At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches
Susan Sontag, Paolo Dilonardo (Editor), Anne Jump (Editor), David RieffBooks.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
Sontag's incisive intelligence, expressive brilliance, and deep curiosity about art, politics, and the writer's responsibility to bear witness have secured her place as one of the most important thinkers and writers of the twentieth century.
At the Same Time gathers sixteen essays and speeches written in the last years of Sontag's life, when her work was being honored on the international stage. She writes of the freedom of literature, about courage and resistance, and fearlessly addresses the dilemmas of post-9/11 America, from the degradation of our political rhetoric to the appalling torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib.
David Rieff describes his mother's passion in his foreword: "She wanted to experience everything, taste everything, go everywhere, do everything. Indeed, if I had only one word with which to evoke her, it would be avidity. . . . I think that, for her, the joy of living and the joy of knowing really were one and the same."
Synopsis
Sontag's incisive intelligence, expressive brilliance, and deep curiosity about art, politics, and the writer's responsibility to bear witness have secured her place as one of the most important thinkers and writers of the twentieth century.
At the Same Time gathers sixteen essays and speeches written in the last years of Sontag's life, when her work was being honored on the international stage. She writes of the freedom of literature, about courage and resistance, and fearlessly addresses the dilemmas of post-9/11 America, from the degradation of our political rhetoric to the appalling torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib.
David Rieff describes his mother's passion in his foreword: "She wanted to experience everything, taste everything, go everywhere, do everything. Indeed, if I had only one word with which to evoke her, it would be avidity. . . . I think that, for her, the joy of living and the joy of knowing really were one and the same."
The New Statesman - John Gray
...these 16 pieces brim over with vitality. Every one of them opening up fresh lines of thought... In At the Same Time we hear the voice of a unique writer, who loved the world and spent her life in an attempt to see it whole.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
"It's never been my prime mission to give comfort, unless somebody's in drastic need. I'd rather give pleasure, or shake things up." These words, spoken late in her life, might serve as Susan Sontag's motto. In this posthumous collection (she died in 2004), Sontag shakes things up with 16 penetrating essays on literature, freedom, and American life and foreign policy in the post-September 11th world.From the Publisher
"What ultimately matters about Sontag . . . is what she has defended: the life of the mind, and the necessity for reading and writing as 'a way of being fully human.'"—Hilary Mantel, Los Angeles Times Book ReviewJohn Gray
...these 16 pieces brim over with vitality. Every one of them opening up fresh lines of thought... In At the Same Time we hear the voice of a unique writer, who loved the world and spent her life in an attempt to see it whole.—The New Statesman
Publishers Weekly
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 areus" in relation to the Abu Ghraib photos) are all fiercely displayed here. (Mar. 6)
Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.Library Journal
As a writer, late American literary luminary Sontag (Regarding the Pain of Others) managed to cross genres with ease and grace. She received prizes and acclaim for her fiction—In Americawon her the National Book Award in 2000—but also captured public attention through essays that brooked both political and literary spheres, elucidating their interconnectedness. This latest collection of 16 essays written toward the end of her life (Sontag died in December 2004) continues that tradition. It ranges widely: Sontag references early Christian scholars, 17th-century painters, and contemporary political leaders. She breezily assumes the breadth of her readers' understanding and in doing so shocks them out of any national, and thus parochial, view of literature or current events. The preface is by David Rieff, Sontag's only son. Every public and academic library should crave to own this. [See Prepub Alert, LJ10/15/06.]—Maria Kochis