SOURCE: Spalding, Frances. “Writer in a Critical Condition.” New Statesman 131, no. 4571 (21 January 2002): 49-50.

In the following review, Spalding finds that Sontag's essays in Where the Stress Falls appear pessimistic concerning the state of current arts and society, and deems that Sontag is at her best when indignantly taking an unpopular stance on issues.

Susan Sontag is America's most successful woman of letters, but she is also, right now, in a curious position, unable to please either the right or the left. Ten days after 11 September, the New Yorker carried an article by her in which she fired off at the “sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days”. To her, it seemed “unworthy of a mature democracy”. There followed howls of rage. Although much of what she said echoed opinions being voiced in British newspapers, she was labelled an intellectual crank and a...