mmaruskin 's review for:

Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag

4.0

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Fairly dense for such a short book. Based on the description, I expected this to go in a different direction than it ended up going, in that much of it was writing about the history of photographic documentation of human suffering in response to war, and its relationship to historical depictions of suffering in art. Where references are usually insightful and inspiring, often they were so profuse that it was actually bogging down my comprehension a bit. Love the way she wrapped up the last few chapters of the book, talking about the psychological effects of digesting the horror of reality. Going to reality-test with this one: "Someone who is perennially surprised that depravity exists, who continues to feel disillusioned (even incredulous) when confronted with evidence of what humans are capable of inflicting in the way of gruesome, hands-on cruelties upon other humans, has not reached moral or psychological adulthood. No one after a certain age has the right to this kind of innocence, of superficiality, to this degree of ignorance, or amnesia (114)."