Susan Sontag: the name is a resonance of qualities, of quality itself. The drama of the idea, the composition, a recognition from the past that tells us what the present may bestow when we see her name. The term "essay" itself is somewhat flat as a definition of the liberality of her floating, restless expositions. A Susan Sontag Reader, a choice from her criticism and fiction, is in no way scant, but it interested me to note that one could regret the omission of almost any piece of her writing, any square of the mosaic that is in the end an extraordinarily beautiful, expansive, and unique talent.

Her writings are hers, intimately and obsessively one might say. They bear, each one, the mark of a large and coherent sensibility, the mark of her interests, her sense of the aesthetic and moral world around us. Almost none of her...