A review by melanie_reads
At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches by Susan Sontag

4.0

While not her best, it is alas, the last. It was helpful also to read the foreword to better understand the context of these essays and how truly heart breaking to read the lament that she wishes she had more time to write about what burned deep inside her.

Many, many wonderful "big ideas" broken down into tiny bits:

1. There is no final photograph.

2. Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged.

3. The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be in the best interests of your community.

4. The greatest offense now, in matters both of the arts and of culture generally, not to mention political life, is to seem to be upholding some better, more exigent standard, which is attacked, both from the left and the right, as either naive or (a new banner for the philistines) "elitist."