W illiam Beckford's Vathek (1786), subtitled An Arabian Tale, displays an imagination and moral vision deeply penetrated by the perfumes of Arabia and the essence of Islam. Beckford's enthusiasm was not merely simple-minded ecstasy in a falsely perceived "Orient" of "sensuality, promise, terror, sublimity, idyllic pleasure, intense energy," like that which was seized upon and utilized, as Edward Said has shown, by his ~ontemporaries.~ Although Beckford succumbed to the temptation of projecting his fantasies onto an unknown and unknowable "other" world-a fictional Orient-his "Arabian" tale also offers evidence of a deeper intuition, in particular a sympathy with Islam (or what he took Islam to be) that lifts Beckford and his narrative beyond the bounds of the traditional English (and Christian) tale. Beckford's East is self-evidently grotesque, without any attempt at historical or geographical veracity. Yet under its wild and extravagant surface Beckford was attempting to introduce a new way of conceiving experience which, while not authentically "Eastern," was not conventionally "Western" either.' Vathek was influenced in its characterization, its description, its philosophy, even its structure, by the practices of the East as Beckford understood them; its consequent lack of conventional guideposts and its