I'd just gotten this book last week, started it, and had every intention of reading it, despite the fact that I've never been able to finish any of Susan Sontag's other books, and despite the fact that she plagiarized her last novel, In America.  Then I read this essay by Ms Sontag in The New Yorker :

    The disconnect between last Tuesday's monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and
    outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing.
    The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize
    the public.  Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or
    "liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world" but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed
    superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many
    citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word "cowardly" is to be
    used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in
    the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a
    morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were
    not cowards.

    Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is O.K. America is not afraid. Our spirit is
    unbroken, although this was a day that will live in infamy and America is now at war. But
    everything is not O.K. And this was not Pearl Harbor. We have a robotic President who assures us
    that America still stands tall. A wide spectrum of public figures, in and out of office, who are
    strongly opposed to the policies being pursued abroad by this Administration apparently feel free to
    say nothing more than that they stand united behind President Bush. A lot of thinking needs to be
    done, and perhaps is being done in Washington and elsewhere, about the ineptitude of American
    intelligence and counter-intelligence, about options available to American foreign policy,
    particularly in the Middle East, and about what constitutes a smart program of military defense.
    But the public is not being asked to bear much of the burden of reality. The unanimously
    applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The
    unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and
    media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.

    Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative one:
    confidence-building and grief management. Politics, the politics of a democracyówhich entails
    disagreement, which promotes candoróhas been replaced by psychotherapy. Let's by all means
    grieve together. But let's not be stupid together. A few shreds of historical awareness might help us
    understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen. "Our country is strong," we
    are told again and again. I for one don't find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is
    strong?  But that's not all America has to be.

Of course the policy that she's saying needs to be rethought is American support for Israel and opposition to Saddam Hussein and radical Islamic fundamentalist terrorism.  All well and good, such is her right as an American.  It seems hardly necessary to point out though the delicious irony that, as a bisexual Jew, Ms Sontag would be put to death rather quickly were she to open her big yap in one of the countries she's apparently decided to side with against America and Israel.

And lest you think her self-loathing ends with her own gender and religion, try this quote, from her days supporting North Vietnam (Partisan Review, Winter 1967) :

    The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government,
    baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Marx, Balanchine ballet et al.,
    don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the
    cancer of human history. It is the white race and it alone--its ideologies and inventions--- which
    eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of
    the planet, which now threatens the very existence of life itself.

What can we possibly learn, that is of any value, from an author who completely rejects Western Civilization ?  As David Horowitz has noted, after getting cancer herself, Ms Sontag (who was only saved because of the medical advances that the culture she despises made possible) apologized : to cancer patients, for comparing the disease to Western Civilization, or "facism" as she called it.

So, I'll not be reading this book after all.  But I have found an appropriate use for it.  Some of you will recall the old Sears catalogue and the most common use to which it was put (for those of you who are too young to recall, let me just say that it was kept in the outhouse, back when it was hard to get ahold of paper products).  The book now resides in the john and I'm woofing down chili, baked beans, and corn on the cob & washing it all down with Genesee Cream Ale.

(Reviewed:20-Sep-01)

Grade: (T (for toilet paper)) Orrin C. Judd

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