Susan Sontag Libri

Nella New York di fine Novecento Susan Sontag decide di scrivere un romanzo dal forte sapore storico, ambientandolo nella Napoli di fine Settecento, metropoli fastosa e disperata alle prese con la Rivoluzione che darà vita alla Repubblica Napoletana. Al centro del racconto un uomo all'apparenza algido e distaccato, animato da un'indomabile passione per il vulcano almeno quanto per l'arte e i ricercati pezzi di antiquariato di cui è collezionista: si tratta dell'ambasciatore inglese Sir William Hamilton, che, tra le altre vicende, si trova coinvolto in un triangolo amoroso che vede in lui uno dei vertici, assieme alla seconda moglie Emma, considerata una delle donne piú belle dell'epoca, e all'ammiraglio Horatio Nelson. Nell'intreccio narrativo le vicende storiche realmente accadute passano attraverso l'immaginazione dell'autrice, diventando vive e creando mondi imprevisti. Sempre presente sullo sfondo del romanzo, il Vesuvio pare simboleggiare la bellezza, l'imprevedibilità, l'inquietante vitalità e la potenza esplosiva delle cose che giacciono sotto la superficie e improvvisamente tornano visibili. Ne "L'amante del vulcano", da molti anni introvabile in Italia, Sontag mette in scena lo spettacolo della Storia, filtrandolo attraverso una forte coscienza autoriale.

"These two classic essays were the first works of criticism to break down the boundaries between 'high' and 'low' culture, and made Susan Sontag a literary sensation."--Back cover

Susan Sontag, one of the most internationally renowned and controversial intellectuals of the latter half of the twentieth century, still provokes. In 1978 Jonathan Cott, a founding contributing editor of Rolling Stone magazine, interviewed Sontag first in Paris and later in New York. Only a third of their twelve hours of discussion ever made it to print. Now, more than three decades later, Yale University Press is proud to publish the entire transcript of Sontag’s remarkable conversation, accompanied by Cott’s preface and recollections. Sontag’s musings and observations reveal the passionate engagement and breadth of her critical intelligence and curiosities at a moment when she was at the peak of her powers. Nearly a decade after her death, these hours of conversation offer a revelatory and indispensable look at the self-described "besotted aesthete" and "obsessed moralist." Sontag proclaims a personal credo, declaring: "Thinking is a form of feeling; feeling is a form of thinking."

In her most recent collection of essays, "one of America's foremost critics" (Washington Post ) discusses the relationship between moral and esthetic ideas.

ESSAYS, JOURNALS, LETTERS & OTHER PROSE WORKS. Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and is a modern classic. Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. It includes some of Sontag's best-known works, among them 'On Style', 'Notes on 'Camp'', and the titular essay 'Against Interpretation', where Sontag argues that modern cultural conditions have given way to a new critical approach to aesthetics. 'A dazzling intellectual performance.' Vogue.

An introduction to the thinking of the French intellectual, Roland Barthes, as applied to such diverse topics as Gide, Garbo, striptease, photography and the Eiffel Tower. The pieces in this collection were written over a period of three decades.

This second of three volumes begins in the middle of the 1960s and traces Sontag's evolution from fledgling participant in the artistic and intellectual world to renowned critic.

Styles of Radical Will , Susan Sontag's second collection of essays, extends the investigations she undertook in Against Interpretation with essays on film, literature, politics, and a groundbreaking study of pornography.