The World Said Built

Timothy Brennan, Places of Mind: A Life of Edward Said. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021. Pp. 464. H. Aram Veeser, Edward Said: The Charisma of Criticism. New York: Routledge, 2010. Pp. 272. Watching the famous 1986 debate between Edward Said and Bernard Lewis at the Middle East Studies Association some thirty-six years later, one is struck by the element of spectacle in the exercise, as well as the sheer superficiality of the discussion. Ostensibly a debate between two men whose bitter arguments had until then been limited to the printed page, Columbia English professor Edward Said and the (by then retired) Princeton Arabist Bernard Lewis debated “the scholars, the media, and the Middle East.” Two additional panelists, correspondent for the Nation Christopher Hitchens, at that time a Left zealot, and Leon Wieseltier, a former student of Said’s and literary editor at the New Republic, occasionally spoke as well.