In Power, Politics, and Culture, Gauri Vishwanathan, one of Said's colleagues at Columbia, has cast a wide net and gathered interviews from India, Pakistan, the Arab World and Israel. Remarkable for their conversational quality, these interviews reflect as much the interviewers' politics and social concerns as they do Said's responses to them. True to form, Said is never reluctant to throw down the gauntlet and challenge an interviewer. Speaking with Hasan M. Jafri of the Karachi (Pakistan) Herald, in an interview conducted soon after Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued his famous death fatwa against author Salman Rushdie, Said pursues Rushdie's funfamentalist detractors with the same trademark energy he might devote to castigating a Shamir or a Netanyahu. To wit: " I am an absolute believer in absolute freedom of expression. As a Palestinian, I have fought Israeli attempts to censor my people in what they can write or read. A lot of our battle for liberation has to do with freedoms of thought and opinion and expression. I firmly believe in them. So, let me say, regardless of the reason, I believe there should be no censorship at all." He continues: "...I am very disturbed by the whole thing ( the Rushdie affair ) and I just wish that Salman Rushdie could lead a normal life.....It's a huge price to pay for an individual. He has lost the ability to be free. He can't move around as he wishes. He can't see his son. His second marriage failed while he was in hiding. I feel it shouldn't happen to anyone. Our world is big enough to have people like Salman Rushdie writing as they do and to debate what they say. But to condemn him to death and to burn his book and to ban it - those are horrible, horrible things." Incidentally, Pakistan was in the grip of anti-Rushdie riots after the announcement of the fatwa, but on Said's request The Herald printed all of his comments in Rushdie's defense.

His bete noir, The New Republic, gets similar treatment. In a panel discussion chaired by William McNeil ( formerly of the News Hour), and joined by both Christopher Hitchens and Leon Wieseltier, Said reads from a theater review published in that magazine. ...."Where did the follwing review appear: The description of a play at the American Repertory Theater in this town: 'The universalist prejudice of our culture prepared us for this play's Arab, a crazed Arab to be sure, but crazed in the distinctive ways of his culture. He is intoxicated by language, cannot discern between fantasy and reality, abhors compromise, always blames others for his predicament and, in the end, lances the painful boil of his frustrations in a pointless, though momentarily gratifying act of bloodlust.' " Said turns to Wieseltier: "I disagree with you Leon; I'm sorry, I don't believe that could appear about an Indian or an African in any other magazine in this country."

As an antidote to their prejudices about at least one Arab, Leon and his friends at TNR would be well advised to read Power, Politics and Culture. As for the Ayatollahs, they will surely have to. Anything Said says or does, as evidenced in these interviews, is an event in the Middle East. Before long, pirated editions of this book, in Persian, will be available in the myriad bookshops on Enghelab Avenue, the student ghetto outside Tehran University. Arabic copies will sell from Casablanca to Riyadh. In this country too, this volume will hold readers spellbound. Whether he is talking literary theory or street politics, Edward Said brings an immediacy to whatever it is he is discussing that is truly unique.


Truth and Respect   October 10, 2001
 31 out of 38 found this review helpful

Once again, Edward Said forces respect shows the extent of his talent as cultural critic, political essayist and world observer. Few intelectuals today can pretend applying a holisitic and methodological approach to world affairs and classical music at the same time. I highly recommend this book.

Regarding the comment below by the nameless individual "nylawguy", i would just make the following remarks to reestablish the truth:
- Edward Said is no longer a member of the PLO since 1992; however, I do not see why being a member of the PLO is such a problem: PLO members have been received at the White House on countless occasions last time I checked
-Edward Said has not thrown stones at israeli soldiers since he was on the lebanese side of the border when he was pictured throwing a stone. Surprisingly enough, only the NY press made such a big fuzz out of that picture where evidently Edward Said did not aim at anyone
- If you read carefully the book, you'll see that Said is actually one of the most vocal critics of Hamas' tactics, although he clearly tries to understand what led a desperate population of several million embrace Hamas so overwhelmingly

I hope readers will take the time to read this book and draw their conclusions on their own


Instinctively drawn to power   November 18, 2002
 12 out of 72 found this review helpful

Said says he's instinctively drawn to the other side of power, but it's funny to think about Oscar Wilde's axiom that whenever anybody says something true, the opposite of what they're saying is also true. Said is instinctively drawn to power. He's been president of the MLA, and he loves to hear his mouth run. He has no poetry, no humor, no art -- just relentless self-righteous upper-class whining. He makes millions a year with his poseur-politics, but he couldn't write a poem if he had until the sun burned out. He represents everything that is wrong with academia today -- from poetry we have turned to ideology, from humor and wit we have turned to self-righteousness. This man is simply incapable of taking anything lightly, or even turning a witty phrase. He is a pompous bore from an upper-class family. Anyone this drawn to power, and so utterly without style, cannot be taken seriously.


The Public Intellectual   January 20, 2002
 11 out of 43 found this review helpful

Edward Said certainly is a public intellectual. He is perhaps the most photographed and visible intellectual of our century. Whether he likes it or not he is a darling of the western media (which he disparages in his works) because whenever there is a controversy on the eastern side of the world stage he has something to say about it. He wants other modern intellectuals to be more like him, responsive to the world around them. I think this kind of public role has a good side(high level of public debate is a good thing) but also a detrimental side(a close relationship with day to day political changes makes one side with one or another point of view while the neutral vantage point is the traditional intellectuals role) which perhaps explains why so few intellectuals seek the limelight as Said does.
As for his two long works on western cultural history in the time of Imperialism(Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism) I find his analysis of texts and authors to be too narrowly bound to his stringent theories. His analysis of literary texts follows the same pattern every time. He seeks evidence in each text of the Imperialist attitude and proceeds from the scantest of details to speculate about authorial assumptions and limitations. All texts in his view are intimately bound to the historic moment from which they arose. A limited view which produces limited results.
Saids books are therefore studies of western representations of the east as found in texts and other media but are also more than that as he goes on to conclude that those attitudes are a contributing factor in the modern easts current predicament. This I think is the most troubling and unfortunate aspect of Saids work.
Said does come heavily endorsed by his colleagues. Reading the back of any of his books you might think he was the most important intellectual of our day. I think fewer share that assessment than might be imagined.
Power and Politics certainly go together. I think, however, Culture does not fit so neatly into the equation as Said would have you believe. The greatest authors and contributors to culture have always been those that stand apart and were more often than not quite at odds with the accepted notions of their day.


good politics   December 2, 2004
 7 out of 14 found this review helpful

Said gives good insight into politics, especially in the middle east. I didn't enjoy the literature section as much because I wasn't familiar with the authors.