Daniel Schreiber - Böcker

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) was one of America's first celebrity intellectuals. In the first biography to be published since her death, Daniel Schreiber portrays a glamorous woman full of contradictions and inner conflicts, whose life mirrored the cultural upheavals of her time. While known primarily as a cultural critic and novelist, Sontag was also a filmmaker, stage director, and dramatist. It was her status as a pop icon that was unusual for an American intellectual: she was filmed by Andy Warhol and Woody Allen, photographed by Annie Leibovitz and Diane Arbus, and her likeness adorned advertisements for Absolut vodka. Drawing on newly available sources, including interviews with Nadine Gordimer, Robert Wilson, and Sontag's son, David Rieff, as well as on myriad interviews given by Sontag and her extensive correspondence with her friend and publisher Roger Straus, Schreiber explores the roles that Sontag played in influencing American public cultural and political conversations.

FROM THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF ALONE'Such a skilled and engaging writer'Deborah Levy'Schreiber's prose is gorgeous, practically silken'Lauren GroffNothing in this world lasts forever.Exhausted and isolated, numbed to his feelings by all-consuming work, Daniel Schreiber sought escape in Venice: the iconic city that we both love and pre-emptively mourn, as it gradually sinks beneath the waves.As he wanders its waterways and historic buildings, Schreiber confronts how since the death of his father, grief has been his daily companion - and how this personal loss has been magnified by the many larger, collective losses that the world has faced in recent years.With characteristic intelligence, curiosity and compassion, Schreiber considers how other writers have faced their own losses - from Joan Didion and Rebecca Solnit, to Judith Butler and Sigmund Freud - to finally arrive at an understanding of how grief offers us our best and perhaps only chance to find our way back to life.

'A book to love and cherish'Deborah Levy, author of The Cost of Living'A beautiful writer and, just as important, a beautiful thinker'Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life'Friendship is, in fact, as much the topic of this book as aloneness'Sarah Bakewell, GuardianAt no time before have so many people lived alone, and never has loneliness been so widely or keenly felt. Why, in a society of individualists, is living alone perceived as a shameful failure? And can we ever be happy on our own?'A heartfelt memoir on being single, living alone and the existential experience of loneliness'Financial Times'Romantic love, suggests the author, is the lone "grand narrative" to have survived seismic societal shifts in modern times . . . Hermits and intimacy, the taboo of loneliness and the consolation of friendship - all find their place in a meditation that nods to joy and adversity'Observer

At no time before have so many people lived alone, and never has loneliness been so widely or keenly felt. Why, in a society of individualists, is living alone perceived as a shameful failure? And can we ever be happy on our own?Drawing on personal experience, as well as philosophy and sociology, Daniel Schreiber explores the tension between the desire for solitude and freedom, and for companionship, intimacy and love. Along the way he illuminates the role that friendships play in our lives – can they be a response to the loss of meaning in a world in crisis? A profoundly enlightening book on how we want to live, Alone spent almost a year on Germany’s bestseller list.