Debriefing

September 18, 2017
The first complete collection of the late Sontag’s stories affirms both the range and depth of her literary gifts. The volume adds three previously uncollected works, all first published in the New Yorker, to the eight collected as I, Etcetera in 1978. Among the new stories, “Pilgrimage” is a straightforward semiautobiographical narrative—a rarity for Sontag—that chronicles a California teenager’s awkward visit to iconic author Thomas Mann. Less conventionally shaped, “The Letter Scene” fuses instances of letter-writing from the arts, the news, and the narrator’s memory into a haunting meditation on love, time, and distance both physical and psychic. “The Way We Live Now” follows an unnamed man with an unnamed disease (that is clearly AIDS) through a sequence of discussions between his friends. First published in 1986, the story pays compelling witness to both its historical moment and the timeless mystery of suffering. Among previously collected works, “Debriefing,” “Project for a Trip to China,” and “Unguided Tour” in particular stand out for their fierce imaginative and intellectual power. Sontag’s best short fiction is sometimes overlooked because her essays and novels are so strong; this new collection is testament to the fact that, though she did not write short stories often, she wrote them well.

March 5, 2018
Actor Marlo masters Sontag’s complex literary voice in these 11 stories, effortlessly navigating fractured expressions and disjointed configurations. In “The Letter Scene,” Marlo smoothly handles a collage of back-and-forth shifts among multiple letter writers of multiple eras. In the satirical story “Baby,” she’s able to keep the listener in tune with the mother, the father, and the psychologist, whose questions and comments are unvoiced but implied in the answers. Others, like “An Unguided Tour,” involve disjointed dialogues that meld into internal ruminations. Sontag was first and foremost a brilliant essayist, but these stories are occasions to experiment with other genres such as autobiography, allegory, diary, and even sci-fi. Stories such as the sci-fi piece “Dummy” involve Sontag’s philosophical musings on the vacuous ways of modern life, retaining the underlying pedagogical quality of essays. Marlo’s narrative skills guide listeners through each piece, but anyone who wants to delve into the layered meanings within Sontag’s sentences may want to keep the book in hand for easy reference. A Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover.

October 1, 2017

This complete collection of National Book Award winner Sontag's (In America; The Volcano Lover) short fiction, edited by Taylor (Saul Bellow: Letters), contains 11 eclectic stories. "Pilgrimage," the first work, is a sweet, humorous, and expertly crafted tale of two teenagers meeting Thomas Mann. This is followed by a piece that reads more like a poem ("Project for a Trip to China") and then an imaginative, surreal tale ("American Spirits"). In "The Dummy," a man unsatisfied with his life makes a robotic replica of himself to perform what he views as daily drudgery, allowing him to devote all of his attention to pleasure. His family and coworkers are not able to tell the difference between the real man and the robot. "Debriefing," the title work, provides a friend's accounting of an elusive woman named Julia. Ultimately, these works cannot be easily defined; they are often experimental, quite beautiful, and represent the freedom and courage of a mind in love with language. VERDICT Sontag's status as an established novelist, essayist, and critic, and that this is the only collection of her short fiction, will make this a popular choice. [See Prepub Alert, 5/15/17.]--Stacy Russo, Santa Ana Coll. Lib., CA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2017

With her seminal writings, exemplary public intellectual Sontag so shaped our perception of literature that a few folks might forget that she wrote award-winning fiction, too. Here's a collection of her short works.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.