At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches - Softcover

Sontag, Susan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141031689 ISBN 13: 9780141031682

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2008

Synopsis

The sixteen essays gathered here represent the last pieces written by Susan Sontag in the years before her death in 2004. Reflecting on literature, photography and art, post-9/11 America and political activism, these essays encompass the themes that dominated Sontag's life and work, revealing why she remains one of the twentieth-century's preeminent writers and thinkers.

About this title

About the Author

Susan Sontag was born in Manhattan in 1933 and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. Her non-fiction works include Against Interpretation, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, AIDS and its Metaphors and Regarding the Pain of Others. She is also the author of four novels, a collection of stories and several plays. Her books are translated into thirty-two languages. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work, and in 2003 she received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. She died in December 2004.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Literature and politics are inextricably intertwined and unified by moral purpose in this powerful collection of pieces (a couple not previously published in English or at all) by iconic critic and novelist Sontag (Regarding the Pain of Others), who died in 2004. Sontag was a dedicated champion of literature in translation, and the book opens with several introductions to such works, led off by a meditation on beauty. The section might have been called "Art and Ardor," so laced is it with artistic passion, both Sontag's own and that of the writers she celebrates, such as Leonid Tsypkin and Anna Banti. Part three contains speeches Sontag gave in accepting the Jerusalem Prize and other awards, and honoring others whose moral courage she admired. But most striking is to re-read the pieces she wrote in the wake of 9/11 and the Abu Ghraib scandal, which constitute the book's middle section. Sontag's controversial attack on the Bush administration immediately after 9/11 may have been an act of courage or of folly, but from a distance of five years, her critique seems on the mark. Sontag's brilliance as a literary critic, her keen analytical skill and her genius for the searingly apt phrase (like her damning "the photographs are us" in relation to the Abu Ghraib photos) are all fiercely displayed here. (Mar. 6)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0141031689
• ISBN 13: 9780141031682
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256