Reply #14: LA Times obituary [View All]

[bemildred]

A somewhat more detailed picture of the man:

Edward W. Said, an influential Columbia University
professor of literature whose public role as the
West's most eloquent spokesman for the
Palestinian cause brought him both condemnation
and awe over the past three decades, died at a
New York hospital Wednesday after a long battle
with chronic leukemia. He was 67.

Said was a fascinating, complex figure who
sometimes spoke of his two quite separate lives.
He was a Princeton- and Harvard-trained literary
scholar who could knowledgeably expound on the
works of such great Western writers as Joseph
Conrad, Rudyard Kipling and Jane Austen. He also
was an engaged academic, a thinker and an
activist whose articulate and emotional advocacy
of Palestinian sovereignty brought him wide media
exposure and an unwelcome degree of notoriety.

In the Arab world, Said was revered as "Mr.
Palestine in America," who brought a luminous
intelligence to the challenge of humanizing the
Western world's perceptions of the Palestinian
struggle.

"He put us, the Palestinian cause, within the
consciousness of people who would much rather
have been dismissive," Palestinian legislator Hanan
Ashrawi told The Times on Thursday. "He brought
Palestine to the world of intellect, and made it part
of the public discourse, particularly in the West."

LA Times (reg. req.)