Bøger af Susan Sontag

Regarding the Pain of Others is Susan Sontag's searing analysis of our numbed response to images of horror. From Goya's Disasters of War to news footage and photographs of the conflicts in Vietnam, Rwanda and Bosnia, pictures have been charged with inspiring dissent, fostering violence or instilling apathy in us, the viewer. Regarding the Pain of Others will alter our thinking not only about the uses and meanings of images, but about the nature of war, the limits of sympathy, and the obligations of conscience.'Powerful, fascinating. Sontag is our outstanding contemporary writer in the moralist tradition'Sunday Times'A coruscating sermon on how we picture suffering'The New York Times'A far-reaching set of ruminations on human suffering, the nature of goodness, the lures, deceptions and truth of images . . . in short, a summary of what it means to be alive and alert in the twentieth century'Independent'Sontag is on top form: firing devastating questions'Los Angeles Times'Simple, elegant, fiercely persuasive'MetroOne of America's best-known and most admired writers, Susan Sontag was also a leading commentator on contemporary culture until her death in December 2004. Her books include four novels and numerous works of non-fiction, among them Regarding the Pain of Others, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, At the Same Time, Against Interpretation and Other Essays and Reborn: Early Diaries 1947-1963, all of which are published by Penguin. A further eight books, including the collections of essays Under the Sign of Saturn and Where the Stress Falls, and the novels The Volcano Lover and The Benefactor, are available from Penguin Modern Classics.

In l978 Sontag wrote Illness As Metaphor. A cancer patient herself at the time, she shows how the metaphors and myths surrounding certain illnesses, especially cancer, add greatly to the suffering of the patients and often inhibit them from seeking proper treatment. By demystifying the fantasies surrounding cancer, Sontag shows cancer for what it is - just a disease. Cancer is not a curse, not a punishment, certainly not an embarrassment, and highly curable, if good treatment is found early enough. Almost a decade later, with the outbreak of a new, stigmatised disease replete with mystifications and punitive metaphors, Sontag wrote Aids and its Metaphors, extending the argument of the earlier book to the AIDS pandemic.

A series of provocative discussions on everything from individual authors to contemporary religious thinking, Against Interpretation and Other Essays is the definitive collection of Susan Sontag's best known and important works published in Penguin Modern Classics.Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and made her name as one of the most incisive thinkers of our time. Sontag was among the first critics to write about the intersection between 'high' and 'low' art forms, and to give them equal value as valid topics, shown here in her epoch-making pieces 'Notes on Camp' and 'Against Interpretation'. Here too are impassioned discussions of Sartre, Camus, Simone Weil, Godard, Beckett, L vi-Strauss, science-fiction movies, psychoanalysis and contemporary religious thought. Originally published in 1966, this collection has never gone out of print and has been a major influence on generations of readers, and the field of cultural criticism, ever since. Susan Sontag (1933-2004) was born in Manhattan and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. She is the author of four novels - The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover and In America, which won the 2000 US National Book Award for fiction - a collection of stories, several plays, and six books of essays, among them Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. Her books are translated into thirty-two languages. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work, and in 2003 she received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. If you enjoyed Against Interpretation and Other Essays, you might like Sontag's On Photography, also available in Penguin Modern Classics.'A dazzling intellectual performance' Vogue'Sontag offers enough food for thought to satisfy the most intellectual of appetites' The Times

A historical romance, Sontag's book is based on the lives of Sir William Hamilton, his wife, Emma, and Lord Nelson in the final decades of the eighteenth century. Passionately examining the shape of Western civilization since the Age of Enlightenment, Sontag's novel is an exquisitely detailed picture of revolution, the fate of nature, art and love.

Min film fødes først i mit hoved, dør på papiret, genoplives afde levende personer og de virkelige objekter, som jeg bruger,og som dør på filmstrimlen, men som, arrangeret i en særligorden og projiceret på lærredet, vækkes til live igen somblomster i vand. * Model. Hans permanens: altid den samme måde at væreanderledes på. * Grav dybt i din sansning. Se hvad der er på indersiden.Analyser den ikke med ord. Oversæt den til søsterbilleder,til ækvivalente lyde. Desto klarere den er, desto tydeligereviser din stil sig. (Stil: alt hvad der ikke er teknik.)

Susan Sontag's On Photography is a seminal and groundbreaking work on the subject.Susan Sontag's groundbreaking critique of photography asks forceful questions about the moral and aesthetic issues surrounding this art form. Photographs are everywhere, and the 'insatiability of the photographing eye' has profoundly altered our relationship with the world. Photographs have the power to shock, idealize or seduce, they create a sense of nostalgia and act as a memorial, and they can be used as evidence against us or to identify us. In these six incisive essays, Sontag examines the ways in which we use these omnipresent images to manufacture a sense of reality and authority in our lives.'Sontag offers enough food for thought to satisfy the most intellectual of appetites'The Times'A brilliant analysis of the profound changes photographic images have made in our way of looking at the world, and at ourselves'Washington Post'The most original and illuminating study of the subject'New YorkerOne of America's best-known and most admired writers, Susan Sontag was also a leading commentator on contemporary culture until her death in December 2004. Her books include four novels and numerous works of non-fiction, among them Regarding the Pain of Others, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, At the Same Time, Against Interpretation and Other Essays and Reborn: Early Diaries 1947-1963, all of which are published by Penguin. A further eight books, including the collections of essays Under the Sign of Saturn and Where the Stress Falls, and the novels The Volcano Lover and The Benefactor, are available from Penguin Modern Classics.

Året er 1876. Den polske skuespillerinde Maryna, og hendes lille gruppe af familie og venner, slår sig ned i Californien, i nærheden af byen Anaheim, i den hensigt at dyrke landbrug og leve det gode liv i den franske utopist Charles Fouriers ånd. Stort set alle deres drømme havarerer og flertallet af de polske immigranter vender tilbage til Polen – men ikke Maryna, som det lykkes at skabe sig en ny karriere som skuespiller og lægge det dannede amerikanske publikum for sine fødder. Hun er og bliver en diva, en Sarah Bernhardt med en gådefuld magt over omgivelserne – og ikke mindst mændene i hendes liv, som Susan Sontag tegner en stribe virkelig fængende portrætter af.Pressen skrev:""I Amerika" er mere disciplineret og mindre ekstravagant end hendes sidste, "Manden der elskede vulkaner," men lige så stor en læseoplevelse.""Sontag færdes hjemmevant i postmodernismens metafiktive univers"-  Jyllandsposten"Essayisten Susan Sontag har skrevet endnu en bemærkelsesværdig og begavet historisk roman, der ligesom Manden der elskede vulkaner har potentiale til en filmatisering."  -  Lektørudtalelse"Det er fascinerende at læse om en kvinde, der sætter det kunstneriske og profesionelle liv først. Biologi og kærlighed kommer i anden række for hende. Det er ofte noget, mænd (og nogen kvinder) selv i den moderne verden har svært ved at tro, kan gøre kvinder tilfredse."  -  B.T."Det er intet mindre end "drømmen om Amerika", Susan Sontag giver krop og sjæl i sin seneste roman". "Skriveteknisk er Susan Sontag suveræn".  Nordjyske Stifttidende"Det er krævende og underholdende læsning. Formens kompleksitet forlener den lidt banale og bittersøde historie om Maryna med vægt og styrke. Man ender med at holde af hende - og føle tragedien i at et liv kan blive til ingenting, fordi Maryna alligevel ikke tør vælge det, hun egentlig har lyst til."  -  Tidsskriftet Graf

The story of In America is inspired by the emigration to America in 1876 of Helena Modrzejewska, Poland's most celebrated actress, accompanied by her husband, Count Karol Chlapowski, her fifteen-year-old son, Rudolf, the young journalist and future author of Quo Vadis, Henryk Sienkiewicz, and a few friends; their brief sojourn in Anaheim, California; and Modrzejewska's subsequent triumphant career on the American stage under the name Helena Modjeska.

Reborn is the compelling and frank early diary of Susan Sontag.'Vivid, exhilarating, often moving . . . charts the development of a good writer and an important critic'Sunday Telegraph'I intend to do everything . . . I shall anticipate pleasure everywhere and find it too, for it is everywhere! I shall involve myself wholly . . .everything matters!'This first selection from Susan Sontag's diaries (from 1947-1963) takes us from early adolescence though to when Sontag was in her early thirties. It is an astonishingly affecting, honest self-portrait which is also a fascinating, revealing account of an artist and critic being born. We see Sontag honing her skills and fashioning herself, by a supreme act of will, into an intellectual force.'Fascinating. One can feel Sontag's mind beginning to ripen and bloom, and the full force of the intellectual originality that would be her hallmark emerging' Guardian'Inspirational. Sontag shows us not just the importance, but the exhilaration of being earnest' New Statesman'A fascinating document of her apprenticeship, charting her earnest quest for education, identity, and voice. Reborn is overwhelmingly a record of an inner landscape' New York Review of Books'One of the finest American writers, thinkers, and political activists of the past four decades . . . an intimate portrait of her early life' Independent on SundayOne of America's best-known and most admired writers, Susan Sontag was also a leading commentator on contemporary culture until her death in December 2004. Her books include four novels and numerous works of non-fiction, among them Regarding the Pain of Others, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, At the Same Time, Against Interpretation and Other Essays and Reborn: Early Diaries 1947-1963, all of which are published by Penguin. A further eight books, including the collections of essays Under the Sign of Saturn and Where the Stress Falls, and the novels The Volcano Lover and The Benefactor, are available from Penguin Modern Classics.

Amerikas nok skarpeste feminist, aktivist og offentlige intellektuelle beskriver fotografiet og vores billedbårne virkelighed. Susan Sontag udforsker i fire essays forholdet mellem bevidsthed og virkelighed, mellem fotografi og kunst – og viser hvordan billeder i den moderne verden ændrer vores liv og skaber et helt nyt forhold til os selv og verden omkring os. Udgangspunktet for denne klassiker er en personlig oplevelse: Som tolvårig ser Susan Sontag billeder fra koncentrations-lejrene i Dachau: ”Mit liv blev ændret, i dette øjeblik ... Da jeg så disse fotos, brød noget sammen i mig.” Susan Sontag er en af vor tids mest toneangivende skribenter og har som ingen anden analyseret tidens strømninger.

'A brilliant, glittering intelligence' Sunday TimesOn Women brings together Susan Sontag's most fearless and incisive writing on women, a crucial aspect of her work that has not until now received the attention it deservesWritten during the height of second-wave feminism, Sontag's essays remain strikingly relevant to our contemporary conversations. At times powerfully in sync and at others powerfully at odds with them, they are always characteristically original in their examinations of the 'biological division of labour', the double-standard for ageing and the dynamics of women's power and powerlessness.As Merve Emre writes in her introduction, On Women offers us 'the spectacle of a ferocious intellect setting itself to the task at hand: to articulate the politics and aesthetics of being a woman in the United States, the Americas and the world.''Boldly provocative' iNews'On Women demonstrates a powerful mind and equally forceful personality' The Herald

A Financial Times Best Book of 2012 From the turbulent years of her trip to Hanoi at the peak of the Vietnam War to her time making films in Sweden and up to the eve of the 1980 election, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh documents the evolution of an extraordinary mind. The 1966 publication of Against Interpretation propelled Susan Sontag from the periphery of New York City's artistic and intellectual milieu into the international spotlight, solidifying her place as a dominant force in the world of ideas. These entries are an invaluable record of the inner workings of one of the most inquisitive and analytical thinkers of the twentieth century.

A pithy and brilliant introduction to Susan Sontag's writing on women, gathering early essays on aging, equality, beauty, sexuality, and fascism Susan Sontag was one of the most formidable, original, and influential thinkers of the last century. "The most interesting ideas are heresies," she remarked, and indeed, her writing rejects the familiar and refuses party lines.On Women presents seven essays and exchanges, spanning a range of subjects: the challenges and humiliations women face as they age; the relationship between women's liberation and class struggle; beauty, which Sontag calls "that over-rich brew of so many familiar opposites"; feminism; fascism; and film. Taken together, these pieces-relentlessly curious, historically precise, politically robust, and allergic to easy categorization Sontag's inimitable mind at work.

Susan Sontag's celebrated essays on cancer and AIDS now available in one volume.In 1978, Sontag wrote Illness as Metaphor, a classic work described by Newsweek as "one of the most liberating books of its time." A cancer patient herself when she was writing the book, Sontag shows how the metaphors and myths surrounding certain illnesses, especially cancer, add greatly to the suffering of patients and often inhibit them from seeking proper treatment. By demystifying the fantasies surrounding cancer, Sontag shows cancer for what it is--just a disease. Cancer, she argues, is not a curse, not a punishment, certainly not an embarrassment and, it is highly curable, if good treatment is followed. Almost a decade later, with the outbreak of a new, stigmatized disease replete with mystifications and punitive metaphors, Sontag wrote a sequel to Illness as Metaphor, extending the argument of the earlier book to the AIDS pandemic.These two essays now published together, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, have been translated into many languages and continue to have an enormous influence on the thinking of medical professionals and, above all, on the lives of many thousands of patients and caregivers.

Winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award for Criticism.One of the most highly regarded books of its kind, Susan Sontag's On Photography first appeared in 1977 and is described by its author as "a progress of essays about the meaning and career of photographs." It begins with the famous "In Plato's Cave"essay, then offers five other prose meditations on this topic, and concludes with a fascinating and far-reaching "Brief Anthology of Quotations."

First published in 1967, Death Kit is a classic of modern fiction. Blending realism and dream, Susan Sontag's second novel offers a passionate exploration of the recesses of the American conscience.The novel is a narrative of the suffering of Dalton 'Diddy' Harron, told through his own observations. He works in advertising for a microscope manufacturer, is thirty-three and divorced and a month ago tried to commit suicide. The haphazard events of his life, including killing a railway worker and falling in love with a blind girl, are brought to us through the lens of Diddy's own mind. We follow him through his journey to justify his actions and exorcise his inner demons, but we can see what is happening to Diddy only from inside his head, in the present, and the balance of his mind does not always bear close scrutiny.

Where the Stress Falls is divided into three sections: the first, 'Reading', includes ardent pieces on writers from Sontag's own private canon - Machado de Assis, Barthes, W. G. Sebald, Borges, Tsvetaeva and Elizabeth Hardwick. In the second, 'Seeing', she shares her passions for film, dance, photography, painting, opera and theatre. And in the final section, 'There and Here', Sontag explores her own commitments to the work (and activism) of conscience and to the vocation of the writer.

The Benefactor is Susan Sontag's first book and first novel. It was originally published in 1963, and introduced a unique writer to the world. In the form of a memoir by a latter-day Candide named Hippolyte, The Benefactor leads us on a kind of psychic Grand Tour, in which Hippolyte's violently imaginative dream life becomes indistinguishable from his surprising experiences in the 'real world'.