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You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed

for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read?

From KCRW Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today, in memory of Edward Said, who died in September 2003, we're rebroadcasting this conversation

that first aired in January 2002.

Saeed's many books include beginnings, intention, and method, orientalism, and culture

and imperialism.

Out of place, a memoir, and the Saeed reader are available from vintage.

Edward Said studied literature at Columbia University, where he also

taught for most of his life. During this conversation, Mr. Saeed is speaking by phone from his office

at Columbia University in New York City. I have a funny relationship myself with the work of Mr. Said.

I was a graduate student in the State University of New York at Buffalo,

and for the entire year before his first major post-dissertation work appeared,

we were receiving as if urgent missives chapters of Edward Syed's beginning intention and method to read.

The book was expected by my professors, among them Eugenio Donado, René Girard, Homer Brown,

to be the next step in what was then hermeneutical criticism.

While beginnings opened the door and oversaw a huge territory of possibilities in literary criticism.

It was Said's next book, Orientalism, that by choosing a particular entrance,

really did revolutionize the field of literary criticism,

...