UNDER THE SIGN OF SATURN: ESSAYS

New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1980. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 204 pages. The author's fourth collection of essays. One of Susan Sontag's finest achievements. The First Hardcover Edition. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Susan Sontag's "Under The Sign of Saturn: Essays". The pieces she wrote as a mature essayist, and the necessary counterpoint to her debut, "Against Interpretation" (1966). The book is dedicated to the Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky, who once poetically described these essays as "mental music". They are that, and also inexhaustible testaments to the life of the mind. Includes the magisterial, sixty-page tour de force, "Approaching Artaud", which is itself intimidating to approach. Her generous and loving tribute to the European Modernist tradition to which she was deeply indebted, the essays are among the most challenging, complex, and rewarding that Susan Sontag ever wrote: Elias Canetti, Roland Barthes, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, Paul Goodman, and the eponymous piece on Walter Benjamin, "the most important critic of the pre-war period and the writer to whom Sontag can be most relevantly compared" (Publisher's blurb). An absolute "must-have" title for Susan Sontag collectors. This copy is very prominently, neatly, and beautifully signed in blue ink-pen on the title page by Susan Sontag. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a great book. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare signed copy thus. Winner of the MacArthur Genius Grant, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977 for "On Photography", the National Book Award in 2000 for "In America", and the Jerusalem Prize in 2001. Shimon Peres, in awarding the Jerusalem Prize, described Sontag as "one of the world's finest writers and greatest minds". One of the most influential and important writer-intellectuals of the 20th century. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER SUSAN SONTAG TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0863160522.