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Overview
Reading Susan Sontag is the first book to survey the broad range of Ms. Sontag's work, including full discussions of her fiction. Carl Rollyson, Ms. Sontag's first biographer, is uniquely situated to provide well-informed and clear readings of all her major work. He writes for general readers and students as well as for specialists. Each of his chapters is devoted to one of Ms. Sontag's books and is divided into three sections: synopsis, Ms. Sontag's own views of her work, and critical commentary, and thus progresses from basic knowledge to more sophisticated interpretation. In a detailed chronological overview of her work, Mr. Rollyson also describes and comments on Ms. Sontag's forays into film and theatre, showing how her interests in dance and opera, for example, are connected to her aesthetic view of the world. A helpful glossary at the end of the book defines the terms and figures of speech that characterize her essays and may inhibit readers who do not share her formidable command of world culture; it also traces her use of allusions to other writers from one essay to the next. In all, Reading Susan Sontag is an enormously useful companion to the work of one of our major writers.Synopsis
This volume surveys the range of Sontag's work. For each piece, Rollyson (English, Baruch College, NY) provides a synopsis, a short section on "Sontag reading Sontag," and a critical analysis of the material. The author also provides a 40-page biographical introduction to Sontag and her works, with brief discussions of her excursions into film and theatre. Some of the pieces discussed in this text include The Benefactor; Styles of Radical Will; On Photography; I, etcetera; and two pieces on AIDS, The Way We Live Now, and AIDS and its Metaphors. The glossary introduces readers to the terms and figures of speech common to Sontag's writing that may not prove common to the general reader's understanding.
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