THE SCANDAL OF SUSAN SONTAG

New York City, NY: Columbia University Press, 2009. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. As New/No Dust Jacket, As Issued.. New York City, NY: Columbia University Press, 2009. Hardcover. As New/None, As Issued. First Edition/First Printing. 265 pages. Retrospective collection of memorial essays. One of the best assessments on the literary career and ideas of Susan Sontag. The First Hardcover Edition. Should not be confused with the Softcover Edition, which was published simultaneously with it. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original by a University Press. The production values are impeccable: Pristine-white archival stock paper, handsome brown cloth boards, invaluable Index, and other Gender and Culture titles appended at the end. Without DJ, as issued. Presents "The Scandal of Susan Sontag". Posthumous essays that collectively assess the achievement, legacy, and controversy that continue to surround Susan Sontag's "scandalous" career. The collection is valuable in the sense that all of the contributors are trying, in their own way, to continue Sontag's unfinished work, pointing to its unrealized possibilities. Almost twenty years after her untimely death, the most cursory glance at printed commentary on Susan Sontag shows just how passionately people still feel about her work, for or against or somewhere in-between, never indifferent. While she was a cultural icon in her lifetime, that enviable stature was always under relentless attack from critics and detractors that her excruciating final bout with cancer and subsequent death did nothing to soften, mellow, or dissipate. Sontag was a lot more nimble than her enemies (hence their frustration with her continuing relevance and their own "footnote" irrelevance). She always insisted on her right to keep an open mind, to change her mind, and therefore to never let anyone, not even herself, ever have The Last Word. If Harold Bloom was our sage, our educator-guide to life, on every page the voice of wisdom, Sontag was our intellectual, our provocative questioner about life, in every line the voice of a human being's evolving and ecstatic engagement with literature and the arts. She rejected the term, saw herself instead as the last, almost old-fashioned defender of High Classical values in our age of Pop mediocrity and shallowness, but in fact, it succinctly describes what she represents in American culture to this day: Postmodern - in the best sense of the word. An absolute "must-have" title for Susan Sontag collectors. This title is a great collection. This is one of few copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce copy thus. Winner of the MacArthur Genius Grant, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977 for "On Photography", the National Book Award in 2000 for "In America", and the Jerusalem Prize in 2001. Shimon Peres, in awarding the Jerusalem Prize, described Sontag as "one of the world's finest writers and greatest minds". One of the most influential and important writer-intellectuals of the 20th century. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER SUSAN SONTAG TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0231149166.