Debriefing: Collected Stories - Hardcover

A collection of one of our most powerful intellectual’s short fiction

Debriefing collects all of Susan Sontag’s shorter fiction, a form she turned to intermittently throughout her writing life. The book ranges from allegory to parable to autobiography and shows her wrestling with problems not assimilable to the essay, her more customary mode. Here she catches fragments of life on the fly, dramatizes her private griefs and fears, lets characters take her where they will. The result is a collection of remarkable brilliance, versatility, and charm. Sontag’s work has typically required time for people to catch up to it. These challenging works of literary art—made more urgent by the passage of years—await a new generation of readers. This is an invaluable record of the creative output of one of the most inquisitive and analytical thinkers of the twentieth century at the height of her power.

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) was the author of numerous works of nonfiction, including the groundbreaking collection of essays, Against Interpretation (FSG, 1966), and of four novels, including In America (FSG, 2000), which won the National Book Award.

Benjamin Taylor is the author of his family memoir, The Hue and Cry at Our House, as well as Proust: The Search in the Yale Jewish Lives series; Naples Declared, a travel memoir; and the award-winning novels, Tales Out of School and The Book of Getting Even. He edited Saul Bellow: Letters and There Is Simply Too Much to Think About, Bellow’s collected nonfiction. Taylor is a past fellow and current trustee of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.