Like Bryan, I have never been a fan. Many years ago, I concluded a review of I, Etcetera, her collection of stories, by saying that it was great book to curl up with in front of the fire and use as kindling. But the insight Bryan has extracted from this essay is right on the money.
First Bryan, then you and me three!
ReplyDeleteKindling...God yes, I could never "get" her and used to feel guilty.
I'm older now....stoke the fire.
Though I would agree with Bryan about Sontag's somewhat muddled structure and clumsy style in this essay (and I'm forced to wonder if she'd have revised it given the opportunity) I think that there are other nuggets and insights beyond the concern with the modern - the ethical component of fiction, the central importance of order and closure in distinguishing fiction from 'real life', to name just two.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read that much of her, but I enjoyed "AIDS as a metaphor" back in the 1980s (I think that's when it was.) She also wrote about cancer as metaphor, of course -- I found valuable things in that -- though I'm not particularly attracted by much of her ouevre.
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