I’d read some Edward Said in college and have obviously become familiar with his work as a Palestinian, but this biography was absolutely enlightening. It’s my favorite kind of book, tracing the intellectual development of a writer and the evolution of his ideas over a lifetime.
By training, Said was a man of text. He received his PhD in English Literature from Harvard, becoming a professor of English at Columbia. His early work, especially in his books Beginnings and Orientalism, argued that texts should be analyzed not just for their content, but also for their form, structure, and the conditions under which they were produced. Said questioned the idea of a singular, fixed authorial intention, suggesting that an author’s intentions are shaped by their historical and cultural context.
Read alongside McLuhan, this book has a profound impact on me as both a writer and a Palestinian.