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Edward Said, le roman de sa pensée
In this personal portrait of Edward Said written by a close friend, Dominique Eddé offers a fascinating and fresh presentation of his oeuvre from his earliest writings on Joseph Conrad to his most famous texts, Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism. Eddé weaves together accounts of the genesis and content of Said’s work, his intellectual development, and her own reflections and personal recollections of their friendship, which began in 1979 and lasted until Said’s death in 2003. Throughout, she traces the connection between personal history and theoretical options, illuminating the evolution of Said’s thought. Both specialists of Said’s work and newcomers will find much to learn in this rich portrait of one of the twentieth century’s most important intellectuals.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
240 pages, Paperback
First published October 20, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 26, 2020
This book, originally published in France in 2017, has been out in America in its English translation (by Trista Selous and Ros Schwartz) for about three months. Yet there are no reviews on Goodreads or Amazon, and no reviews that I can find in major English-language literary or leftist publications (New York Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, etc.). We can conclude, therefore, that the marketing plan was a mistake.
Verso has dryly advertised this volume as a literary study, an intellectual “portrait” by a friend of Said. This appealed to me when I ran across the book in the library, particularly the title: His Thought as a Novel. Said is often considered a sociological critic, either by champions who praise his ruthless unmasking of ideology in literary texts or detractors who find his work tendentious. And these aspects of his sensibility, these inheritances of Marxist reductionism, are there, when he praises writers as much as when he blames them; his anti-colonial Yeats and his imperialist Austen can both seem like cases of misplaced emphasis.
But there is also a tremendous cultivation and subtlety to his work that, combined with his perhaps belated left-liberal nationalist activism on behalf of the Palestinians, makes him a glamorous and even romantic figure, like a character out of Stendhal or Pushkin. Furious pamphlet writing all day, nights spent in raptures at the piano! (And since he was a male intellectual rather than a female one, I feel safe in observing that his dashing appearance didn’t hurt this impression.)
I was prepared, therefore, for a study taking an aesthetic approach to his avowedly “contrapuntal” work, charting its inner debate between the intransigence of literary language in authors he loved, like Conrad and James, and the much more brutal and decisive intractability of political conflict, especially quarrels over such irreplaceables as territory and resources. Something like Tom Paulin’s appreciation, but at book length. I would, in short, have been happy with the book Verso advertised.
Edward Said: His Thought as Novel is in part that book: Lebanese author Dominique Eddé explores the literary and musical thought of Said, including his divergent responses to Conrad and Dostoevsky, his perhaps surprising dislike of prior engaged intellectuals Orwell and Camus, and his long dialogue about culture and performance with his great friend Daniel Barenboim. She is also candid about her own disputes with his thinking, though these are fairly boilerplate critiques, what everyone has already objected to in Said: he was too soft on Islamic fundamentalism, too hard on literature, and more or less intellectually indifferent to women. She also contributes narrative to analysis, as only an intimate could; perhaps most striking is her account of Said’s leading his and Barenboim’s company of Israeli and Arab musicians to Buchenwald.
But, though I hate prurience, or at least know I am supposed to hate it, I have to say the following. What the jacket copy doesn’t tell us, and what only comes out slowly, is that this book is not entirely an analysis of novelistic qualities in Said’s thought. It is also an at-times breathlessly romantic memoir of their relationship by Said’s on-again, off-again paramour:
Like an old novel, The Novel of His Thought certainly made me nostalgic for a certain vision of adulthood that seems unavailable, for a time when even suffering was glamorous, as if shot on black-and-white film, redolent of dry wine and sharp cologne. When men and women had devoted families and faithful lovers, and paralyzing erotic crises on the way to the Louvre and in the Roman Forum, and a library of great books and sublime operas in their agonized cancer-stricken heads, and quixotic political commitments that left them ethically compromised and in which they only half believed anyway.
This vulgar aestheticized pseudo-nostalgia of mine is no less symptomatic of the present general puerility than anything it would presume to judge (Marvel movies, etc.) and so is completely worthless in itself. But still, I am certain an attempt to appeal to it would have helped Verso to sell more copies! There’s anti-capitalism, and then again there’s a wasted opportunity. Eddé, anyway, ruefully acknowledges that she and Said weren’t very good leftists, were hardly going to lead or like a revolution—they were, she says, just “bourgeois rebels.” Bourgeois rebels would, I am sure, love this book.
Verso has dryly advertised this volume as a literary study, an intellectual “portrait” by a friend of Said. This appealed to me when I ran across the book in the library, particularly the title: His Thought as a Novel. Said is often considered a sociological critic, either by champions who praise his ruthless unmasking of ideology in literary texts or detractors who find his work tendentious. And these aspects of his sensibility, these inheritances of Marxist reductionism, are there, when he praises writers as much as when he blames them; his anti-colonial Yeats and his imperialist Austen can both seem like cases of misplaced emphasis.
But there is also a tremendous cultivation and subtlety to his work that, combined with his perhaps belated left-liberal nationalist activism on behalf of the Palestinians, makes him a glamorous and even romantic figure, like a character out of Stendhal or Pushkin. Furious pamphlet writing all day, nights spent in raptures at the piano! (And since he was a male intellectual rather than a female one, I feel safe in observing that his dashing appearance didn’t hurt this impression.)
I was prepared, therefore, for a study taking an aesthetic approach to his avowedly “contrapuntal” work, charting its inner debate between the intransigence of literary language in authors he loved, like Conrad and James, and the much more brutal and decisive intractability of political conflict, especially quarrels over such irreplaceables as territory and resources. Something like Tom Paulin’s appreciation, but at book length. I would, in short, have been happy with the book Verso advertised.
Edward Said: His Thought as Novel is in part that book: Lebanese author Dominique Eddé explores the literary and musical thought of Said, including his divergent responses to Conrad and Dostoevsky, his perhaps surprising dislike of prior engaged intellectuals Orwell and Camus, and his long dialogue about culture and performance with his great friend Daniel Barenboim. She is also candid about her own disputes with his thinking, though these are fairly boilerplate critiques, what everyone has already objected to in Said: he was too soft on Islamic fundamentalism, too hard on literature, and more or less intellectually indifferent to women. She also contributes narrative to analysis, as only an intimate could; perhaps most striking is her account of Said’s leading his and Barenboim’s company of Israeli and Arab musicians to Buchenwald.
But, though I hate prurience, or at least know I am supposed to hate it, I have to say the following. What the jacket copy doesn’t tell us, and what only comes out slowly, is that this book is not entirely an analysis of novelistic qualities in Said’s thought. It is also an at-times breathlessly romantic memoir of their relationship by Said’s on-again, off-again paramour:
The first period of our relationship began when the French translation of Orientalism was first published in France, the second with the publication of Culture and Imperialism in 1993. This was a time when his desire to live, create and love was at its height, despite the leukaemia that had him repeating that he was ‘a dying man,’ as though to bounce back all the better. It is only now, rereading these two books, that I see the relationship between them and us. Edward came back to me, as he came back to the first of these two books in writing the second. Repeating or returning to a theme in a new movement was a striking characteristic of his life and work. At both the emotional and intellectual levels, all his departures—he hated departures—were instinctively accompanied by a promise to start again. We sometimes played a modified game of consequences. One of us would write a question, fold down the paper, and the other would write a reply without knowing the question. Not long ago I found a paper napkin on which I had written, 'What is love?’ and he had replied, 'The best is return and recapitulation.’Given the book’s narrative charms, then, its original French subtitle is more accurate: Le roman de sa pensée, or “the novel of his thought.” Eddé’s Said can therefore be paid the back-handed compliment merited by all the best nonfiction: it reads like a novel. Not so much the kind of Conradian novel Said preferred; more like, say, if you can imagine, Marguerite Duras crossed with Thomas Mann—but a novel in any case.
Like an old novel, The Novel of His Thought certainly made me nostalgic for a certain vision of adulthood that seems unavailable, for a time when even suffering was glamorous, as if shot on black-and-white film, redolent of dry wine and sharp cologne. When men and women had devoted families and faithful lovers, and paralyzing erotic crises on the way to the Louvre and in the Roman Forum, and a library of great books and sublime operas in their agonized cancer-stricken heads, and quixotic political commitments that left them ethically compromised and in which they only half believed anyway.
This vulgar aestheticized pseudo-nostalgia of mine is no less symptomatic of the present general puerility than anything it would presume to judge (Marvel movies, etc.) and so is completely worthless in itself. But still, I am certain an attempt to appeal to it would have helped Verso to sell more copies! There’s anti-capitalism, and then again there’s a wasted opportunity. Eddé, anyway, ruefully acknowledges that she and Said weren’t very good leftists, were hardly going to lead or like a revolution—they were, she says, just “bourgeois rebels.” Bourgeois rebels would, I am sure, love this book.
July 7, 2021
This amazing book is more than biography and much more than literary biography. It threads the needle extremely well between a literary criticism of Said's work along with a eulogy for the man. Eddé's personal relationship with Said over a lifetime allows her to comment on sources, motives, and trajectories of his work over the years that other critics might miss or not give appropriate credit.
The book reads quickly and is very beautiful. One of the best parts of the book is the attention to the complicated nature of Said's Palestinian heritage to his work. Although many people have devoted long essays, chapters, and books to this question, Eddé does it in such a kind, personal, and loving way that you can't help but feel that great feeling as if you are considering it all anew, for the first time, or as a very living question. In short, she humanizes this titan without pulling back a curtain or diminishing him.
Great read but you should know a bit about Said's work and have read a bit more than Orientalism in order to get the full value of reading this. Goes quick, very emotional read with many beautiful asides about the nature of intellectual work. Loved it.
The book reads quickly and is very beautiful. One of the best parts of the book is the attention to the complicated nature of Said's Palestinian heritage to his work. Although many people have devoted long essays, chapters, and books to this question, Eddé does it in such a kind, personal, and loving way that you can't help but feel that great feeling as if you are considering it all anew, for the first time, or as a very living question. In short, she humanizes this titan without pulling back a curtain or diminishing him.
Great read but you should know a bit about Said's work and have read a bit more than Orientalism in order to get the full value of reading this. Goes quick, very emotional read with many beautiful asides about the nature of intellectual work. Loved it.
November 29, 2021
This is not a novel.
It is, however, a pretty great book. I come at it from a place of not knowing much about Said, and nothing at all about Eddé. I still loved it--lots of intricate analyses of complex problems, summed up at times very nicely. And some windows into both Said and Eddé. My favorite stuff was about his ideas' relationship to those of Camus and Sartre (though if you're going to use them in this book, why not deBeauvoir, too?), but it was nice to see Vico represented some too. And I learned quite a bit about Joseph Conrad.
It's also a lovely slice of how a person grieves.
It is, however, a pretty great book. I come at it from a place of not knowing much about Said, and nothing at all about Eddé. I still loved it--lots of intricate analyses of complex problems, summed up at times very nicely. And some windows into both Said and Eddé. My favorite stuff was about his ideas' relationship to those of Camus and Sartre (though if you're going to use them in this book, why not deBeauvoir, too?), but it was nice to see Vico represented some too. And I learned quite a bit about Joseph Conrad.
It's also a lovely slice of how a person grieves.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews