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A Life of Edward Said
by Timothy Brennan
The first comprehensive biography of the most influential, controversial, and celebrated Palestinian intellectual of the twentieth century.
As someone who studied under Edward Said and remained a friend until his death in 2003, Timothy Brennan had unprecedented access to his thesis adviser's ideas and legacy. In this authoritative work, Said, the pioneer of postcolonial studies, a tireless champion for his native Palestine, and an erudite literary critic, emerges as a self-doubting, tender, eloquent advocate of literature's dramatic effects on politics and civic life.
Charting the intertwined routes of Said's intellectual development, Places of Mind reveals him as a study in opposites: a cajoler and strategist, a New York intellectual with a foot in Beirut, an orchestra impresario in Weimar and Ramallah, a raconteur on national television, a Palestinian negotiator at the State Department, and an actor in films in which he played himself. Brennan traces the Arab influences on Said's thinking along with his tutelage under Lebanese statesmen, off-beat modernist auteurs, and New York literati, as Said grew into a scholar whose influential writings changed the face of university life forever. With both intimidating brilliance and charm, Said melded these resources into a groundbreaking and influential countertradition of radical humanism, set against the backdrop of techno-scientific dominance and religious war. With unparalleled clarity, Said gave the humanities a new authority in the age of Reaganism, one that continues today.
Drawing on the testimonies of family, friends, students, and antagonists alike, and aided by FBI files, unpublished writings, and Said's drafts of novels and personal letters, Places of Mind synthesizes Said's intellectual breadth and influence into an unprecedented, intimate, and compelling portrait of one of the great minds of the twentieth century.
"Drawing on abundant archival sources, Said's hefty FBI file, his published and unpublished works, and hundreds of interviews, Brennan...traces the evolution of a boldly transformative, controversial thinker, considered to be the inventor of post-colonial studies...Exemplary scholarship informs an absorbing biography." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[A] meticulous account on the intertwined personal, professional, and political lives of professor and public intellectual Edward Said...Brennan's work will be invaluable reading for students of Said or the postcolonial critical movement his work sparked." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"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. 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." - Library Journal (starred review)
"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." - Booklist
"In Places of Mind, Timothy Brennan offers a portrait of Edward Said in all his complexity, revealing multiple aspects of his life and work unknown even to some of those closest to him. Relying on a remarkable range of sources, ranging from Said's private papers to extensive interviews, Brennan offers us an elegiac and nuanced portrait of one of the most influential literary figures of the past century, who was also the foremost public advocate for the rights of the Palestinian people." - Rashid Khalidi, author of Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East
"Timothy Brennan delivers a powerful and moving portrait of Edward Said, a multi-dimensional public intellectual, teacher, activist, artist, and scholar. As someone who knew the subject of this book quite well―as tennis partner, editor, and fellow traveler in Israel/Palestine―I feel on every page of this book in the presence of both confirmation and revelation. From his precocious childhood to his scholarly triumphs and critical battles, to his final struggles with illness and the intricacies of his 'latestyle,' Said emerges as one of the essential intellectuals of our time, brave, inventive, incisive, and prophetic, portrayed against a historical background as complex and contradictory as its main subject." - W. J. T. Mitchell, author of Mental Traveler: A Father, a Son, and a Journey through Schizophrenia
"Timothy Brennan's study of Edward Said is an outstanding intellectual and personal biography of one of the 20th century's most brilliant and debated scholars. Deeply researched and erudite, Places of Mind is also written with the elegance and power of a novel that Said himself would have admired. To read these pages is to understand the enormity of Said's often singular contributions and the profound void he has left behind. A tour de force." - Sara Roy, author of Unsilencing Gaza: Reflections on Resistance
This information about Places of Mind was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Timothy Brennan is the author of several books, including At Home in the World: Cosmopolitanism Now; Borrowed Light: Vico, Hegel, and the Colonies; and Salman Rushdie and the Third World: Myths of the Nation. His writing has appeared in the Nation, The Times Literary Supplement, and other outlets. He teaches in the humanities at the University of Minnesota and has received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
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