Interesting parts of a posthume collection of essays. especially the way he plays with and a few times against notions of 'late style and catastrophes' of Adorno.
Beautiful general definition of the 'term late-style' when he writes about Beethoven:'fully in command of his medium nevertheless abandons communication with the established social order of which he is a port and achieves a contradictory, alienated relationship with it. His late works constitute a form of exile.' It is a pity that the chapter on Britten's Opera Dead in Venice hardly explains how almost all of the 'late style' is recognizable in Mann's novella and does not even mention the Visconti film, while he writes a very original and clever chapter about 'Il Gattaopardo' and Visconti's film about the book. ( )

Emperor's new clothes claptrap. ( )

Edward Said, perhaps best known for "Orientalism," one of the most-recognized and important contributions to post-colonial studies, wrote the essays in "On Late Style" shortly before his death. The sense of "lateness" - of mortality, of obsolescence - permeates them, and they cover everything from the music of Strauss, Mozart, and Beethoven, to the political activism of Jean Genet, to "Il Gattopardo" (as envisioned by both Lampedusa and Visconti). In many ways, this is Said's last conversation with Theodor Adorno, whose presence deeply informs his criticism in many of these essays.

The book begins by reading around lateness as an aspect of chronological development - as synonymous with maturity - and opens the concept up as something that can realize "intransigence, difficulty, and unresolved contradiction," instead of the facile harmony and resolution that seeks the end of all tension. Said claims that late style refuses to reconcile what is impossible to reconcile, and that this reconciliation is oftentimes just a refusal to accept difference. It "grasps the difficulty of what cannot be grasped and then goes forth to try anyway." Musicologist Rose Subotnik says of the late work of Beethoven, no doubt with his Missa Solemnis or the Ninth Symphony in mind, "no synthesis is conceivable [but is in effect] the remains of a synthesis, the vestige of an individual human subject sorely aware of its wholeness, and consequently the survival, that has eluded it forever." It is this idea of lateness - which is quite distinct from, but not completely unrelated to, mortality and death - which Said puts to critical use in these wonderful essays.

While I think that everything in the book is worth reading, a few essays especially jumped out as being worthy of attention. In "Return to the Eighteenth Century," Said sets out to carve a middle path between two radically different opinions on the late operas of Richard Strauss. Adorno's rejection and derision of them is total, saying that he "intended to master music without submitting to its discipline" and that "his ego ideal is now fully identified with the Freudian genital-character who is uninhibitedly out for his own pleasure." Compare this with Glenn Gould's hagiographic characterization of Strauss as "more than the greatest man of music of our times." In one of the most convincing arguments made in the book, Said argues against Adorno's accusation of Strauss being a Beidermeier relic, and that he went a long way in countering Wagner's theatrical idiom of "history as a grand system to which everyone and every small narrative is subject," becoming the "keeper of the art of our fathers."

The most compelling and readable essay in the collection is "On Jean Genet," an autobiographical account of Said's two encounters with Genet during the early 1970s. The second of these, which took place in Beirut, allowed Said to learn about Genet's role in Palestinian activism, which was passionate and total. Through a reading of "Les Paravents," Said argues that because of Genet's lifelong marginality as a thief, prisoner, and homosexual, that he was able to sympathize with Palestinians without the Western rose-colored glasses of Orientalism.

I recommend this for anyone, especially those seriously interested in classical music. For Said admirers who have only known him as a literary critic, these essays open up whole new vistas by displaying the full panoply of his concerns and academic interests. While I have the suspicion that many musicologists would disagree with his characterizations of, for example, Mozart and late Beethoven and perhaps Strauss, these are nevertheless well-wrought essays constructed with lapidary reasoning. These essays are all the more poignant because Said knew that he was in the last stages of his fight with leukemia as they were being written. Readers who admire Said for his clear presentation of sometimes very opaque ideas will not be disappointed with this collection. ( )

It’s good that Edward Said got far enough with the writing of this book to allow it to be published posthumously. It’s sad, though, that he was not able to finish it himself. The editors spliced together notes, lectures and essays into a book, without having to add any bridging paragraphs or explanations — all the words are Said’s.

But the trouble is that it reads like a bunch of essays and lecture notes spliced together. There’s nothing really tying it all together, apart from the overall theme of ‘lateness’. For Said, this means artists who towards the end of their careers do not bask in their achievements but remain dissatisfied: ‘artistic lateness not as harmony and resolution but as intransigence, difficulty and unresolved contradiction.’ He is interested in artists who find themselves apart from their contemporaries, yet refuse to age gracefully. ‘It is as if having achieved age, they want none of its supposed serenity or maturity, or any of its amiability or official ingratiation. Yet in none of them is mortality denied or evaded, but keeps coming back as the theme of death which undermines, and strangely elevates their uses of language and the asthetic.’

Unfortunately, such passages are few and far between in ‘On Late Style.’ The book is mostly just an essay on Beethoven followed by an essay on Glenn Gould, followed by one on Benjamin Britten. All are interesting in their way, although I suffered from not being familiar with many of the examples he draws on. With a few months more work, they could have been shaped into a book, with a strong theme developed and the relevance of each essay made clear. Sadly that is just what was lacking, and so we are left with a half-formed book, promising much but leaving this reader wanting more. ( )