#manasabookclub

Once there were flies roaming around in a distant forest. A charismatic magician passed by and they huddled together in wonder. He quickly threw over a thread which passed through them, turned them into jewel. Then they dangled happily together in his n...

SUSAN SONTAG

    Style is the principle of decision in a work of art, the signature of the artist’s will. And as the human will is capable of an indefinite number of stances, there are an indefinite number of possible styles for works of art. Seen from the outside, that is, historicall...

SUSAN SONTAG

    IT WOULD be hard to find any reputable literary critic today who would care to be caught defending as an idea the old antithesis of style versus content. On this issue a pious consensus prevails. Everyone is quick to avow that style and content are indissoluble, that t...

SUSAN SONTAG 

    The earliest experience of art must have been that it was incantatory, magical; art was an instrument of ritual. (Cf. the paintings in the caves at Lascaux, Altamira, Niaux, La Pasiega, etc.) The earliest theory of art, that of the Greek philosophers, proposed th...

    VIRGINIA WOOLF 

    In making any survey, even the freest and loosest, of modern fiction, it is difficult not to take it for granted that the modern practice of the art is somehow an improvement upon the old. With their simple tools and primitive materials, it m...