Where the Stress Falls

Two decades of indispensable work by a great American writer—more than forty longer and shorter pieces that illustrate a deeply felt, kaleidoscopic array of interests, passions, observations, and ideas

Thirty-five years after her first collection, the classic Against Interpretation, America’s most important essayist chose more than forty longer and shorter pieces from the previous twenty years. “Reading,” the first of three sections, includes ardent pieces on writers from Sontag’s own private canon—Machado de Assis, Barthes, W. G. Sebald, Borges, Tsvetaeva, and Elizabeth Hardwick. In the second section, “Seeing,” she shares her passions for film, dance, photography, painting, opera, and theater. And in the final section, “There and Here,” Sontag explores her own commitments to the work (and activism) of conscience and to the vocation of the writer.