Review by Choice Review
Writing with insight and originality about the late Edward Said is no easy task. As both an icon and a lightning rod for a variety of scholars thinking and writing about Europe's relationship with the larger world, the range and complexity of Said's persona and ideological contributions to postcolonial studies seem to be already well known. Brennan's investment in telling Said's story anew provides an eye-opening gem that reveals what past scholarship on the Princeton-trained scholar of Palestinian heritage, who studied European literature and culture, overlooks. A former student of Said, Brennan (Univ. of Minnesota) draws on testimonies of adversaries and loving admirers alike, close members of Said's family, and even FBI files to reveal Said's impact from his position at Columbia University on events in his native Middle East and on Western politics. In this sympathetic biography, Brennan's quest to afford more complexity to the already robust story around Said's many intellectual and political battles proves intriguing and illuminating. Speculations as to the best tools to understand such a momentous figure--poetry instead of fiction--reveal much about the author's engagement with a world his professor forged for him through his lessons. Rewarding, fresh insights await readers. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers and advanced undergraduates through faculty. --Isa Blumi, American University of Sharjah
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Best known for Orientalism, a polarizing and profoundly influential critique of Western attitudes toward the East, intellectual, academic, and writer Edward Said lived at the intersection of East and West. Born in Palestine as the son of an American businessman, he put down roots in New York City, but the "imaginative geography" of his life extended to Cairo and Beirut, Bayreuth and Seville. Said's intellectual affinities were likewise complex. Drawn to exiles and contrarians, he was fascinated by Joseph Conrad and Jonathan Swift. He found structuralist theories of culture both fascinating and infuriating. His cultural criticism was inseparable from his political advocacy, and Said argued viciously and constantly with his contemporaries, seeming to thrive on conflict. A talented musician, he refused to call himself an artist. Brennan, a literary scholar as well as a student and friend of Said, enjoyed broad access to his subject's contacts and papers, allowing him to examine Said's formative experiences and key relationships. The result is a warm and perceptive exploration of one of the twentieth century's most compelling minds, and the passions that shaped it.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Brennan (Borrowed Light: Vico, Hegel, and the Colonies), professor of comparative literature at the University of Minnesota, shines a light in this meticulous account on the intertwined personal, professional, and political lives of professor and public intellectual Edward Said (1935--2003). Said's best work, Brennan argues, emerged from his conviction that "the humanities have political consequences." The author surveys the mentors who influenced Said's thinking, among them "eccentric critic" R.P. Blackmur and Harry Levin (a "sociologist and economist who scandalized academia"), and the works that played a recurring role in Said's writing, such as Georg Lukacs's History and Class Consciousness (Said "Had been frustrated for some time that Lukacs was not widely known in the Arab world") and Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness (which Said used to "expose the fundamental weakness of literary studies at the time"). A rich overview of Said's academic career features detailed treatments of his major texts (including Beginnings, Orientalism, and The World, the Text and the Critic), and Brennan goes into detail as well on his subject's fraught connection to the Palestine National Council, and his role as a celebrity. Brennan's work will be invaluable reading for students of Said or the postcolonial critical movement his work sparked. Agent: Jacqueline Ko, Wylie Agency. (Mar.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Edward Said (1935--2003) is best known for his 1978 book Orientalism, which revolutionized the study of the Eastern world and heavily influenced the emerging field of postcolonial studies as well as literary studies in general. In Orientalism, he argued that Western authors had painted a negative picture of the Middle East throughout the ages. The book was controversial, as were Said's public interventions in support of Palestine, his homeland. Brennan (humanities, Univ. of Minnesota; At Home in the World), one of Said's former students, offers insight into one of the foremost public intellectuals of the postwar period, beginning with his early years in Jerusalem and Cairo. As an adult, Said garnered recognition in his academic career, teaching comparative literature at Columbia University from 1963 to 2003, and serving as a visiting lecturer at universities around the world. Brennan effectively uses a range of primary sources to provide insight into what influenced Said's thinking, and how he handled criticism of his noteworthy work. VERDICT While there is a great deal of theory in this sweeping biography, Brennan has succeeded in writing an account that is both an act of love and a solid study of a fascinating man.--David Keymer, Cleveland
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The eventful life of a celebrated public intellectual. As a graduate student at Columbia in the early 1980s, humanities professor Brennan came to know Palestinian American scholar, cultural critic, and activist Edward Said (1935-2003), whose suave urbanity and intellectual complexities he admirably captures in a sharply incisive portrait. Drawing on abundant archival sources, Said's hefty FBI file, his published and unpublished works, and hundreds of interviews, Brennan, who remained Said's friend until his death, traces the evolution of a boldly transformative, controversial thinker, considered to be the inventor of post-colonial studies. Born in Jerusalem, Said grew up in Cairo in a household characterized by "old-world opulence." He came to the U.S. when he was 15; after boarding school in Massachusetts, he went on to Princeton and Harvard. Indecisive about pursuing a career in music (he was an accomplished pianist), medicine, or business, he opted for literature, guided by mentors such as R.P. Blackmur at Princeton and Harry Levin at Harvard. In 1963, Said joined Columbia's English department, where among his colleagues were "the school's resident ironist Freudian," Lionel Trilling, and Fred Dupee, "a tweedy iconoclast, and so just right for Said's similar desire to be an antinomian fit for the Ivy League." Soon, Said found a role among New York intellectuals, writing for prominent journals and taking upon himself the "task of mapping out an indigenous Arab culture, politics, and aesthetics." Brennan closely examines the literary, philosophical, and political thinkers who shaped Said's ideas as well as the turbulent political events that informed his understanding of the phrase "the politics of literature." By the late 1970s, Said was a media star, making the case that Islamophobia had a significant influence on U.S. foreign policy. His outspoken support of Palestine subjected him to fierce threats. "Apart from the president of Columbia," Brennan notes, "only Said's office had bulletproof windows and a buzzer that would send a signal directly to campus security." Exemplary scholarship informs an absorbing biography. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
