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Sontag, Susan (Author/Subject) & Cott, Jonathan (Interviewer/Author) : Susan Sontag: The Complete Rolling Stone Interview

Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2013

ISBN 0300189796

First Edition / First Printing. Fine in Fine Dust Jacket. 168 pages. Book-length transcript of the author's interview. One of the greatest literary-interview books ever published in our time. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only by a University Press that sold out shortly after publication. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents "Susan Sontag: The Complete Rolling Stone Interview". Jonathan Cott's Interview with Susan Sontag in its entirety. At the time of the Interview, Sontag was at the peak of her career, fame, and influence. She was also dying from cancer. The Interview shows her going non-stop and full blast on a breathtaking range of subjects, turning the predictable Q & A format into a full-fledged genre that is as riveting and well, as great as her best essays. Sontag was a great talker, the writer-as-talker par excellence. Some of the things she talks about she had already written about, but with the very real possibility of death, felt she needed to clarify, modify, and expound upon further. More poignantly, she also talks about ideas and projects that she had thought about for some time and began working on, but felt she may never get around to doing or finishing. The inescapable sense one gets from the 150-page Interview is one of restlessness, which is deeply rooted in her unusually peripatetic childhood. Restlessness compelled her to think and re-think more than most writers ever need to do. To the frustration of even her most loyal readers, she assumed then abandoned positions, which to her, were always provisional and open to change. Restlessness turned her life into one of perpetual flight: Flight from America to Europe; from Europe to America; from a male to a female lover; from a female to a male lover; from New York to London; from London to Paris; from Paris to New York; from essays to fiction; from fiction to essays; from film to theater; from theater to film; from one idea to another, one project to another, one passion to another, one cause to another, one commitment to another. Sontag lived for another twenty-five years (she died of Stage 4 leukemia, her third bout with cancer, in 2004), but unlike most writers with a significant body of work behind them, the sense is that her work will always remain unfinished. "One of my oldest crusades is against the distinction between thought and feeling, which is really the basis of all anti-intellectual views: The heart and the head, thinking and feeling, fantasy and judgment. Thinking is a form of feeling and feeling is a form of thinking" (Susan Sontag). An absolute "must-have" title for Susan Sontag collectors. This title is a modern classic. 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, a pristine beauty. Please note: Copies available online are subsequent printings. The first print run was small, sold out shortly after publication, and had to be reissued right away. 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 0300189796.

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