Places of Mind

A Life of Edward Said

By: Timothy Brennan

Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon

Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

Places of Mind reveals Said 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.

©2021 Timothy Brennan (P)2021 Tantor

Great biography,

This biography of Said is particularly important in our time of Palestinian/Israeli conflict. I wish the reader had done a quick Wikipedia check to find out how to pronounce many of the names of the important scholars the book discusses such as Flaubert, Barthes, Louis Althusser, Marcuse and-jarringly- Cockburn.

The book is a lovely portrait of Said

This review is of the audio narration, not the book itself. Most if not all Arabic words were heavily butchered. People’s names mispronounced… it’s a little ironic… we couldn’t hire an Arabic speaker to read a book about the man who wrote Orientalism.

Promise and peril of being a public intellectual

Brennan's biography of Edward Said is written through the prism of a former student's deep admiration for his mentor, yet it remains critical of his subject's ideas and motivations. Far from the exhaustive warts-and-all biography that is often the result of a writer becoming immersed in personal papers and extensive interviews, Brennan remains focused on Said's ideas. For the most part, Brennan dedicates himself to explaining and analyzing the cultural, political, and historical context which shaped Said's published work, not his private life. Dealing with the political complications of the Middle East throughout, Brennan also uses Said's story to chart the broader trajectory of academia since the 1960s. In doing so he asks critical questions about intellectual freedom, political efficacy, and the minefields that public intellectuals must navigate. The institutional history found here regarding Columbia University is especially informative. This book helps explain both Said's lasting influence and the ways in which his work continues to generate divided responses both in and out of the academy.

Extraordinary uniquely Palestinian

An extraordinary man we were lucky that he was Palestinian. He was our great intellect. A man who saw the world I head of his time. It is a fitting biography.