This book is very important to all students and professionals interested in the field of Human Ecology. The case studies are very well explained, and helpful to the understanding of the complexity of human ecology. It is a pleasant reading that gives insight for all persons interested in the field.

Words have tremendous power, and reading the letters written from one person to another often helps us to know that person far more intimately than anythng else ever could.

During the summer of 1926, three extraordinary poets (two Russian and one German) began a correxpondence of the highest order. These three extraordinary people were Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetayeva and Ranier Maria Rilke. Rilke, who is revered as a god by both Pasternak and Tsvetayeva, is seen by them as the very essence of poetry, itself.

None of these three correspondents is having a good year: Pasternak is still living in Moscow, attempting to reconcile his life to the Bolshevik regime; Tsvetayeva has been exiled to France with her husband and children and is living in the direst financial straits, with each day presenting a new hurdle in the struggle to simply "get by;" Rilke's situation is perhaps the worst of all...he is dying of leukemia in Switzerland.

Pasternak and Tsvetayeva have already exchanged years of letters filled with the passion and romance of poetry, itself. Although Pasternak saw Rilke briefly in 1900, Tsvetayeva has never laid eyes on her idol. These three poets are, however, connected by a bond far stronger than the physical. They are kindred spirits, and each find repetitions and echoes of himself in the other.

Tsvetayeva quickly becomes the driving force of this trio. This is not surprising given her character. She's the most outrageous of the three, the boldest, the neediest, the one most likely to bare her inner soul to its very depths. Tsvetayeva's exuberance, however, eventually has disatrous effects.

Although Pasternak and Tsvetayeva consider Rilke their superior by far, these are not the letters of acolyte to mentor, but an exchange of thoughts and ideas among equals. If you've ever read the sappy, sentimental "Letters to a Young Poet," you'll find a very different Rilke in this book. Gone is the grandiose, condescending Rilke. In his place we find an enthusiastic Rilke, one filled with an almost overwhelming "joie de vivre," despite his sad circumstances.

As Susan Sontag says in her preface, these letters are definitely love letters of the highest order. The poets seek to possess and consume one another as only lovers can. But even these lovers haven't suspected that one of their trio is fatally ill. Pasternak and Tsvetayeva are both shocked and devastated when Rilke dies.

Love, many people will argue, is best expressed when the people involved are able to spend time together. There is, however, something to be said for separateness, for there is much that can only come to the surface when the lover is separated from the beloved.

These letters can teach us much about Rilke, Pasternak and Tsvetayeva. They can also teach us much about the very depths of the soul...both its anguish and those sublime, angelic heights...areas not often explored by anyone, anywhere, at any time.

When an author's canon includes such masterpieces as "The Bonfire of the Vanities" and "The Right Stuff," it is easy to overlook his lesser-known, albeit no less brilliant, earlier work. "Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine" includes a handful of Wolfe's classic essays from the mid-1970s, including the title piece (which close Wolfe readers will notice he reprised in a "Bonfire" passage),"The Me Decade," and the hilarious "Street Fighters." Any Wolfe fan looking for something to nibble on while they await the long-overdue "A Man In Full" will thoroughly enjoy this book.

Although his novel "Jakob von Gunten" is a masterpiece, the maniacal genius of Walser is more easily discovered in his short fiction. If Kafka's vision is maddening and claustrophobic, Walser, who deals with a similar kind of surrealistic world, applies a lighter, more deftly playful touch. Sometimes, the puns and literary license Walser take can be willful and test a reader's patience, but the sheer force of his philosophy and world view contained in these miniaturist stories are awe-inspiring, and are on par with the delirious vision of Kafka. Walser is a kind of a writer who can turn from anger to unbearable tenderness within a sentence. Many of these stories will move you and frustrate you at the same time, but all the risks he takes are still, and I suspect always will be, thrillingly modern and relevant. I only wish his excellent reworkings of fairy tales (I'm thinking especially of 'Snow White') could have been included in this volume. Walser has been neglected for far too long, and the longer his work languishes in obscurity, the world is that much more at a loss.

Long before she entered her current middlebrow-novelist phase, Susan Sontag was one of America's most important critics. A tireless crusader for the idea that the distinction between "high" and "low" culture is best forgotten, and that creating a "new sensibility" which is able to take in everything from pop music to avant-garde art, is essential, Sontag had an incredibly learned, original sensibility that was nevertheless makes for an enjoyable, engaging read.

Styles of Radical Will (originally published in 1969) is, perhaps, Sontag's most triumphantly expansive collection of essays, covering film (Bergman, Godard), politics (the famous "Trip to Hanoi" essay) and philosophy ("'Thinking Against Oneself:' Reflections on Cioran"). Sontag explores each of her subjects in a nuanced, objective, often opinionated, and always lively way.

Nearly all of the essays in Styles of Radical Will stand the test of time because Sontag's approach is irreproachably modern (she is certainly America's mother of modernism/postmodernism) in its absolute refusal to look at her subjects in any easy or expected way; Sontag is not afraid to criticize the banalities of some of our most celebrated culture-heroes, while propounding not what is "...embalmed, immortal, unequivocally (and merely) 'beautiful'," but work that retains its "...youthful power to offend, to appear 'ugly,' irresponsible, frivolous, pretentious, empty." In other words, Sontag looks beyond the immediate, easy, "acceptable" perception.

Styles of Radical Will is a treasure and a touchstone for any reader looking for a deep, invigorating, and unconventional exploration of culture through modern eyes.

Studying Artaud is one way of taking a deep dive off into the realm of the unknown. His struggle to fully comprehend and describe lucidly his thought process and the clockwork of his soul; his obsessive desire and drive to break beyond the mundane level of median psycological theatre to rediscover the fiery roots and potent magic of the theatre event; and his visionary words---all of these combine to give us a man who was deep, profound and troubled---hence, utterly human, and truly inspirational to any theatre artist or artist in general. This translation of some of his most essential writings is essential to anyone who wishes to study the avant garde theatre. His influence is at times lucid and clearly defined; at other times, one sees that the myth of Artaud has distorted what the actual man wanted and worked for. In dealing with any artist who has created such a controversy (in his own time as well as in our time), one has to approach his work with the discipline of a tightrope walker. And Sontag's work provides the researcher with a straight, keen and powerful translation. Among the other translations of Artaud, this one is the best anthology available for the experienced researcher and the burning initiate. Read it as an athlete of the heart.

This isn't a book that you read from cover to cover. Find a subject that interests you. Then another. And then another. Soon you'll find yourself caught in his web of genius. His madness came from his endless spring of sanity that could no longer hold up under the insanity of the world he lived in. Genius suffers. He suffered too much. Years ago I saw a one man play "Artaud's Project" in Chicago. Best piece of theatre I've ever seen. This was my introduction to Artaud. This book captures this brilliant lunatic's crystal clear vision and pain. His letters are prehaps the highlight of this collection. This book is not for the masses, though, I wish it were. So much insanity and ignorance could be wiped out in a single stroke if people understood this man. Of course the sane appear to be insane in an insane world. If any of what I've said makes the least bit of sense to you this book is for you!

Selected Writings isn't an easy read. I jumped around a lot. This stuff is the most intense stuff I've ever come across. Artaud is one of the most important writers to rationalise beyond logic. His ideas on Van Gogh prove, beyond doubt, that his sense of aesthetics was far more acute than his contemporaries. They always said weird stuff about Neitszche, how he was more 'in touch with himself' than other writers or, indeed, society at large. But Artaud explodes that idea, since he continually toys with his own sense of himself to the extreme. Reading Artaud for prolonged periods is like going beyond this (his) sense of self to another place, something completely new and agonizing. His ideas abouty the theatre are quite well established but there is other stuff here. The poems, monologues and just the sheer variety of 'inner scenarios' at play here really astounds you. 'To have done with the judgement of God' must be the most extreme form of self expressed mental torture around! (incidentally, am I correct in thinking there is a recording of this piece knockin' around?) Anyways, please take a slice of the insanity, you never know where it will lead you...

I am not a big fan of artistic criticism: I often find it pretentious and prolix. Sontag's essays can be described by these adjectives, at least on first reading. I suspected that critics are inherently like this (until I read Nancy Newhall), but I reread "On Photography" recently and have changed my opinion slightly: critics can be pretentious, but that is the nature of the task.

Sontag's essays are complex and thought provoking, eliciting a flow of ideas that one needs to think about deeply: what is a photograph and how does it convey its message? How much truth does a photograph contain, if any? The answer to that last question is much more difficult with the advent of digital photography and the wonderous (or evil, depending on your viewpoint) manipulations that can be done in the digital darkroom.

An issue that isn't discussed in great depth is the relationship between candid snapshots on one end of the spectrum, and fine art photography on the other; Photography as a medium for artistic expression vs. a medium for recording reality (or unreality or surreality).

The book is not trivially understood: references to philosophy and art history abound, and a dictionary of philosophy and art is almost a requisite. You should also expect to read this a couple of times to get the full impact: do not make your judgement based on a first reading.

Photography, probably more than any other medium, is emblematic of the nature of modern Western society. Photographs are concerned chiefly with appearances, they are deceptively nuanced but essentially narrow, yet somehow they find great breadth in their mechanization and ubiquity. And, like our society, they tend towards an ultimate reduction of the dimensionality of time. Through photographs the past blends into the present, flattening into an omni-present "now" in which history loses its philosophical weight as it increases in familiarity. In a sense photographs are the ultimate invention of a humanist-capitalist society: they provide the commodification of memory itself! And like the society which originated them, they provide equal portions of help and harm, of truth and of fiction; they have undeniable value, but they also result in a certain loss of innocence, and of deeper values.

The six essays in this book (all of which were originally published in the New York Times Review of Books) provide a critical evaluation of these themes. Ms. Sontag is concerned with what she sees as the cheapening of experience that the proliferation of photographs in our society has caused. She argues that photography has enshrined a superficiality of experience and contributed to the overvaluation of appearances to a point where image has (subconsciously) replaced reality as reality. In many ways this shift in our modes of cultural perception is shattering; it is also completely inevitable and irreversible. As an example: who after seeing Ansel Adams's stunning photographs of Yosemite could help feeling slightly underwhelmed when experiencing the real thing? Certainly, Yosemite in person retains a certain cachet simply for its "bigness", but the mystique, the mysticism of the Adams photo is going to be missing from most people's experience of the real place. The image genie is out of the bottle... and Sontag is here to tell us that we have to live with the consequences of its release. On Photography is a lengthy exploration of the implications of the genie's (photography's) work on society. The book is full of insights into the meaning of an image-saturated society, but you won't find many conclusions at the end. It is, as a good work of criticism should be, a collection of numerous deep and provocative statements with few prescriptions. Sontag leaves it up to you, the reader, to sort out the pieces for yourself.

In fact, one of the things I found most interesting about the essays was that although Ms. Sontag evaluates many of these societal trends she doesn't seem to have a strictly negative response to any of them. Her attitude seems to be that if, for instance, the easy availability of images of Half Dome makes us enjoy Half Dome itself somewhat less, that rather than stopping looking at pictures of Half Dome or photographing Half Dome we should instead re-evaluate what experiencing Half Dome really means to us. Since we've invented a new society, and new ways of looking at society and nature, it's requisite upon us that we also invent new ways of understanding our experience of life and society. I actually agree with her on this: it's okay to wax nostalgic about the idyllicism of life before the advent of the image-saturation that we have today, but there's no way to go back to that idyllic society. Our time would be better spent in learning to deal with (and shape) our present society than in trying to shift back to an older, now completely lost, ideal of society.

Sontag wants photographers to reach a deeper understanding of the implications of their work. She's not asking the photographer-reader to put down his camera and take up a brush or pen instead, but she is saying that without some grasp of the meaning of photography to society photographers are not very helpful or socially desirable creatures. One of the points that she makes, touching on this, is that our traditional understanding of photography in relation to the other arts is flawed. Photography itself isn't actually an art-form, like painting or music. Or in her words, "Like language, it is a medium in which works of art (among other things) are made. Out of language, one can make scientific discourse, bureaucratic memoranda, love letters, grocery lists, and Balzac's Paris. Out of photography, one can make passport pictures, weather photographs, pornographic pictures, X-rays, wedding pictures, and Atget's Paris." Artistic photography without theme, photography without intent, is about as valuable as fiction without characters or plot. Photographers persist in photographing meaningless objects and minutiae, simply because this is what the "great" photographers have done, instead of trying to draft their own statements and follow their own visions. (Curiously, Edward Weston's photographs of his toilet are actually art; however, my pictures of my toilet would not be art, because I cannot photograph my toilet with any understanding of the meaning of these photographs, and so cannot have any pretensions towards the artistic value of these photographs.)

I believe that anyone who photographs should read this book, whether they merely take casual photos while on vacation or are pursuing photography as their career. We all need to reach an understanding of the act of picture-taking, because only with some sort of understanding can we give our work a sense of direction. And only with direction can photography become more than cultural noise, desensitizing us through over-exposure to cliches and making banalities out of the profound.

Every so often one reads about tourists who are found strangled with the strap of their cameras in some obscure alleyway of Bangkok or Manila. Or New York. The camera is invariably missing, of course, and one would wish that the perpetrator had left a message on the body explaining the crime. A copy of ON PHOTOGRAPHY placed on the victim's chest would splendidly communicate most of the motivations for such murders.

People who possess even the rudiments of sensitivity become aware, without any necessary explanations, that holding a camera is not unlike holding a gun. It conveys upon the possesor raw power, whether it is wanted or not. How this power is used may result on the strangulation of the photographer.

This book, in a much more elegant way, is about such things. Its essays should be included as part of the operating instructions of all cameras sold in the US. I think that even the users of disposable cameras should read this book because it will not only improve their camera work, but their souls, also.

There are some shortcomings to the book. For one it does not have an index, a sin I find hard to forgive in any book of this nature. Nor does it contain any pictures, a most disconcerting fact. For as early as page 7 we are told that David Octavius Hill and Julia Margaret Cameron were early masters of photography. Uh? Never heard of them. And so, as part of this excercise in gaining Kultur, I was forced to purchase Naomi Rosenblum's A WORLD HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY (available through Amazon[.com], naturally), a joyous addition to my book collection, and one in which I was able to find almost all of Ms. Sontag's references to photographers. Cameron and Hill were, of course, prominently discussed and their work carefully reproduced in Ms. Rosenblum's book. The two books in combination are wonderful; but, if on a budget, by all means consider that ON PHOTOGRAPHY is marvelous all by it self.

bad writting , fishy explanation of what happene

I may be biased because I have worked with Kemal but I have to say that I truly enjoyed this book. as an American I never fully understood what happened in Sarajevo- why it happened or the extent of the conflict over there. After reading this book I was rather ashamed that the rest of the world did nothing. Worse, we continue to allow atrocities to be perpetuated in that corner of the world. This book remains topical. Conflicts continue to erupt in the region and anyone who wants to speak intelligently on the subject, understand the story that's not in the news or would like to read about an un-sung hero, read this book. Kemal is presently working on a new book and reading this one would be a great starter. I would read this book over and over again. Its the story of people fighting for democracy and freedom (focused on freedom of the press) and the long bloody road that lay in front of them.

This memoir by the editor-in-chief of Oslobodjenje from 1991 to 1995 bears unrivalled witness to the resilience and survival of an operative civil society in Sarajevo under siege. Under Kurspahi 's editorship the paper came to symbolize the resistance of Bosnia-Herzegovina and its people to genocidal aggression and to terrible deprivation, while at the same time maintaining its journalistic integrity and critical independence when to do so was hard indeed. (This short review is from "Book on Bosnia" published by The Bosnian Institute)

Even the conventional medical community is beginning to integrate modern medicine with "alternative" forms of treatment, as seen in such infamous documentaries as Bill Moyer's "Healing and the Mind." Any book, including Sontag's, is remiss if it fails to provide a balanced view of illness in the 21st century. (We know, for instance, that stress contributes to heart disease) Pretending that our internal lives have no bearing on our health is irresponsible. Sontag herself writes about the negative effects doctors have noted in a patient's health when the patient was given a diagnosis, thus underscoring the link between emotion and health. She then goes on to refute her own statement by discrediting the link between the two, and blaming the "new age" for perpetuating negativity in regard to illness.

I do believe that illness needs de-sensatization in our culture, but we must not succeed in downplaying the role our internal lives play in health. The myths and negativity that go along with a cancer diagnosis are only pernicious because of the emotion and negativity they hold. For Sontag to suggest there is no such link between emotion and health is ludicrious, and further perpetuates the notion that intelligence and material reality are the only threads to the tapestry of life.

There is no replacement for a healthy and centered attitude towards life and death. When an illness is balanced with conventional medicine, an informed and knowledgable patient who feels empowered by his or her choices, (whether they be conventional medicine or alternative choices)and a connection to one's self-- the patient fares much better.

"De-mythacizing" cancer and aids is an important step in reducing the emotional burden one feels from such a diagnosis. But it should also serve to replace that void with positivity, courage and a stronge sense of ones self.

Cancer phobia, some people say, is worse than cancer. Well, not really... But true up to a point. Being afraid of a disease, be it cancer, AIDS, or whatever else, can be debilitating. And who of us doesn't know people that are scared to death of cancer, or of AIDS? And how can we all not be scared (maybe even terrified) of these diseases, when in our eyes they're not just diseases but are loaded with a whole lot of different meanings...

Susan Sontag's essay on cancer (& her later essay on AIDS) deal with these diseases as metaphors of whatever is bad, evil, reprehensible, sinful about human experience. Especially with cancer, the metaphor is more poignant, since, cancer still has unknown causes, at least up to a point: of course cancer now is much better understood, but in '78, when Sontag wrote the first essay, cancer was mostly unknown territory. Obviously, when we're talking about unknown territory, unknown (& mysterious) causes, there's a lot of theoretizing & projecting: anyone can project their own ideas on this white wall of ignorance. And so people 'fight' cancer, 'win the battle' against cancer, 'have cancer personalities', 'cause' their cancer or whatever else. It was even worse with AIDS, especially in the '80s: then it was widely (& stupidely) believed that this new disease was the payback for the free sexuality of the '70s, & especially of the sexuality of homosexuals.

Susan Sontag's essays tackle these issues & show the metaphors & prejudices of illness as what they are. They are important, clearly-written essays, & if today some of these ideas appear obvious or widely known, remember that Sontag talked about these things many years ago, being one of the first people to address the issue.

I've read only the original essay (Illness as Metaphor) so will
comment on that alone. The book is an excellent antidote to the
overemphasis on psychological causes for physical illness that is
current in society and, especially, in the "new age"
community. Well worth reading and digesting for that purpose.

This
said, I do think [the text] overstates the case somewhat. There is
a body of empirical evidence showing, for example, links between
mental state and immune function. This link would, in principle, be
expected to influence the incidence of both infective disease and
cancer. For example, only a fraction of those who are infected with
T.B. develop clinical disease, and stress may play a role in
activating latent disease in those who are chronically infected. In
polio, the situation is even more extreme, as only about one pecent of
those who are infected develop clinical disease. Thus, for many
infective diseases, there is a marked difference between rates of
infection and rates of "symptomaticity." It seems likely
that the mind and mental state is one (but certainly not the only!)
factor that influences whether an infection becomes clinical
illness.

Similarly, in cancer, as I understand it, all of us are
constantly experiencing mutations that have the potential to become
cancerous. But most of these mutations are eliminated, before they do
harm, by the operation of various "survaliance" systems
(including the immune system) in the body. Thus, the onset of cancer
may involve an escape from survaliance. To the extent that mental
state affects immune function, the mind could affect the appearance of
cancer. Of course, there are many factors--such as environmental
carcinogens, smoking, etc.--which in some fraction of the population
will cause rates of mutation that will overwhelm the bodies
survaliance functions, perhaps even when these systems are operating
well.

In conclusion, I think Sontag is on to something important,
and makes excellent points that many people could learn from. But
these points should be viewed as part of the picture, and good food
for thought, rather than the whole truth.

Comments and corrections
welcome at publiccontact@hotmail.com

Just be aware that Susan Sontag, in the current New Yorker, dated September 24 and with a black cover commemorating the WTC disaster, has published a piece in which she attacks U.S. leaders and commentators and military personnel. The military personnel are cowards, she says. Our leaders and the media spout "self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions" she says.

The World Trade Center attackers, on the other hand, she says "were not cowards" and she strongly implies they were courageous.

So for all of you Sontag lovers, just be aware of who you're really dealing with.

Susan Sontag knows what the terrorists knew for sometime. America, in all its arrogant pride and underhanded support of some of the most repressive regimes on the planet, has to realize that we are still a 225 year old experiment. America is flabby and lacks the true insight that doesn't flinch. We could develop this essential quality of a mature democracy, but it will take pain and suffering. America suffers from the puer aeternus flight from the earth. Prolonged adolescence. It doesn't have its feet planted firmly in the earth. Look at what we're doing to it! Ms. Sontag had the guts to say what was bothering her soul. How many Americans can say that and not fear reprisal? Come on people, what the hell is wrong with your perpetual blindness ? It does not bode well for our future as a unified nation willing to encourage and demand free speech!

Susan Sontag is a very intelligent and articulate woman! These essays are brilliant! As is all of her writing. This country needs more thinking people doing his or her patriotic duty which is to question and to debate all sides of EVERY issue.
We have a robotic President who assures us that America still stands tall. A lot of thinking needs to be done, and perhaps is being done in Washington and elsewhere, about the ineptitude of American intelligence and counter-intelligence, and about what constitutes a smart program of military defense. But the public is not being asked to bear much of the burden of reality. The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.