At the Same Time: Essays and Speaches
Susan Sontag Picador Each of the essays in this posthumously published collection give short, readable and brilliant insights into who we are now as Americans. From three different discussions about Septemeber 11th, titled “9.11.01,” “A Few Weeks After,” and “One Year After,” to discussions on beauty, art, and literature, Sontag masterfully explores how we understand ourselves through everything from cultural relics to human torture. The essay titled “Photography: A Little Summa,” defines the ubiquitous impact of photography on our contemporary experience. “Photography – the supreme form of travel, of tourism – is the principal modern means for enlarging the world.” And then goes on in the following essay, “Regarding the Torture of Others,” to examine how photography impacts the way we perceive ourselves as the subjects of a government ensnared in the gruesome misdeeds of war. “The pictures taken by American soldiers in Abu Ghraib, however, reflect a shift in the use made of pictures – less objects to be saved than messages to be disseminated, circulated.” True to form, these gems from Sontag’s exquisite mind are both aesthetically magnificent and bracingly insightful. Sontag is known as a groundbreaking essayist, novelist and activist. She died in New York in December 2004. |