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Sontag, Susan : Duet For Cannibals

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York City, NY, 1970

ISBN 0374144249

First Edition / First Printing. Fine in Fine Dust Jacket. 129 pages. The author's screenplay. One of Susan Sontag's finest - and most underrated - achievements. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with the Softcover Edition. Published in a small and limited print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Susan Sontag's "Duet For Cannibals". The screenplay of her first film. She wrote and directed two full-length feature films in Sweden: "Brother Carl" and "Duet For Cannibals", both of which have earned a considerable cult following. Sontag once said that she would have accepted an invitation to direct a film in Afghanistan if that was the only chance to make her own contribution to the one art (other than literature) that she cared most passionately about. Her gratitude to her Swedish sponsors is unmistakable in the films themselves: "Brother Carl" is an homage to the films of Carl Theodor Dreyer whereas "Duet For Cannibals" is redolent of Strindberg, Ingmar Bergman, and even Vilgot Sjoman, whose conflation of political and sexual liberation is echoed in the film. The "message" of Sjoman's "I Am Curious Yellow" is that in order for it to succeed and endure, a political revolution must be a cultural one as well, especially in the realm of sex, clearly implying that all 20th-century revolutions were tragic failures whereas California's Counter Cultural Movement, which was ruthlessly suppressed by American corporate culture in collusion with the media, remains influential to this day, the same conclusion Sontag arrived at ambivalently in "Trip to Hanoi" and somewhat less ambivalently in "On Photography". Even the acerbic Pauline Kael, the New Yorker Magazine's resident critic and the most influential American film critic of the 20th century, found "Duet For Cannibals" eerily disturbing, particularly a brilliant extended scene between a homeless person and the wealthy patrons of a restaurant. "A witty, bone-dry serio-comedy that fascinates and disturbs in turn" (Frederic Tuten). An absolute "must-have" title for Susan Sontag collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in black ink-pen on the front free endpaper by Susan Sontag. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. It also comes with an unusually fine copy of the original 4.5 X 3.0 inch Film Poster, the first such copy we have ever found of an otherwise ephemeral piece. This title is a cult classic. As far as we know, this is the only such signed copy (with Souvenir Film Poster) of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, pristine beauties. A rare set thus. Lavishly illustrated with black-and-white stills from the film. 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 set. (SEE ALSO OTHER SUSAN SONTAG TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0374144249.

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