Laila Lalami

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Department of Good News I Needed to Hear On A Rainy Monday Morning: Dzanc Books has announced that its first title as a publishing house will be a short story collection by my pal Roy Kesey (Nothing in the World). The book is called All Over and is due out in October 2007. You can read all about it here.

The El Paso Times had a profile of me in their weekend edition. Check it out.

I’ll be reading from Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits this Saturday night at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle. Here are the details:

Saturday, November 4
7:30 PM
Reading and Discussion
Elliott Bay Book Company
101 South Main Street
Seattle, Washington

Be there!

Earlier in the day, though, I’ll be stopping by the Olympia Timberland Library for a reading and discussion of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits. Details:

Saturday, November 4
2:00 PM
Reading and Discussion
Olympia Timberland Library
313 8th Ave. SE
Olympia, Washington

Please come by and say hello!

Several people sent me a link to William Grimes’s review of Robert Irwin’s Dangerous Knowledge, a new book that appears to be a rebuttal of Edward Said’s Orientalism. I was dismayed by the review: Its first line calls Said’s book “a polemic” without offering much of a reason why that label should be applied to such a careful, well-sourced work. (And I say this as someone who very much enjoyed Orientalism, even if I didn’t agree with everything in it.) And I’m sorry to say that Grimes doesn’t appear to have understood Said’s work. For example he states that “orientalism is conceptually imperialist”–but this is a misreading of the book. Said himself acknowledged the contribution of classical orientalists like Maxime Rodinson.

In addition, Grimes freely admits that the historical background crucial to understanding Irwin’s rebuttal is “occasionally tough going for anyone not familiar with the field,” a category Grimes seems to place himself in, and yet, despite his unfamiliarity with the academic background, he delights in Irwin’s criticism: “The payoff is Mr. Irwin’s all-out assault on Mr. Said, which makes for bracing reading.” I think Edward Said, and his work, deserve better.