Word: sontag
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...want to repudiate the earlier work, but it is totally remote to me," Sontag insists. She has steadfastly become a high modernest in a post-modernist world. "I feel this was the book I was born to write. And I wish it were my first book. "I feel this was the book I was born to write. And I wish it were my first book... I'd much rather write this kind of book than anything else I've written...
...novel is good, but it's not Sontag at her best. Though she shuns it, the temptation to contrast Volcano Lover with her earlier work is irresistible. Sontag--the same woman who was influenced by the novels and plays of Batille and Artaud and the philosophy of Sartre, Camus, Lukacs, Barthes and Canetti--has turned her back on the present by ignoring the history of her work...
Like Rachmaninov, the stubborn composer who used 19th-century models for his music, Sontag is a willful anachronism and has never been accepted by critics and academics. Unlike Rachmaninov, however, it is doubtful that Sontag's Volcano Lover Work will be embraced by the general public. Now the novelty, the taboo topics have vanished from Sontag's art; a shadow of the pioneer of the '60s has settled into his book...
...Sontag of the 60's was an observer and analyst of the avant-garde, a cultural critic that showed us ourselves. She always learned toward the esoteric. Who would have guessed a generation of trendy academics would make the formerly well-known story of Sir William Hamilton obscure...
More historical novels are on the way. Sontag has a four-book contract with her life long-time publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She has plans to start her next novel in December at the conclusion of her book tour. Her only comment: It was that it will be set in the 19th century...