Summary
Styles of Radical Will, Susan Sontag's second collection of essays, extends the investigations she undertook inAgainst Interpretationwith essays on film, literature, politics, and a groundbreaking study of pornography. Susan Sontagbecame a cultural figure upon the publication of her pathbreaking collection of essaysAgainst Interpretationin 1966. She went on to write four novels, includingIn 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 themOn Photography,Illness as Metaphor, andRegarding 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 landmarkAgainst 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 fromStyles 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 rememberedthat 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
Author Biography
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. She lives in New York City. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work.
Table of Contents
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The Aesthetics of Silence |
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3 | (32) |
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The Pornographic Imagination |
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35 | (39) |
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``Thinking Against Oneself'': Reflections on Cioran |
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74 | (25) |
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99 | (24) |
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123 | (24) |
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147 | (46) |
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What's Happening in America (1966) |
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193 | (12) |
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205 | |