ABSTRACT
The popular image of Said as an activist/ideologue locked into his own doctrine is the opposite of the Said I encountered at Columbia, a restless character who could not embrace any position or idea without simultaneously pushing it away. Foes painted him as an evil ideologue-automaton who was the implacable agent of much bigger forces. Friends rewrote him to make him consistent, logical, and imitable. But friends and foes alike tried to routinize and institutionalize his charisma. In consequence Said’s colorful world has gone gray, and younger critics getting him second-hand conclude that “Said wasn’t even boring.”2
