Where the Stress Falls: Essays

Rating:
Summary: Still pithy (now and then) after all these years
Review: ''Where the Stress Falls'' is a collection of reprinted nonfiction written by Ms. Sontag in the last two decades. These 41 eclectic pieces present a view of the world according to Sontag. Many readers may not identify Ms. Sontag's views. Reading this not-always-popular intellectual icon's work challenges the reader to use many brain cells. And her writing style sometimes lacks smooth flow, words run rough shod across the myriad topics. Her writing voice can rub even the open minded the wrong way. But this is a worthwhile intellectual adventure. Most of the essays are brief, but make you feel like you're indulging in an exotic literary feast. Sontag has long threatened to make the phrase "American Intellectual" a dirty one, but that's half the fun. There lies the most probable key to her longevity as a published writer: at inopportune times she makes choppy waves in a stagnating intellectual swamp and I suspect she does so with a good dollop of literary glee. A bit of her writing is cloying with it's self congratulatory indulgences and her inability to get out of her own way. If you feel compelled to read a challenging nonfiction book, this can be brain candy.

Rating:
Summary: Vintage Sontag
Review: Bravo Susan Sontag- great book, greater writer - her stature is directly proportional to the lengths her critics have gone to character-assassinate her. I now will buy the book! No, I'll buy two.

Rating:
Summary: I'm shocked and astonished.....
Review: I'm shocked and astonished at the level of vitriol doled out to Susan Sontag by the other reviewers on this page - not because of the contents of her book, but because she voiced a certain dissent to the war-mongering and empty-headed patriotism currently sweeping the United States. Now, I'm not a great Sontag fan, and this book is a fairly insubstantial gathering of reviews and prefaces in no way comparable to her previous essays, which are certainly worth reading. But she spoke bravely against the prevailing mood, and if that isn't tolerated and respected.... well, Bin Laden's won.

Rating:
Summary: 'Nothing new except language, the ever found...'
Review: My favorite piece in this book is 'Answers to a Questionnaire'-- vintage Sontag-- thinking, witnessing, and finally enlightening everything she must. Despite the self-loathing revealed by a number of American reviewers below who show themselves apparently ready to detest integrity itself, the naked truth comes clear and comes clear! Clear thinking may yet be the last frontier! A worthy argument for such is surely made in the pages of this book. It is even for those who are spiteful without cause to discover themselves lurking in the heart of this book, grevious as ignorance is, & wretched as spite becomes in the end. Listen-- vitriolic political sideswiping is as American as dumplings. Sontag, characteristically and sympathetically, not only notes its irrevelance, but conjures an antidote called moral patience, so no wonder all the shouts and curses against her! Making certain their own avenues of self-discovery venture nothing wiser than a hepped up, but sunless, hyper-nationalism wretchedly disguised as patriotism, it's unfortunately not surprising the chorus of disappoval this woman engenders. Thank goodness Sontag remains preoccupied with her Art!-- a living, teaching, redemptive art burnished, by now, to an holistic glow, as every page of this book bears witness. What in the world are you talking about??! -- SUSAN SONTAG IS AMERICAN TO THE CORE! I reckon that aspect of her identity contributes as much as any other of her native gifts to the beauty and usefulness of her art. Wake up, people!

Rating:
Summary: 'Nothing new except language, the ever found...'
Review: My favorite piece in this book is 'Answers to a Questionnaire'-- vintage Sontag-- thinking, witnessing, and finally enlightening everything she must. Despite the self-loathing revealed by a number of American reviewers below who show themselves apparently ready to detest integrity itself, the naked truth comes clear and comes clear! Clear thinking may yet be the last frontier! A worthy argument for such is surely made in the pages of this book. It is even for those who are spiteful without cause to discover themselves lurking in the heart of this book, grevious as ignorance is, & wretched as spite becomes in the end. Listen-- vitriolic political sideswiping is as American as dumplings. Sontag, characteristically and sympathetically, not only notes its irrevelance, but conjures an antidote called moral patience, so no wonder all the shouts and curses against her! Making certain their own avenues of self-discovery venture nothing wiser than a hepped up, but sunless, hyper-nationalism wretchedly disguised as patriotism, it's unfortunately not surprising the chorus of disappoval this woman engenders. Thank goodness Sontag remains preoccupied with her Art!-- a living, teaching, redemptive art burnished, by now, to an holistic glow, as every page of this book bears witness. What in the world are you talking about??! -- SUSAN SONTAG IS AMERICAN TO THE CORE! I reckon that aspect of her identity contributes as much as any other of her native gifts to the beauty and usefulness of her art. Wake up, people!

Rating:
Summary: no publicity is bad publicity, or, believing your own hype
Review: Since "On Photography" Miss Sontag has been making us think more about our resposability as individuals to this world. Americans should be proud to have such a genious among themselves.

Rating:
Summary: Great Essays
Review: Sontag is a great writer and if you love non-fiction writing (a la Joan Didion) then you will love this book. The essays cover a wide range of topics, including a discussion of some fellow writers. I highly recommend it!

One other thing: some of the posts here have absolutely nothing to do with Sontag's book. I thought this space was for book reviews, not political diatribes and ad hominem attacks.

Rating:
Summary: Yet more proof that Sontag is America's Preeminent Poseur
Review: This book confirms something which should have been obvious to most people years and years ago: Sontag's work has always been all about style. This is a woman who has modeled her life and work on the image of the Central European intellectual. Her productions are one long affectation of Mitteleuropa world-weariness. Take a look at her "Elegy for Europe". She praises the "ethical seriousness" of European intellectual life, but the only thing of substance she's ever taken away from 20th-century European intellectuals is their political nihilism. In that context, there is nothing surprising about her inhumane ramblings on the "courage" of Mohammed Atta & Co., just a couple of days after the worst terrorist attack in history, or her denunciation of the "disconnect" between the American reaction to the events and their true significance. The *real* disconnect, and the source of all of the pretentious buffoonery we've had to put up with for so long, is Sontag's own alienation from her country. It is in times like these that we find ourselves wishing that Susan Sontag had never returned from her Parisian garret.