Oh this is perfectly timed! I am (loosely because I don't want to put any time restraint on it) going to do a bit of a Sontag project this year - aka start reading some of her work and eventually get through it all. I have always wanted to read all her work on illness but having been very ill myself for many years I have avoided it bc... its too close to home, too confronting. As the tides (hopefully) are turning in my own life, I feel more ready to dive into her work about illness, and everything else. Do you think there is any sort of hailed order I should be approaching her with, or shall I just follow wherever my heart wants to go??
I definitely think going in whatever order seems right! The thing to know about her nonfiction is that it gets clearer as it goes. Her early essays (Against + Styles) are dense and recursive and her later work is breezier, airier, but without losing any intelligence or weight. Illness would probably be a great place to start, as it really highlights a lot of what she was obsessed with (representation vs reality, etc)
Thank you for the insight & heads up! This comment makes me more excited to start reading her - I will start with illness upon your encouragement and also the fact it has been lurking in my brain for the longest.
Hopefully not a mere slogan, but when you mention Sontag's belief in the "inevitable plurality of moral claims” I think back on the personal liberation I felt when witnessing "women's lib" in the late 60's and 70's and that it came from its sloganistic directive "Not 'either/or' but 'both/and.'" It was a life-changing release from the straightjacket of ideology and right-wrong thinking I had bought into, especially with civil rights and the Vietnam War daily in the news. Although it is once again morally harder to take a pluralistic approach to political life and life in big tech these days, for the people we know whose views or habits irritate us and for the fictional bad guys we create it is wise to follow Sontag and not forget to see and portray those ambiguities we share with them by "virtue" of us all being part of the human condition.
Oh this is perfectly timed! I am (loosely because I don't want to put any time restraint on it) going to do a bit of a Sontag project this year - aka start reading some of her work and eventually get through it all. I have always wanted to read all her work on illness but having been very ill myself for many years I have avoided it bc... its too close to home, too confronting. As the tides (hopefully) are turning in my own life, I feel more ready to dive into her work about illness, and everything else. Do you think there is any sort of hailed order I should be approaching her with, or shall I just follow wherever my heart wants to go??
I definitely think going in whatever order seems right! The thing to know about her nonfiction is that it gets clearer as it goes. Her early essays (Against + Styles) are dense and recursive and her later work is breezier, airier, but without losing any intelligence or weight. Illness would probably be a great place to start, as it really highlights a lot of what she was obsessed with (representation vs reality, etc)
Thank you for the insight & heads up! This comment makes me more excited to start reading her - I will start with illness upon your encouragement and also the fact it has been lurking in my brain for the longest.
Hopefully not a mere slogan, but when you mention Sontag's belief in the "inevitable plurality of moral claims” I think back on the personal liberation I felt when witnessing "women's lib" in the late 60's and 70's and that it came from its sloganistic directive "Not 'either/or' but 'both/and.'" It was a life-changing release from the straightjacket of ideology and right-wrong thinking I had bought into, especially with civil rights and the Vietnam War daily in the news. Although it is once again morally harder to take a pluralistic approach to political life and life in big tech these days, for the people we know whose views or habits irritate us and for the fictional bad guys we create it is wise to follow Sontag and not forget to see and portray those ambiguities we share with them by "virtue" of us all being part of the human condition.
I was a big fan of Sontag and "Small Rain" was one of my last reads of 2024.