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imthechillalex's review against another edition
4.0
I’m a little too stupid to get the parts about opera, but when Said starts talking about Visconti that’s something I can understand
wmhenrymorris's review against another edition
Great concept. Mostly focused on opera so it wasn't that interesting to me, but the first and last chapters and the chapter on The Leopaard were great.
lovegriefandgender's review against another edition
4.0
There's a sanctity to this book, because it was (ironically, or perhaps unironically) published posthumously so has a special status as Said's last work. It's fantastically written, informed but with clarity. Where it struggles though, is when the discourse deviates in favour of an enthusiasm.
nearit's review against another edition
5.0
Anything that seems like mere digression is part of the subtle argument, and adds to the description of a type of talent that is made possible by conditions it seeks to abolish, disrupt or supersede entirely.
quintusmarcus's review
5.0
From 2010 reading:I first read Said's On Late Style a few years ago, and returned to re-read it in light of some more recent publications. What is "lateness", as Said defines it? "Lateness" as a concept is not necessarily restricted to an artists's late compositions, but is rather a condition. Said challenges earlier definitions of lateness that focus on maturity and serenity, preferring rather to focus on style characterized by "intransigence, difficulty, and unresolved contradiction". Said takes his cue from Adorno, who sees in Beethoven's final works an art that is "uncreconciled, uncoopted by a higher synthesis: they do not fit any scheme, and they cannot be reconciled or resolved, since their irresolution and unsynthesized fragmentariness are constitutive, neither ornamental nor symbolic of something else." These works are characterized by negativity: "...where one would expect serenity and maturity, one instead finds a bristling, difficult, and unyielding--perhaps even inhuman--challenge."
Said exands this thesis out to examine late works in opera, film, and literature, focussing on those compositions that "remain uncreconciled, uncoopted by a higher synthesis". These qualites are located in Strauss, Britten, Thomas Mann, Euripides, and Lampedusa, and woven into a broad cultural critique. Althpugh Adorno's essay on Beethoven was well known, Said's exposition has reverberated in the years since the publication of On Late Style. The analysis of "lateness" is now a scholarly position, as eveidenced by such new monographs as Margaret Notley's "Lateness and Brahms", which places Brahms's last works in the context of music and culture at the twilight of Viennese liberalism. Said's book is a collection of essays brought together after his death, and though necessarily lacking a final, unifying summation, are nonetheless highly illuminating, and essential reading for any analyst of culture.
Said exands this thesis out to examine late works in opera, film, and literature, focussing on those compositions that "remain uncreconciled, uncoopted by a higher synthesis". These qualites are located in Strauss, Britten, Thomas Mann, Euripides, and Lampedusa, and woven into a broad cultural critique. Althpugh Adorno's essay on Beethoven was well known, Said's exposition has reverberated in the years since the publication of On Late Style. The analysis of "lateness" is now a scholarly position, as eveidenced by such new monographs as Margaret Notley's "Lateness and Brahms", which places Brahms's last works in the context of music and culture at the twilight of Viennese liberalism. Said's book is a collection of essays brought together after his death, and though necessarily lacking a final, unifying summation, are nonetheless highly illuminating, and essential reading for any analyst of culture.
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