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Sontag, Susan (Subject) & Kennedy, Liam (Author).
SUSAN SONTAG: MIND AS PASSION.
Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1995. Hardcover. First Edition/First Printing. 146 pages. As New/As New. The second book-length critical study on Susan Sontag. Published in an extremely small and limited print run by a University Press. The first and only edition. A penetrating and insightful book on the work, it is beautifully and perceptively written, and is the single best introduction to its subject. This slim, accessible, and jargon-free book is the best "interpretation" of her life-work so far. "The inner life tends to mistrust the new. A strongly developed inner life will be particularly resistant to the new. We are told we must choose, the old or the new. In fact, we must choose both. What is life if not a series of negotiations between the old and the new? We cannot do without the old, because in what is old is invested all our past, our wisdom, our memories, our sadness, our sense of realism. We cannot do without faith in the new, because in what is new is invested all our energy, our capacity for optimism, our blind biological yearnings, our ability to forget, the healing ability that makes reconciliation possible" (Susan Sontag). Sontag died on December 28, 2004 at the relatively young age of 71, her work unfinished, a one-of-a-kind writer who is a heartbreaking, irreplaceable loss to contemporary life and literature. One of the ironies about her career is that despite her fame, readers and collectors never fully appreciated the magnitude of her achievement, that she is a writer's writer, and that she will endure long after currently fashionable and hopelessly provincial American writers are forgotten. A triumph of synthesis over analysis. This title has been out-of-print for a long time. This copy has no flaws, a pristine beauty. A scarce copy thus. Winner of the MacArthur Genius Grant, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977 for "On Photography", the National Book Award in 2000 for "In America" and the Jerusalem Prize in 2001. Shimon Peres, in awarding the Jerusalem Prize, described Sontag as "one of the world's finest writers and greatest minds". One of the most influential and important American writer-intellectuals of the 20th century. A flawless copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER SUSAN SONTAG TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0719037859. $75.00 |
