The collection comprises some of the key critical essays written by Susan Sontag between 1972 and 1980.
The book includes Sontag’s texts exploring her emotional experience of Paul Goodman’s death, intense memories of Roland Barthes, an essay on Walter Benjamin, and a thorough study of Antonin Artaud’s philosophy and art. It also features a critique of Hitler’s favorite film director Leni Riefenstahl (most famous for the propaganda pictures Triumphof the Willand Olympia), as well as a brilliant analysis of the antifascist Hitler: A Film from Germany(1977) directed by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg. In these recognizably explicit texts, Sontag reflects on death, art, history, imagination, and writing as such.
