As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
Susan Sontag
Language: English
Pages: 544
ISBN: 0374100764
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This, the second of three volumes of Susan Sontag's journals and notebooks, begins where the first volume left off, in the middle of the 1960s. It traces and documents Sontag's evolution from fledgling participant in the artistic and intellectual world of New York City to world-renowned critic and dominant force in the world of ideas with the publication of the groundbreaking Against Interpretation in 1966.
As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh follows Sontag through the turbulent years of the 1960s―from her trip to Hanoi at the peak of the Vietnam War to her time making films in Sweden―up to 1981 and the beginning of the Reagan era. This is an invaluable record of the inner workings of one of the most inquisitive and analytical thinkers of the twentieth century at the height of her power. It is also a remarkable document of one individual's political and moral awakening.
Read My Lips: Stories of a Hollywood Life
Etched in Sand: A True Story of Five Siblings Who Survived an Unspeakble Childhood on Long Island
Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality
6-year-olds that the collar-bone was called the clavicle, or [SS’s sister] Judith the 48 capitals of the 48 states (me age 12, the bunk beds). I was Gulliver in Lilliput + in Brobdingnag at the same time. They were too strong for me and I was too strong for them. I would protect them from me. I was from Krypton, but I would be meek, mild-mannered Clark Kent. I would smile, I would be “nice” … And politics came into it—was that a supporting cause, or a product of the unhappy consciousness? I felt
today?) Why Diddy? If John Hollander had said his nickname was Bubu or Toto—or Dig? No! Diddy, Diddy only. Those five letters. Why? I’ve never understood. Today [I] saw. Diddy Daddy That’s the source of the meditation on death I’ve carried in my heart all my life. Diddy is 33 years old. So was Daddy when he died. Did-he? Did he die? The theme of false death, la mort équi-voque, la résurrection inattendue [“unexpected”] in all my work— Frau Anders (The Benefactor) The Bauers (Duet for
scientist. What would the world do with all those things? The universalization of art [would] be an ecological disaster. An idea of infinite productivity. No better than the idea of infinite inventiveness (technology) or the infinite acquisition of knowledge. Concept of limits. Fear of engaging in “élite” activities is what makes people say that, ideally, everyone should be [an] artist. But some activities are possible only if a few people do them. The only sense in which everybody could be
[Rainer Maria Rilke’s] Malte Laurids Brigge—the first “notational” novel. How important, premonitory, and underestimated it is. Benjamin is neither a literary critic nor philosopher but an atheist theologian practicing his hermeneutical skills on culture. Rivière’s brilliant description of the Symbolist work of art—he describes what should be abandoned (as exhausted; too elitist; lazy; too life-denying) but I’m still in the grip of the Symbolist mentality … Proust included everything the
The lonely figures everywhere—many of whom wouldn’t have liked each other—who uphold the asocial position. Oscar Wilde. Benjamin. Adorno. Cioran. True that Benjamin used a communist language in the last years of his life, so he looks different to us now. But that’s because he died in 1940. Those last years were the ones in which communist language regained authority—seen as necessary to fight fascism (identified as The Enemy). Had Benjamin lived as long as Adorno [he] w[oul]d have become as
