The American Voice

Where the Stress Falls

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 288 pp., $27

In one of the typically piercing essays in Where the Stress Falls, Susan Sontag enumerates the extent to which Latin American writer Machado de Assis experienced just about everything: He was a poet, playwright, essayist, novelist, champion for other writers, "a prodigy of accomplishment." The parallels to Sontag are striking; she's done those things, too, and Where the Stress Falls is the latest evidence of her undiminished interest in everything. Where the Stress Falls is more encyclopedic than Against Interpretation and Other Essays, with forays into the movies, travel books, Sarajevo -- where she spent much of the years 1993-1996 -- more about photography, more about Roland Barthes, dance, and even gardening history. Her restraint has a certain commanding swagger to it, as if she's in battle, but she is never unclear. With its captivating range of subjects, Where the Stress Falls is an unrivaled guide to what to read.