On the Great Atlantic Divide

January 5, 2005 10:11 AM

On the Great Atlantic DividePublished on Sunday, October 26, 2003 by TomDispatch.com. By Susan Sontag. I came across this piece at dailyKos "Two weeks ago during the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Association of German Publishers and Booksellers awarded the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade) to Susan Sontag. She was cited for standing up for "the dignity of free thinking" and for her role as an "intellectual ambassador" between the United States and Europe. The association's director Dieter Schormann commented, "In a world of false images and distorted truths, she defends the honor of free thought." In its over half-century of existence, the Friedenspreis Prize has been awarded to Chinua Achebe, Max Frisch, Jurgen Habermas, Yehudi Menuhin, and Vaclav Havel among many others. An excerpt from Susan Sontag's acceptance speech was published today in the Los Angeles Times Book Review section, but I thought the whole speech, which focuses on the increasingly embattled relationship between Europe and the United States, or rather between much of Europe, especially the various peoples of Europe, and the Bush administration, was well worth reproducing as a whole. Near its end is a rare moment in which Sontag considers an aspect of her early life in public. Her most recent book, by the way, is Regarding the Pain of Others. What follows then, with her kind permission, is her full acceptance speech. (The title and subheads are, however, mine.) Tom "
posted by Postroad (9 comments total)

A good contender for the MeFi version of AskMe's [more inside] tag.
posted by milovoo at 11:36 AM on January 5, 2005

oh, and while we're on that point, using [via dailykos] would also be an acceptable shorthand for "I came across this piece at dailyKos"
posted by milovoo at 11:38 AM on January 5, 2005

This is a wonderful speech, I was very struck by the clarity of her thinking and the way she manages to explain, instead of just condemning, the growing divide.

I would love to share this with my American friends, but ever since your nation went mad, I'm afraid I don't have any.
posted by fingerbang at 11:40 AM on January 5, 2005

yes indeed, "literature is freedom"!

(that is, if one can include rock music, indie films, comic books and sitcoms as "literature",
oh, what the hell, why not take the fast and loose interpretation)
posted by milovoo at 11:46 AM on January 5, 2005

I would love to share this with my American friends, but ever since your nation went mad, I'm afraid I don't have any.

yawn.
posted by felix betachat at 1:01 PM on January 5, 2005

Sontag has never been the same since she flipped out about being undercharged for a Jr. Grand Slam at Denny's.

But she is still the consummate public intellectual in my book.
posted by esquire at 2:57 PM on January 5, 2005

AnnoyanceFilter: Not to be too fussy but why do people link to ripoff sites like CommonDreams when the original posting by the person who actually put it on the web and wrote the introductory text is so easily found?
posted by billsaysthis at 4:08 PM on January 5, 2005

Thanks.
posted by jacknose at 9:32 PM on January 5, 2005

But she is still the consummate public intellectual in my book.

Sadly, esquire, no more. [Via Ed.]
posted by rory at 3:20 AM on January 6, 2005