Abstract

'Saturn is the "planet of detours and delays" according to Walter Benjamin, one of the six literary figures under examination in Susan Sontag's latest collections of essays. Sontag... understands the saturnine mentality: the slowness, the attentiveness, the patience, the melancholy need to work, the solitude, the complexity of excellence and stamina, Sontag's criticism is a kind of spiritual autobiography... it is sufficient to confirm not only her excellence but her stature as one of America's foremost critics' Washington Post.