Author(s): Susan Sontag

Modern Thought

An unprecedented collection of the controversial later writings of the greatestand most provocative critic of our time.
Susan Sontag was the most influential critic of her time. This second volume inLibrary of America's definitive Sontag edition gathers all the collected essays andspeeches from her last quarter-century, brilliant works whose subjects, from theAIDS epidemic, 9/11, the Iraq war, and the perverse allure of Fascism to painting, dance, music, film, and scintillating literary portraits of such writers as WalterBenjamin, Roland Barthes, Antonin Artaud, Machado de Assis, Jorge Luis Borges, Nadine Gordimer, Joseph Brodsky, W. G. Sebald, Marina Tsvetayeva, and RobertWalser, bear enduring witness to passionate curiosity and expansive intellect. Shebrings to every subject an unwavering focus and intensity, and a deep commitmentto "extending our sense of what a human life can be," as she said on accepting theJerusalem Prize in 2000. An account of her 1993 residence in war-torn Sarajevo tostage a production of "Waiting for Godot" becomes a meditation on the meaning ofculture: "Culture, serious culture, is an expression of human dignity-which is whatpeople in Sarajevo feel they have lost." "AIDS and Its Metaphors" marks a furtherdevelopment of the central ideas of her classic "Illness as Metaphor," while"Regarding the Pain of Others" explores eloquently the troubling moral issues
surrounding photographic depictions of violence, cruelty, and atrocity."