At the Same Time

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At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches
At The Same Time Book Cover.jpg
Author Susan Sontag
Cover artistDorothy Schmiderer Baker
LanguageEnglish
Genre Essay, criticism
Publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux (US), Hamish Hamilton (UK)
Publication date
March 6, 2007
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardcover and paperback)
Pages256
ISBN 978-0312426712

At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches is a nonfiction book by Susan Sontag published in 2007 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Sontag's first posthumously published book, it was edited by her friend Paolo Dilonardo and her assistant Anne Jump and features a foreword by her son David Rieff. At the Same Time includes pieces on literature, language and politics, as well as five speeches and lectures given by Sontag towards the end of her life.

Contents

Contents

Reception

At the Same Time received generally favorable reviews. Publishers Weekly wrote, "Sontag's brilliance as a literary critic, her keen analytical skill and her genius for the searingly apt phrase... are all fiercely displayed here." [2] Bloomberg News's Craig Seligman said that it "numbers among her finest books." [3] The Daily Telegraph wrote, "At the Same Time reads like a greatest-hits album - a little politics, something on photography, some lit crit - of the range of her commitments and passions." [4] Writing for The New York Review of Books , Eliot Weinberger gave the book a mixed review, praising some of Sontag's book introductions but criticizing the inclusion of five of her speeches and noting some apparent contradictions in her essays about the War on terror. [5]

Allegation of plagiarism

In a 2007 letter to the editor of The Times Literary Supplement, John Lavagnino identified an unattributed citation from Roland Barthes's 1970 essay "S/Z" in the last piece of the book, her speech "At the Same Time: The Novelist and Moral Reasoning". [6] Further research led Lavagnino to identify several passages that appeared to have been taken without attribution from an essay on hypertext fiction by Laura Miller, originally published in The New York Times Book Review six years earlier. [7] Writing for The Observer , Michael Calderone interviewed Sontag's publisher about the allegations, who said that "This was a speech, not a formal essay" and that "Susan herself never prepared it for publication." [8]

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References

  1. Moser, Benjamin (2019). Sontag: Her Life and Work. New York: Ecco. p. 695. ISBN   978-0062896391.
  2. "At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches by Susan Sontag". Publishers Weekly.
  3. Seligman, Craig (7 March 2007). "Passionate to the end: Susan Sontag's last writings". The Seattle Times.
  4. Swift, Daniel (26 April 2007). "Big words in capital letters". The Daily Telegraph.
  5. Weinberger, Eliot (16 August 2007). "Notes on Susan". The New York Review of Books.
  6. Lavagnino, John (April 20, 2004). "Letters to the editor". Times Literary Supplement.
  7. Miller, Laura (March 15, 1998). "www.claptrap.com". The New York Times Book Review.
  8. Calderone, Michael (May 9, 2007). "Regarding the Writing of Others". The Observer. Retrieved April 23, 2021.