Io, eccetera

by Susan Sontag

En 1978 vieron la luz en forma de libro por primera vez los relatos que Susan Sontag fue publicando en las revistas más
importantes de la época. Muestran a una escritora que se aleja de la cotidianidad y se maneja con soltura entre atmósferas opresivas, que baraja temas como el amor, el conocimiento, la relación con el presente o la dificultad de establecer límites entre el bien y el mal. Una nueva muestra de la apertura de caminos literarios que Sontag, Premio Príncipe de Asturias de las Letras 2003, se propuso como ineludible norma intelectual.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literature, Essays, Philosophy, Womens, United States

246 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Susan Sontag was born in New York City on January 16, 1933, grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and attended high school in Los Angeles. She received her B.A. from the College of the University of Chicago and did graduate work in philosophy, literature, and theology at Harvard University and Saint Anne’s College, Oxford.

Her books include four novels, The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In America; a collection of short stories, I, etcetera; several plays, including Alice in Bed and Lady from the Sea; and nine works of nonfiction, starting with Against Interpretation and including On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, Where the Stress Falls, Regarding the Pain of Others, and At the Same Time. In 1982, Farrar, Straus & Giroux published A Susan Sontag Reader.

Ms. Sontag wrote and directed four feature-length films: Duet for Cannibals (1969) and Brother Carl (1971), both in Sweden; Promised Lands (1974), made in Israel during the war of October 1973; and Unguided Tour (1983), from her short story of the same name, made in Italy. Her play Alice in Bed has had productions in the United States, Mexico, Germany, and Holland. Another play, Lady from the Sea, has been produced in Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, and Korea.

Ms. Sontag also directed plays in the United States and Europe, including a staging of Beckett's Waiting for Godot in the summer of 1993 in besieged Sarajevo, where she spent much of the time between early 1993 and 1996 and was made an honorary citizen of the city.

A human rights activist for more than two decades, Ms. Sontag served from 1987 to 1989 as president of the American Center of PEN, the international writers’ organization dedicated to freedom of expression and the advancement of literature, from which platform she led a number of campaigns on behalf of persecuted and imprisoned writers.

Her stories and essays appeared in newspapers, magazines, and literary publications all over the world, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Art in America, Antaeus, Parnassus, The Threepenny Review, The Nation, and Granta. Her books have been translated into thirty-two languages.

Among Ms. Sontag's many honors are the 2003 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the 2003 Prince of Asturias Prize, the 2001 Jerusalem Prize, the National Book Award for In America (2000), and the National Book Critics Circle Award for On Photography (1978). In 1992 she received the Malaparte Prize in Italy, and in 1999 she was named a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government (she had been named an Officier in the same order in 1984). Between 1990 and 1995 she was a MacArthur Fellow.

Ms. Sontag died in New York City on December 28, 2004.

Reviews

[Asclepiade · Rating 1 out of 5]

Spesso in calce ai video di canzoni su YouTube compaiono ragazzini (o gente adulta solo dal punto di vista anagrafico) che berciano “Che schifo!”, in genere riguardo a canzoni carine o anche magnifiche; poi arriva un commentatore assennato ad ammonirli che non si dice “Che schifo!” ma piuttosto “Non mi piace”, magari anche spiegandone la ragione. Memore di tali saggi moniti, una volta terminata con fatica estrema questa silloge di racconti editi da Susan Sontag nel 1978, non dirò “Che schifo!”, ma mi limiterò, come sto facendo, a scrivere che a mio avviso è uno dei libri più irrimediabilmente brutti, soporiferi, supponenti e privi di senso che mi siano mai capitati per le mani. Non vi trovo nulla, ma davvero nulla da salvare; al massimo, il volumetto potrebbe tornar utile al livellamento d’un tavolino claudicante: ma in caso di zoppia lieve, tenuto conto del suo modesto spessore materiale oltre che letterario. Mi spiace anche affibiargli una sola stelletta, perché lo metto così alla stregua di altre opere parimenti valutate ma, dopotutto, meno perdutamente brutte di questa. È anche difficile, a conti fatti, spiegare in modo chiaro i motivi della bruttezza, tanto è soverchiante. Diciamo, anzitutto, che i raccontini sono presuntuosi. Non ce n’è uno che non brami con tutte le proprie forze di essere “sperimentale”; d’altronde, bisogna capire la Sontag, poveretta: li compose in anni ove, se non si era sperimentali, oscuri, astratti, ellittici, allusivi, provetti cacciatori di sinestesie, consumati alchimisti di mescidanze, si passava e si veniva burlati come Liale della porta accanto. L’impressione che se ne ricava è che, per cercare ad ogni costo la letterarietà del risultato, la Sontag perdesse di vista una cosa essenziale: un racconto può essere lambiccato e scombinato quanto si vuole, ma dev’essere in qualche modo interessante o piacevole; se si scrivono cose noiose, non diventano affascinanti perché si fa il cut-up, si fa simbolismo spinto, si spezzetta la prosa o si allude senza dire; anzi, si ottiene l’effetto contrario: rompere le scatole al lettore e irritarlo. E inoltre, se lo scopo è la satira o la critica della società e della politica statunitense, cioè un fine che diecimila scrittori hanno perseguito e sovente ottenuto senza bisogno di fare i William Burroughs in sedicesimo e Kafka in sessantaquattresimo, e per di più senz’averne la necessità e le forze, che gliene cale al lettore d’una satira e d’una critica tutte velami e arzigogoli da strologare con fatica quando ha già lì comode le satire o le critiche pungenti, acute, chiare e pure scritte meglio? Conoscendo l’autrice quale saggista ma non come narratrice, temo che racconti o romanzi non fossero materia per lei. Mi sono sentito come quei poveretti che alcuni lustri or sono andavano a sentir sonare roba con titoli come Collage concreto n°3 per pianoforte (im)preparato e quattro percussioni ad libitum, e dovevano anche applaudire per non apparire zotici poveri di spirito, ma intanto sognavano i dischi di Claudio Villa; a me, davanti a codeste novellette orripilanti, viene una voglia malsana di romanzi Harmony.

[William2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stories
1. "Project For a Trip to China" -fragmentation, trashing narrative continuity, seems to be a main goal for the entire collection. Not sure what one can say about this first story. Is it meant to be against interpretation?
2. "Debriefing" - you tell me.
3. "American Spirits" - oneiric; a look at the debauched 1970s; lots of group sex.
4. "Dummy" - An office worker builds a mechanical replica of himself to take over his life, which it does with a few amusing hitches. Among other things, it's an essay on dualism.
5. "Old Complaints Revisited" - rationalizations and reminiscences on attempting to leave something like the Communist Party; an existential conundrum.
6. "Baby" - permissive California parents in analysis talking about their wildly precocious child. Crazy funny.
7. "Jekyll" - cryptic; something about gurus and never being satisfied with who you are; mostly a hash; experimental.
8. "Unguided Tour" - What a torture to read. Experimental. Virtually unreadable.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶]

As a reader I am a bit intimidated by Susan Sontag's intellectual ferocity. While I enjoyed her novel Death Kit, it is a dense read and struck me as a so-called 'difficult' novel, which would surely turn off less patient and exploratory readers. Her short fiction here is not much different in certain ways, although on the whole I enjoyed it less. I sometimes have the sense that Sontag would prefer to be writing an essay when she is in fact attempting to write a story. Some of her stories feel like mere vehicles for political and sociocultural critique. There is satire—some of it dated—and what could be construed as allegory. The writing is quite dry and cerebral, while also often quotable in an aphoristic way. I found this style worked better in Death Kit. In general, I don't think the stories here have aged as well as her nonfiction. But that doesn't make me any less admiring of her intelligence.

[Lee Foust · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once again I have to complain that my literature degree of the early 1980s didn't point me to the American authors who were at that time breaking postmodern ground. Where were the syllabi with books by Sontag, Gaddis, and Barth when I needed them and was so busy reading Kundera and Calvino and thinking that postmodernism was a wholly European thing and that we were all just modernist rubes on our side of the pond? Who is to blame for this lacuna? I guess it just takes a decade or so for the critics to catch up--and yet I wonder if US literature students aren't still reading Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald as if they were the last important American authors.

So, that beef aside, I loved the unique structures these stories presented--I was going to call them experimental, but I heard an author grouse about that description since it implies that the writer isn't sure what they're doing yet or if it will work. Really, to write a story in some as-yet-unthought-of format--rather than the more traditional character-driven, conflict, climax, and resolution narrative--is an experiment only for the reader, or maybe the writer experimenting on the reader. I love discovering anti-narrative narratives, if that's a thing, and being challenged as a reader to learn how to read a story or novel as I go. terra incognita--bring it on!

Sadly, not all of these stories completely convinced me though. My favorites were the first and the last, both about place and travel--the topic of my own first book, a collection of tales and poems called Sojourner. These two are going right into the Literature and Place course that I'm teaching this semester. Can't wait to discuss them with my students.

"Baby" also resonated with me, having raised a child and spent too much time around other parents (to me, the worst thing about child rearing, having to always interact with other parents chosen for you by your child or happenstance (the school district). Pithy stuff, wonderfully absurd.

Mostly my impression was just how damned smart a writer Sontag is, and also witty and often funny too. "Doctor Jekyll" felt a little over my head, I must say. I wasn't warned but if I were you I'd go back and reread Stevenson's short novel before reading that one. If I'd been home when I got to it I would have done so (I still have the illustrated hardcover I purloined from my elementary school library, I guess the first book I ever owned, on the shelf), but I was on a train so I just read Sontag's version helplessly, feeling like I was missing something because I couldn't really remember all of the details of the relationships between Poole, Utterson, and the Doctor and his alter-ego.

Clever stories worth a read, even if a couple in the middle kind of dragged a bit.

[Chelsa Durham · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wild, wild ride.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eclectic, poignant, philosophical, even wildly funny. This collection of stories is like no other collection of stories I've ever read. Each story here has its own spark of genius and no two are alike, in form or subject. Just as you're reeling from one you're plunged into another very unlikely story right away.
This is a well-written collection.

Favourite stories include, "Project for a Trip to China," "American Spirits," "The Dummy," "Old Complaints Revisited," "Baby," "Doctor Jekyll."

[Ber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kitap ile ilgili düşüncelerimi yazarın cümleleri ile ifade etmek istedim.
“Slzi öldürmeyen şey sizi daha güçlü kılar, ama sizi öldürmeyen şey sizde derin izler bırakır. Ölüme bu denli yaklaşınca hiçbir zaman tüm o yolları aşıp yeniden eskiye dönemezsiniz.”

[Aaron Gallardo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tres cuentos magníficos. El Nene. El muñeco. Doctor Jekyll. Escritura telegráfica. Viajes. Complots. Renuncia. Libertad. Hong Kong. Disección de Occidente.

Todos los cuentos tienen poco en común entre ellos, estilísticamente, de modo que el libro no se percibe como una unidad, sino como los troncos psicodélicos que se apilan sobre él. Quizá Susan Sontag quiso repetir en el primer relato -Proyecto para un viaje a China- lo que hizo en su primer filme, Duet for cannibals, un artificio que deliberadamente evitaba un significado más profundo que las imágenes construidas por ella, bajo una prosa fragmentada, como los negativos de una película corriendo a muchos fotogramas por segundo. Los demás cuentos, por otro lado, tienen un estilo que por momentos recordaba a Cortázar en su sencillez discursiva y la irreverencia del narrador frente a hechos que rayaban lo fantástico, y conjuran una atmósfera en entero reflexiva, sin los obstáculos del Ardis, del Palacio.

No obstante, todos los cuentos tratan el tema de la subyugación -a los padres, a los hijos, a los sistemas, a uno mismo, al pasado- como naturaleza del ser humano, y la 'libertad' -irónicamente retratada por Sontag- como disidencia física, mayormente violenta (verbigracia la muerte del Nene, los crímenes de Jekyll, la renuncia a la Organización, los viajes y el sexo como escape del pasado o la rutina), única forma de quebrar cadenas. Resultaría más que interesante leer sus ensayos. Alcanzó altos picos aquí.

[Michal Tallo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Everything. – then I won’t have seen everything before it disappears.

Everywhere. I’ve been everywhere. I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.

Land’s end. But there’s water, O my heart. And salt on my tongue.

The end of the world. This is not the end of the world."

[sevdah]

Why have I avoided her fiction for so long! It just makes me like Sontag even better. Theses stories are like a confused, emotional part of herself, one that she takes and uses creatively and seems at ease with (at least on the page). For Sontag who has always been so controlled and who's praised being serious as a virtue, this collection is really eye-opening.
Some of the stories were also just plain good. (I'm thinking of Baby & The Dummy especially.)

[Mina-Louise]

I enjoyed this, a fragmented and occasionally familiar Sontag. Fleeting brilliance as opposed to a voracious, palpable brilliance in other works of hers.

However I think the most important thing here is the cover — possibly the coolest, sexiest author portrait ever done.

[Nicole Pühringer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've enjoyed the stories, all of them, very much. Her writing style is very real, very unique. I've been searching for such a long time for a female, not misogynistic and non alcoholic Bukowski and now it seems that I have finally found her!

[stew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Short stories written by someone too intelligent to write short stories.

[Núria Costa · Rating 3 out of 5]

La primera historia, para mí, se lleva 5 estrellas.
A medida que avanzaba más, decrecía mi entusiasmo. En general ha sido una bonita primera experiencia con la autora.

[Sophie Griffin · Rating 2 out of 5]

ngl, didn’t finish some of these short stories. a few were good and interesting, but Sontag is much better in nonfiction for me at least. probs would just recommend 1 or 2 of these stories.

[sofia b · Rating 2 out of 5]

termino essa leitura de 9 meses (!) com um gosto meio amargo na boca, pois adorei os outros livros da autora que li (de não-ficção).

os poucos contos que realmente gostei (‘the dummy’, por ex), acabaram ofuscados por ‘doctor jekyll’ - foi nesse que comecei a me demorar e trocar a leitura por outras. não sei se ter lido ‘strange case of dr jekyll and mr hide’ teria tornado esse conto desnecessariamente longo menos maçante pra mim. outros contos, como ‘unguided tour’ e ‘debriefing’, embora tenham elementos que eu amo (fragmentação seria um), não mexeram comigo de forma nenhuma.

a dúvida que fica é se não gosto da ficção da susan sontag ou se só não gostei desse livro. descobrirei.

[Matina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Her essays are far stronger than her stories.
Old Complaints Revisited was an especially maddening and unrewarding read.

“One must be careful not to wonder if these pleasures are superior to last year’s pleasures. They never are.
That must be the seduction of the past again. But just wait until now becomes then. You’ll see how happy we were.” — from Unguided Tour

[Linda Franklin · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories date from 1963, 1965, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1977, and put together in 1978. The stories originally appeared in the Atlantic, Playboy, The New Yorker, etc. I wonder if I'd read them when I was 22, 23, 32, etc. if I would have appreciated them as much. Her style is so direct, almost abrupt, and I am experienced enough as a reader now to really appreciate the oddities. In the '60s I was reading (and writing) a lot of weird stories, but I don't think I have ever read Sontag's work except for her amazing book On Photography in 1977. (That was a collection of essays from the New York Review of Books, which I couldn't possibly have afforded at that time.) I also read Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, Reflections on Photography, in about 1980.
~ Linda Campbell Franklin

[Vicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

the first story is "project for a trip to china" which is why i was reading this during my 14-hour flight to china, and with an additional 2-hour delay, with the AC drying my eyes, i was not able to create tears at all. i was not allowed to express sadness by crying. why should i cry, i don't know, but it's hard for me to cry when i try. anyway, my eyes were burning as i finished this, and the drawn out process of trying to read through squinted eyes exhausted me, so i didn't end up liking this too much. i don't know, but i recall getting too excited over someone with the username i_etcetera.

"3.5"

[Yu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Susan Sontag seems always struggling in writing novels. She claims she sees it as her permeant career, but readers hardly notice her novels, except for Volcano Lover.

In this book, several short stories. I like them, they are really really speaking of something that is quite common nowadays, but the way she wrote it seems way to shallow for Sontag's big name.

She tried to mute some characters' voices, nice move. But she could do better. Actually I believe she did better in The Benefactor and Death Kit. These short stories are not that catching eyes.

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of short stories. Sontag maintains a lot of her trademark wit, but leans into some dry territory at times.

I really love OLD COMPLAINTS REVISITED as a frame of activist circles and a vehicle for her thoughts on the USSR. Some strong specific allegory even parodying titles of Lenin’s essays. Picked up my copy for $1 and it was a great investment! :)

[yarinés suárez · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Yo, etcétera" es un volumen conformado por diversos relatos disimiles, Sontag parece transformarse en cada uno de una manera fascinante.

Recomendado a quien desee una lectura que, siendo variada, es sumamente ávida y fresca a cada línea.

[Nora Alvarez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Los primeros dos relatos y el último, son joyas.

[maisie · Rating 3 out of 5]

felt relieved when i was done reading

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a weird collection, and unfortunately, it's not an especially satisfying one. Most of them take on some sort of innovative structure, so you have one, for example, that is one side of the daily visits parents make with a therapist about their misbehaved child. Or else another story revisits the story of Jeckyll and Hyde, only, well, the circumstances have changed. Or the last story, which is something like a Q and A, only it's series of linguistic prompts, like finish the phrase, all about travel.

I wanted to like these; I generally like stories that take on strange shapes or that rise out of novel rhetorical situations. But I don't think there were really stories here, in the sense of circumstances that evolved, that were affected by the passage of time. Instead, they felt static-- what development there was was mostly a development of the reader's comprehension of what was happening. In some stories, like the last, about travel, there were flashes of lyricism, which was good. But that didn't happen often enough through the collection.

Sontag's style is slightly formal, and based on the evidence here, she can't quite get away from that in her stories. It makes them sound, well, artificial. the stories feel very of the moment to the late 60s, 1970s period when she wrote them, with their interest in therapy and unconventionally conventional romantic relationships and absent fathers and etc. It came across as kind of dated, these cultural concerns that I think Sontag means to explore here.... She's clearly very smart, but this book isn't as interesting as any one of her essays. I think this is the second time I've been let down by Sontag's fiction. Let's see if I remember that before I try her fiction again.

[Chloe Cattaneo · Rating 4 out of 5]

FINALLY DONE. This took me over 2 months to finish. While Sontag's language is often gorgeous, her philosophical insight is divine, and her voice is unique and sharply perceptive, I definitely had to work for this. It did not necessarily... grab me. I think I did the grabbing. But I am glad I did!

Favorite stories: Project for a Trip to China, The Dummy, Old Complaints Revisited

Least favorite story: American Spirits. I know Susan is doing something here. But you could not pay me to tell you what it is. Perhaps once my brain goes click in 2-3 years I will reread and understand. For now, this story makes no sense.

Some of my highlighted quotes:
"I would gladly consent to being silent. But then, alas, I'm unlikely to know anything. To renounce literature, I would have to be really sure that I could know. A certainty that would prove my ignorance." -29
"Actually, this world isn't just one world-- now. As this city is actually layers of cities. Behind the many thicknesses of pain, try to connect with the single will for pleasure that moves even in the violence of streets and beds, of jails and opera houses." -48
"I want to save my soul, that timid wind." -51
"I don't consider devotion to the past a form of snobbery. Just one of the more disastrous forms of unrequited love... it's not love that the past needs in order to survive, it's an absence of choices." -235

[Jack McClelland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Playful, enlightening stories. The back cover describes her prose as "telegraphic", but sometimes it felt like Sontag was flaunting her erudition. She uses words like "hirsute" instead of "hairy". Then again, just have a dictionary nearby.

Some will find this vocabulary too pretentious. Your patience is rewarded with tender observations on life and love. One of my favourite of these moments is in "Old Complaints Revisited" when the narrator (gender ambiguous) has decided to return to their spouse (Lee) after an affair with a lover (Nicky):
"It wasn't guilt that brought me back. It was a very peculiar kind of homesickness: a longing for the word. Nicky and I could have laconic, aphoristic conversation. But the full-blooded verbal union that I had with Lee finally counted for more. Returning to Lee, I was plunged back into the warm bath of talk that I'll never be able to do without." (129)

"the warm bath of talk" seems like a very writerly way to discuss love. But is it really? Isn't that all there is to great companionship: a willingness to listen, and the trust you will be sincerely heard?

[Mauricio Montenegro · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ocho cuentos publicados entre 1963 y 1978 se recogen en este volumen, muy desigual, sin hilo conductor ni centro de gravedad. Hay un interés por la identidad, como sugiere el título, y los mejores cuentos ("El muñeco", "Dr. Jekyll") son precisamente sobre eso: la figura del doble, la pulsión del aislamiento, la alienación. Pero los demás cuentos son casi ejercicios de estilo, divertimentos. Sontag prueba con técnicas narrativas interesantes, diálogos sin interlocutor, flujos de consciencia fragmentarios, casi como si quisiera abandonar el rigor argumental de sus ensayos para experimentar con la forma, pero el efecto general es el de un ensayo y error vagamente existencialista.

[lady Carretero 🥀 · Rating 3 out of 5]

recull d’escrits de la nostra amiga Susan. Té relats xulíssims, ultra creatius i que barrejen una extrema transparència crua amb una sensibilitat profunda. Després té relats que m’han deixat indiferent, dos d’ells ni els vaig acabar de llegir ja que se’m feia molta muntanya.

té una manera d’escriure molt seva que a mi em funciona en alguns nivells i en amtres em costa seguir-la.

Els millors:

Proyecto para un viaje a China
Declaración (em va encantar especilament <3)
Espíritus norteamericanos
El muñeco

[maJo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nunca había leído nada de Susan Sontag, tal vez debería darle una oportunidad a sus ensayos ahora que veo que son su fuerte. Este fue un libro escrito por alguien definitivamente inteligente con el lenguaje, y creativa al aportar particularidades interesantes en las estructuras narrativas. Me pone triste que no lograra nunca interesarme mucho… Admito que lo terminé como por obligación hacia mí misma, más que por querer realmente terminarlo. Tampoco es que me aburriera, más bien es que no me quedé pensando en ninguna historia mucho.