The Last Amateur is a hugely original and much-anticipated major work by a singular critic. The wager of the book, developed over a series of intricate readings and reflections that sit somewhere between memoir and critical argument, is that reading Swift through Said and Said through Swift transforms bothand, I think, us, as well. The Last Amateur makes good on this ambitious wager. The force of Deutschs claim comes from what it reveals about each of these writers and a set of important questions or commitments they share: about the practice of criticism and the role of the critic, the relationship between cultural traditions and a radically different future, and the relationship between the humanities and freedom. * Heather Keenleyside, University of Chicago * The Last Amateur is an exciting, original, and subtle book. There is a brilliant close reading of Swift and Said, and there are wonderful suggestions about what they mean when we put them together. How can Swift be the last amateur if Said (and many others) followed him? The same goes for Said, and we begin to realize how the word is working. We shant understand these writers if we dont see how they situate themselves in relation to some kind of threatened ending, the fear that no one will follow them, that the very mode they write in will die. The book will be of considerable interest to anyone seeking challenging questions about books, reading, biography, and the hope for some sort of mitigation of dark days. * Michael Wood, Princeton University *
