The Benefactor [Paperback]

Susan Sontag (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1991

Sontag's first novel, it is a fascinating, knowing, acerbic portrait of Hippolyte, a latterday Candide whose violently imaginative dream life becomes indistinguishable from his surprising experiences in the "real world."

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Released in 1963 and 1967, respectively, these are Sontag's first and second novels. In The Benefactor, protagonist Hippolyte "depends on his dreams to direct the course of his life" (LJ 9/1/63). The story, which unfolds over a 60-year period, might itself be a dream. Death Kit is no less cerebral.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

'An extraordinary, imaginative achievement that plays over the reader's senses with boldness, grace and daring.' - John Hawkes 'A highly original, brilliant tale of a self-centered, solitary dilettante whose dreams take over his life.' New York Post --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 273 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (August 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 038526710X
• ISBN-13: 978-0385267106
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,482,432 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Susan Sontag was born in Manhattan in 1933 and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. She is the author of four novels, a collection of stories, several plays, and six books of essays, among them Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. Her books are translated into thirty-two languages. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work, and in 2003 she received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. She died in December 2004.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Much brain, little heart, May 7, 2001

By 

"elljay" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Benefactor (Paperback)

Susan Sontag's first novel (published in 1963) is a fairly turgid, over-intellectualized tale, mostly notable for a stiff prose style that suggests the author had never read a book written after 1900. Sontag is, of course, primarily an essayist, and the book is at its best whenever she's just musing on various subjects. "If war did not satisfy an elementary desire--not the desire to destroy, which is superficial, but the desire to be in a state of strain, to feel more intensely--the practice of war would have been tried once and abandoned." But this is "thought provoking" in the worst sense--more of a lecture than a fully realized novel. The book is full of aphorisms, but the characters and events tend to be unconvincing (such as the narrator's unlikely detour into movie acting). It is finally undramatic and lifeless; monotony sets in well before the end. It comes off like a second-rate version of Andre Gide's "The Immoralist."