Styles of Radical Will

This collection of essays contains some of the most important pieces of criticism of the twentieth century, including the classics The Aesthetics of Silence, a brilliant account of language, thought and consciousness, and Trip to Hanoi, written during the Vietnam War. Here too is an excoriating account of America’s identity and future, a robust and surprising discussion of pornography and other richly rewarding writings on art, film, literature and politics.

Susan Sontag has written four novels, The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In America, which won the 2000 National Book Award for fiction; a collection of stories, I, etcetera; several plays, including Alice in Bed; and five books of essays, among them Against Interpretation, On Photography, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, and most recently, Where the Stress Falls. Her books are translated into twenty-eight languages. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work.