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Sontag, Susan (Author) & Editors of The New Yorker Magazine : The New Yorker Magazine Issue: Susan Sontag: "the Very Comical Lament Of Pyramus And Thisbe"

The New Yorker Magazine, New York City, NY, 1991

First Edition / First Printing. Fine in No Dust Jacket, As Issued. 100 pages. Rare Susan Sontag and New Yorker Magazine collectible item. Landmark New Yorker Magazine March 4, 1991 Issue. Pictorial softcovers with titles on the cover and spine, as issued. Contributions by some of the world's finest writers, journalists, poets, humorists, and graphic/cartoon artists. Printed on pristine-white, thick coated stock paper in the United States to the highest standards. Unlike most books being published today, American magazines are still being printed in America; many of them are not only superior in quality, they will last in terms of production values. Without DJ, as issued. Presents Susan Sontag's "The Very Comical Lament of Pyramus And Thisbe". Her first and only short play. An allegorical dialogue between the eponymous Shakespearean characters from "A Midsummer Night's Dream", whom Sontag has appropriated to personify the former West and East Germany. The Berlin Wall is the subject of their melancholy and meditative dialogue on The Old versus The New as well as the Cold War and the Fall of Communism in 1989. Beautifully, allusively, and wittily written in the Beckett-ian mode, the piece appears in published form for the very first time (it appeared, ten years later and in slightly revised form, in "Where the Stress Falls", her last collection of essays). An activist all her writing life, Sontag considered herself a committed member of the American Radical Left early in her career. Her book-length essay, "Trip to Hanoi", is referred to by the great Leftist filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci in his film, "The Dreamers", as one of the key texts which influenced European students, thinkers, and activists during the tumultuous 1960's. She eventually became disillusioned with the Left, famously calling Communism "fascism with a human face", and adopted a more pragmatic, more open-minded, and (still-controversial) anti-ideological political stance towards the end of her life. In America, her position was necessarily a precarious and vulnerable one because the national dialogue is dominated by the ideological Left and Right. Her embrace of German culture as a Jewish-American writer did not prevent her from being recognized by Israel with the Jerusalem Prize. She was honored in 2003, the year before her death, with the "Friedenspreis", the German Prize. Along with The Nobel, The Goethe, The Prince of Asturias, and The Erasmus Prizes (Sontag also received the last two awards), the Jerusalem and "Friedenspreis" are the world's most prestigious literary awards, much more so than either the Pulitzer or Booker. Her only short play is unique in her oeuvre. An absolute "must-have" title for Susan Sontag collectors. This Issue is now collectible. As far as we know, this is the only copy available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a beauty. A rare copy thus. Winner of the MacArthur Genius Grant, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977 for "On Photography", the National Book Award in 2000 for "In America", and the Jerusalem Prize in 2001. Shimon Peres, in awarding the Jerusalem Prize, described Sontag as "one of the world's finest writers and greatest minds". One of the most influential and important writer-intellectuals of the 20th century. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER SUSAN SONTAG TITLES IN OUR CATALOG).

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