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Where the Stress Falls: Essays Paperback – November 9, 2002

by Susan Sontag (Author)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 16 ratings
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Thirty-five years after her first collection, the now classic Against Interpretation, America's most important essayist has chosen more than forty longer and shorter pieces from the last twenty years. Divided into three sections, the first "Reading" includes ardent pieces on writers from her 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 theater. 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.

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Previous page
  1. Print length
    368 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publication date
    November 9, 2002
  4. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.81 x 8.5 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    0312421311
  6. ISBN-13
    978-0312421311
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“What ultimately matters about Sontag is what she has defended: the life of the mind, and the necessity for reading and writing as ‘a way of being fully human.' She has been a great explainer, but her explanations are not reductive....She regroups the familiar and makes the eye fresh....She stands for what is articulate, independent, exploratory: for self as work in progress.” ―Hilary Mantel, Los Angeles Times Book Review

“[The essays] invariably also leave one with the urgent desire to read the book or see the painting, play, dance she describes. Her passion evokes that urgency...The outstanding essays are ‘Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo' and ‘Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes,' both of which are definitive and awe-inspiring.” ―Bookforum

“Three essays--the longest in the book--are of unquestioned lasting importance. They are ‘Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes,' ‘Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo' and the title essay [‘Where the Stress Falls' which] is a stunning tour de force.” ―Houston Chronicle

“Where the Stress Falls raises the bar of criticism to the highest level....Her energy infuses every word in the collection.” ―The Seattle Times

“Her criticism is art in its own right, so gorgeously formed and creative, so vital and searching, deeply rooted in passionately intelligent reading and unstinting curiosity ....A substantial and wonderfully musical collection that makes matters literary and artistic urgent and thrilling.” ―Booklist

About the Author

Susan Sontag was the author of four novels, including The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In America, which won the 2000 National Book Award for fiction; a collection of stories, I, etcetera; several plays, including Alice in Bed; and nine works of essays, among them On Photography, which won the National Books Critics Circle Award for criticism. In 2001, Sontag was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work. She died in New York City in 2004.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; First Edition (November 9, 2002)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0312421311
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312421311
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.81 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 16 ratings

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Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag

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Susan Sontag was born in Manhattan in 1933 and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. She is the author of four novels, 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. She died in December 2004.

Customer reviews

4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5
16 global ratings
Water Damage
1 Star
Water Damage
I haven’t read the book yet. I love her so I’m assuming it will be wonderful.The book has LOTS of water damage, very disappointed with the quality of this book.
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Top reviews from the United States

LuelCanyon
5.0 out of 5 stars 'Nothing new except language, the ever found...'
Reviewed in the United States on October 30, 2002
Verified Purchase
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!
10 people found this helpful
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Robert
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2016
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Interesting pieces from a very intelligent writer, it feels good to get to grips with her clearly expressed thoughts.
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Steiner
3.0 out of 5 stars Good stuff but...
Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2005
I generally prefer Sontag's longer and more personal essays usually found in her earlier work. This collection is a compilation of essays on art gathered from some of the last years of her life; they cover a wide range of topics, from literature to Italian photography. I felt that the most interesting section was her essays on her solidarity trips to Sarejevo during the Serbs' bombardment, where she directed a production of Beckett's Waiting for Godot; it's a wonderful testament to the universality of great art. I'm afraid I can't sustain the same kind of equality of interest to the arts collectively as Sontag did, and I must admit I found her pieces on garden art and dance terribly boring. That aside, she does include some characteristically excellent essays on film, such as her elaborate review of Fassbinder's adaptation of Alfred Doblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz which immediately imparted me with an urge to see the film and read the book. She also writes a brief review of cinema's 100 year history, which is a bit simplistic as any short piece on this topic would have to be. She maintains that silent cinema was born which brought forth two directions in cinema: art and entertainment. The films during the silent era were largely adaptations of plays and were truly great art. Then the sound period came into being and film receded into "Hollywood" adaptations of great novels which largely failed, until the pioneer directors of the period such as Howard Hawks perfected the genre style mode of filmmaking. Then the French New Wave came along, led by the genius of Jean-Luc Godard and Francoise Truffaut and turned movies into a high art for 20 years. Unfortunately, when production costs escalated in the 80's Hollywood took over gain and turned the cinema into an industry once again. This narrative has elements of truth, but it really denies the significance of many American and Asian filmmakers who played an important role in the history of film, Sontag prefers to label Godard the patron saint of the cinema, a view I hold only in his relationship with the progression of French cinema as a whole, a history which of course includes Jean Renoir, Sontag's essay does not acknowledge such masters.
4 people found this helpful
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Betsy R Auwerda
1.0 out of 5 stars Water Damage
Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2018
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I haven’t read the book yet. I love her so I’m assuming it will be wonderful.
The book has LOTS of water damage, very disappointed with the quality of this book.
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Betsy R Auwerda
1.0 out of 5 stars Water Damage
Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2018
I haven’t read the book yet. I love her so I’m assuming it will be wonderful.
The book has LOTS of water damage, very disappointed with the quality of this book.
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Marie Sherer
5.0 out of 5 stars Vintage Sontag
Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2001
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.
12 people found this helpful
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PEDRO L MONTALVO LOPEZ
5.0 out of 5 stars A Great American.
Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2001
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.
8 people found this helpful
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David Schweizer
4.0 out of 5 stars Recommended by Susan Sontag
Reviewed in the United States on October 26, 2008
Sontag sure did make a name for herself. I recently read in the biography of Edmund Wilson that he didn't think much of her. Here are gathered a miscellaneous collection of essays from Sontag's days as a critic/reviewer. One loves her willingness to go out on a limb for nearly unknown authors. She was a talent scout more than anything else. The big boys out in Hollywood would have known what to do with her. She could have dug up material for MGM and made a decent living, instead of hanging around New York. Alas, she was born 20 years too late. Like Pauline Kael of the New Yorker, Sontag was an enthusiast; she had "lost it" at the library, as Kael would have said, and we benefit from her exquisite taste. She wrote appreciations, but as Wilson rightly notes, she wasn't all that deep and doesn't have half of Wilson's erudition and learning, although clearly she had flair. If you read Coetzee's recent essays on many of the same authors, such as the Eastern Europeans and Germans, one can see clearly what the difference is between a critic and a reviewer. Sontag was always a journalist first and a scholar last if at all. She would have loved Vanity Fair or pretended not to. Sontag, one hears, grew rather flamboyantly arrogant, which is a shame. She really had no reason to look down on people. The little two-page essays here, including film reviews and articles on ballet, are too slight to justify the enormously high regard she had for herself. Sontag is now hardly a foot-note in the literary firmament, but in her day she provided an enormously valuable service to readers. She helped us discover new and exciting writers from around the world.
4 people found this helpful
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