This was an unexpected pleasure, as I'd never read Said before and was fearful of drowning in jargon. He's largely un-jargony, with the exception of some mentions of "universalizing discourses" here and there. Pleasantly catholic in his tastes, he finds merit in authors as diverse as Kipling and Achebe. There was a little too much of Frantz Fanon for me, but tidbits I especially liked included a brief discussion of the fabulousness, erudition, and extinction of philology-trained scholars like Erich Auerbach; his analysis of A Passage to India; a tantalizing mention of "the professionalization of intellectual life" which I wish had been more extensive; and his calling bullshit on Fouad Ajami.

Like all of Edward Said's writings this book is endlessly repetitive, but if you can wade through the thickets of verbiage you'll find gems of extraordinary insight. The subject of the book is obvious from the title, but the book also offers a trenchant critique of nativist nationalism. Drawing on Fanon, Said argues that nationalism might serve as a mobilizing force during the war of liberation but unless it develops a social and political vision in its evolution toward liberation, it will ossify into mere nativism. Said's analysis of empire's cultural appendages, and the responses of the colonized are original, but unfortunately there is little that is original in his chapter on America. His commentary on Conrad, whom he oldly lumps with Kipling over and over, is equally problematic. For a superior analysis of Conrad's prophetic "Heart of Darkness", I'd recommend Sven Lindqvist's "Exterminate All the Brutes".

This book certainly has its problems and I don't agree with all of Said's arguments as breathlessly as I did when I first read it, but considering he was one of the first people to say these things, I still think it's pretty amazing. This book was as important to the way I think about literature as _Midnight's Children_, and that's saying a lot.