Synopses & Reviews
Styles of Radical Will, Susan Sontag's second collection of essays, extends the investigations she undertook in Against Interpretation with essays on film, literature, politics, and a groundbreaking study of pornography.
Susan Sontag became a cultural figure upon the publication of her pathbreaking collection of essays Against Interpretation in 1966. She went on to write four novels, including In America, which won the National Book Award for Fiction, as well as a collection of stories, several plays, and seven subsequent works of nonfiction, among them On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, and Regarding the Pain of Others. Her many international honors included the Jerusalem Prize in 2001 and the Friedenspreis (Peace Prize) of the German Book Trade in 2003. She died in New York City on December 28, 2004. Styles of Radical Will, Susan Sontag's second collection of essays, first appeared in the mid-1960s. The book extends the investigations Sontag had begun in her landmark Against Interpretation, with writings on film, literature, politics, and a groundbreaking study of pornography.
Susan Sontag's essays are great interpretations and even fulfillments of what is really going on.--Carlos Fuentes
Susan Sontag] is one of the most interesting and valuable critics we possess, a writer from whom it's continually possible to learn.--Richard Gilman, The New Republic
She has come to symbolize the writer and thinker in many variations: as analyst, rhapsodist, and roving eye, as public scold and portable conscience.--Time
Miss Sontag emerges from Styles of Radical Will . . . as an open and vulnerable intellect, a consciousness in process of transformation . . . Her first essay, 'The Aesthetics of Silence' is a brilliant and important account of Western tradition of artistic revolt against language, against thinking, against consciousness.--Robert Sklar, The Nation
It should be remembered that Miss Sontag has now written four of the most valuable intellectual documents of the past ten years: 'Against Interpretation, ' 'Notes on Camp, ' The Aesthetics of Silence, ' and 'Trip to Hanoi.' In the world in which she's chosen to live, she continues to be the best there is.--The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Susan Sontag's essays are great interpretations and even fulfillments of what is really going on."—
Carlos Fuentes"[Susan Sontag] is one of the most interesting and valuable critics we possess, a writer from whom it's continually possible to learn."—Richard Gilman, The New Republic
"She has come to symbolize the writer and thinker in many variations: as analyst, rhapsodist, and roving eye, as public scold and portable conscience."—Time magazine
"Miss Sontag emerges from Styles of Radical Will . . . as an open and vulnerable intellect, a consciousness in process of transformation . . . Her first essay, 'The Aesthetics of Silence' is a brilliant and important account of Western tradition of artistic revolt against language, against thinking, against consciousness."—Robert Sklar, The Nation
"It should be remembered that Miss Sontag has now written four of the most valuable intellectual documents of the past ten years: 'Against Interpretation,' 'Notes on Camp,' The Aesthetics of Silence,' and 'Trip to Hanoi.' In the world in which she's chosen to live, she continues to be the best there is."—The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
Styles of Radical Will, Susan Sontag's second collection of essays, extends the investigations she undertook in
Against Interpretation with essays on film, literature, politics, and a groundbreaking study of pornography.
Synopsis
Styles of Radical Will, Susan Sontag's second collection of essays, extends the investigations she undertook in
Against Interpretation with essays on film, literature, politics, and a groundbreaking study of pornography.
About the Author
Susan Sontag is the author of four novels, The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In America, which won the 2000 National Book Award for fiction; and five works of nonfiction, among them On Photography, which won the National Book Critics' Circle Award for criticism, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, and most recently, Where the Stress Falls. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work.
Table of Contents
I.
The Aesthetics of Silence
The Pornographic Imagination
"Thinking Against Oneself": Reflections on Cioran
II.
Theatre and Film
Bergman's Persona
Godard
III.
What's Happening in America (1966)
Trip to Hanoi