Volume 30, Number 21 & 22 · January 19, 1984
Three-Part Inventions
By Irvin Ehrenpreis
The World, the Text, and the Critic
by Edward W. Said
Harvard University Press, 327 pp., $20.00
Edward Said's new book is a disconcerting example of a rational position sapped by alarming faults. As a practical and theoretical critic of literature, Said sacrifices accuracy and good sense to self-indulgent carelessness. His collection of essays deals with a range of writers from Swift to Conrad, with philosophers from Plato to Derrida, and with scholars from Ibn Hazm of the eleventh century to Professor Gerald Graff. But wherever I scrutinize the reasoning or try to verify the evidence, the weakness of his accomplishment disturbs me.
Review, 2652 words
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