Worlds", and "The Clash of Definitions." Then turn around and start reading the essays again and see how much you missed the first time and how much more your thinking is challenged all over again.