On Late Style - Music and Literature Against the Grain

_______________-A series of dazzling case studies exploring the idea of lateness in a range of composers, writers and artists'' - London Review of Books-Gracefully unquiet, probing and wise ... Said''s own elegiac masterpiece of late style'' - Financial Times-What Said stands for - critical intelligence, high art and the preservation of the language - must be at the centre of our lives. This book is a fine monument to his life and work'' - Hanif Kureishi-His own late style, if it is acceptable to call it that, mixes an easy mastery of material with an unquenched desire to preserve difficulties'' - Guardian_______________On Late Style examines the work produced by great artists -Beethoven, Thomas Mann, Jean Genet among them - at the end of their lives. Said makes it clear that, rather than the resolution of a lifetime''s artistic endeavour, most of the late works discussed are rife with contradiction and almost impene