Vance Miguel Johnson’s Reviews > Out of Place: A Memoir > Status Update
Vance Miguel Johnson
is on page 199 of 336
“During the middle fifties, while I was at Princeton, the Times reported on the Israeli plot to blow up Cairo cinemas and libraries that had American connections, like the Metro and the USIA center, […] a plan designed to sour relations between Nasser’s new government and the Americans. This was the Lavon Affair, and it was carried out by members of the local Jewish community…” Page 199
— May 11, 2026 10:40AM
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Vance Miguel Johnson
is on page 199 of 336
“Unrest: temporary, short-lived, impermanent, and somehow hostile to Egypt, a place that had once been the welcoming, open, laxurious. and voluptuous paradise for foreigners who reveled in its weather, unparalleled creature comforts, and, most important, the subservience of its natives.”
— May 11, 2026 10:37AM
Vance Miguel Johnson
is on page 197 of 336
“Madeleine [Ghorras] was very religious. [She] belonged to […] the Syro-Lebanese high bourgeoisie. […] I recall meeting de Zogheibs and de Chedids there, recipients of papal titles, which about a decade later, during the high Nasser years, struck me as grotesquely inappropriate[…] they spoke the heavily accented French of the Levant with its rolled r's” Pgs. 196-197
— May 11, 2026 10:24AM
Vance Miguel Johnson
is on page 182 of 336
This segment on Victoria College of Cairo seems meant to remind the reader of how terrible going to an authoritarian school is as a pubescent teenager.
— May 10, 2026 06:56AM
Vance Miguel Johnson
is on page 178 of 336
So, Edward, you found your freedom through tennis in Dhour, Lebanon after being a Princeton Graduate? I know how freeing it can feel to be on a tennis court. Very relatable.
— May 05, 2026 06:26AM
Vance Miguel Johnson
is on page 169 of 336
It’s very clear that Said’s documentation of Arabic words, especially proper nouns from his own attempts to translate and record things that were not being intellectually exported into English. Because of that, some of what he writes is information that otherwise seems to be unrecorded now in 2026 like that the American University was former called the Syrian College.
— Apr 29, 2026 11:00PM
Vance Miguel Johnson
is on page 159 of 336
Edward, your awkward childhood is pretty endearing. I'm happily surprised that all this didn't make you a very unkind person.
— Apr 06, 2026 01:37PM
