Synopses & Reviews
One of my oldest crusades is against the distinction between thought and feeling, which is really the basis of all anti-intellectual views: the heart and the head, thinking and feeling, fantasy and judgment . . . and I dont believe its true. . . . I have the impression that thinking is a form of feeling and that feeling is a form of thinking.”
Susan Sontag, one of the most internationally renowned and controversial intellectuals of the latter half of the twentieth century, still provokes. In 1978 Jonathan Cott, a founding contributing editor of Rolling Stone magazine, interviewed Sontag first in Paris and later in New York. Only a third of their twelve hours of discussion ever made it to print. Now, more than three decades later, Yale University Press is proud to publish the entire transcript of Sontags remarkable conversation, accompanied by Cotts preface and recollections. Sontags musings and observations reveal the passionate engagement and breadth of her critical intelligence and curiosities at a moment when she was at the peak of her powers. Nearly a decade after her death, these hours of conversation offer a revelatory and indispensable look at the self-described "besotted aesthete" and "obsessed moralist."
I really believe in history, and thats something people dont believe in anymore. I know that what we do and think is a historical creation. . . .We were given a vocabulary that came into existence at a particular moment. So when I go to a Patti Smith concert, I enjoy, participate, appreciate, and am tuned in better because Ive read Nietzsche.”
Theres no incompatibility between observing the world and being tuned into this electronic, multimedia, multi-tracked, McLuhanite world and enjoying what can be enjoyed. I love rock and roll. Rock and roll changed my life. . . .You know, to tell you the truth, I think rock and roll is the reason I got divorced. I think it was Bill Haley and the Comets and Chuck Berry that made me decide that I had to get a divorce and leave the academic world and start a new life.”
Review
“I really believe in history, and thats something people dont believe in anymore. I know that what we do and think is a historical creation. . . .We were given a vocabulary that came into existence at a particular moment. So when I go to a Patti Smith concert, I enjoy, participate, appreciate, and am tuned in better because Ive read Nietzsche.”
Susan Sontag
Review
“Theres no incompatibility between observing the world and being tuned into this electronic, multimedia, multi-tracked, McLuhanite world and enjoying what can be enjoyed. I love rock and roll. Rock and roll changed my life. . . .You know, to tell you the truth, I think rock and roll is the reason I got divorced. I think it was Bill Haley and the Comets and Chuck Berry that made me decide that I had to get a divorce and leave the academic world and start a new life.”
Susan Sontag
Review
“One of my oldest crusades is against the distinction between thought and feeling, which is really the basis of all anti-intellectual views: the heart and the head, thinking and feeling, fantasy and judgment. . .and I dont believe its true. . . .I have the impression that thinking is a form of feeling and that feeling is a form of thinking.”
Susan Sontag
Review
“A humanizing interview with the late cultural icon, who was often perceived as a fiercely aggressive and polarizing intellect.”—Kirkus Reviews
Review
“A great resource for longtime followers of the critic and novelist, as well as for those encountering this great mind for the first time.”—Publishers Weekly
Review
“A strong and deeply personal argument about what it means to be cultured.”—Mark O'Connell, Slate Mark O'Connell
Review
“This long and largely genial portrait of the (not always quite so genial) intellectual in middle age also amounts to a strong and deeply personal argument about what it means to be cultured.”—Mark OConnell, Slate
Review
"There's no incompatibility between observing the world and being tuned into an electronic, multimedia, multi-tracked, McLuhanite world . . Rock 'n' roll really changed my life. I think rock 'n' roll is the reason I got divorced. It was Bill Haley and the Comets, Chuck Berry . . . So when I go to a Patti Smith concert, I enjoy, participate, appreciate and am tuned in better because I've read Nietzche."—Susan Sontag, from the Rolling Stone interview Slate
Review
One of Brainpicking's Best Books of 2013, selected by Maria Popova. Mark O'Connell - Slate
Review
One of Brain Pickings's Best Books of 2013, selected by Maria Popova.
Review
"The full, wide-ranging magnificence of their tête-à-tête, spanning literature, philosophy, illness, mental health, music, art, and much more, is at last released. . . . A rare glimpse of one of modern history's greatest minds in her element."—Maria Popova,
Brain Pickings; selected by Popova as one of the best books of 2013
Review
andldquo;The present clear, readable, and relatively brief biography, in Reaktionandrsquo;s andlsquo;Critical Livesandrsquo; series, is the best available introduction to Sontagandrsquo;s life. Maunsell pays extended attention to her workandmdash;essays, novels, short stories, and filmsandmdash;as well as her life.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Maunsell presents a nuanced account of Sontagandrsquo;s intellectual development. He traces her ever-present subjects, above all the duty of the writer to direct attention, while seeing that her books arose andlsquo;out of self-correctionandrsquo; and self-contestation, the result of a continuing andlsquo;readiness to immerse herself in contemporariness.andrsquo; Indeed, the achievement of Maunsellandrsquo;s biography is that he makes sense of Sontagandrsquo;s responsiveness to the contemporary and the currency this gave her work for over half a centuryandmdash;a period long enough for her to repeatedly modify arguments or reason on the contrary. She was an oppositional writer, and the opposition was frequently wielded against herself. Maunsell champions her andlsquo;crucially misunderstoodandrsquo; early novels, judged as failures in realism rather than on their own terms as Duchamp-like andlsquo;endlessly reconstructable puzzles,andrsquo; designed to resist analysis.andrdquo; and#160;
Review
andldquo;Above all, Sontag was a writerandmdash;with all the longing, doubt, envy, and occasional sabotage of her own talent that implies. She seems more, not less, of a sympathetic character now that we know how much energy she put into constructing a persona called Susan Sontag, then playing the role with panache . . . This [is a] short but instructive biography . . . a svelte account of Sontagandrsquo;s life.andrdquo; and#160;
Review
andldquo;Maunsellandrsquo;s short biography covers both the life and the work [of Sontag] and integrates the two effectively. . . . Maunsellandrsquo;s book is highly readable, and, to date, is the best of the biographical writings.andrdquo; and#160;
Synopsis
Published in its entirety for the first time, a candid conversation with Susan Sontag at the height of her brilliant career
Synopsis
Susan Sontag, one of the most internationally renowned and controversial intellectuals of the latter half of the twentieth century, still provokes. In 1978 Jonathan Cott, a founding contributing editor of Rolling Stone magazine, interviewed Sontag first in Paris and later in New York. Only a third of their twelve hours of discussion ever made it to print. Now, more than three decades later, Yale University Press is proud to publish the entire transcript of Sontags remarkable conversation, accompanied by Cotts preface and recollections. Sontags musings and observations reveal the passionate engagement and breadth of her critical intelligence and curiosities at a moment when she was at the peak of her powers. Nearly a decade after her death, these hours of conversation offer a revelatory and indispensable look at the self-described "besotted aesthete" and "obsessed moralist." Sontag proclaims a personal credo, declaring: "Thinking is a form of feeling; feeling is a form of thinking."
Synopsis
and#147;My idea of a writer: someone interested in and#145;everythingand#8217;and#8221;, declared Susan Sontag (1933-2004). Essayist, diarist, filmmaker, novelist, and playwright, her own life seemed to match this ideal. As well as writing in an unusually broad array of genres, Sontag wrote about a startling range of topicsand#151;from literature, dance, film, and painting to cancer, AIDS, and the ethics of war reportage. Few have captured the 20th century in the same manner.
In this new biography Jerome Boyd Maunsell follows the astonishing scope of Sontagand#8217;s life and work, tracing her growth during her academic career at Chicago, Oxford, and the Sorbonne, through her short-lived marriage to Philip Rieff at the age of 17, to the birth of her son David and her subsequent relationships with women. The extraordinary arc of Sontagand#8217;s life provides the structural backbone of the book; from her literary life in New York to her diagnosis with cancer in the mid-1970s and her miraculous rebirth as a novelist and critic in the 1980s and and#8217;90s. The biography puts intellectual development hand-in-hand with personal, providing a fully integrated picture of Sontag as private person and as public figure.
and#160;
About the Author
Jonathan Cott is the author of numerous books, including most recently
Days That I'll Remember: Spending Time with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. He lives in New York City.
Susan Sontag gained immediate prominence with the publication of her first book of essays, Against Interpretation, in 1966. She went on to write many more books, including On Photography and Illness as Metaphor, which were translated into more than two dozen languages. She died in December 2004.
Table of Contents
1. Beginnings, 1933-1950
2. Notes on Marriage, 1951-1958
3. New York! New York! 1959-1965
4. Styles of Radical Will, 1966-1968
5. In Platoand#8217;s Cave, 1968-1975
6. The Kingdom of the Sick, 1975-1988
7. Beginning Again, 1988-2000
8. The Pain of Others, 2000-2004
References
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements