On Late Style

Edward Said's first book of literary criticism since 1993

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‘A series of dazzling case studies exploring the idea of lateness in a range of composers, writers and artists' - London Review of Books

‘Gracefully unquiet, probing and wise ... Said's own elegiac masterpiece of late style' - Financial Times

‘What Said stands for - critical intelligence, high art and the preservation of the language - must be at the centre of our lives. This book is a fine monument to his life and work' - Hanif Kureishi

‘His own late style, if it is acceptable to call it that, mixes an easy mastery of material with an unquenched desire to preserve difficulties' - Guardian
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On Late Style examines the work produced by great artists -Beethoven, Thomas Mann, Jean Genet among them - at the end of their lives. Said makes it clear that, rather than the resolution of a lifetime's artistic endeavour, most of the late works discussed are rife with contradiction and almost impenetrable complexity. He helps us see how, though these works often stood in direct contrast to the tastes of society, they were, just as often, announcements of what was to come in the artist's discipline - works of true artistic genius.