American author challenge: Susan Sontag. 1933-2004' writer, critic, and public intellectual. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novel. I read what is mostly a short story collection though some felt autobiographical, some leaned toward essay. I can't say that I liked the short stories because I didn't. My impression is that she was a ferocious reader and was compelled to write.

Not quite as good as I anticipated, Sontag's Debriefing is comprised of 11 short stories memorable enough for their experimental structure but they run in a circular track, lingering there, with their frequent nonlinearity.

Most of these stories begin interestingly only for them to slide down the rambling hole, their inconsistency apparent, and unfortunately, Sontag can't seem to get away from her style for her comfort in writing her essays overlaps with her intriguing prose which parts of these stories echo.

However it is worth mentioning three of these stories stand out to me personally namely The Dummy, Baby, and The Way We Live Now. In The Dummy, a small tribute to the sci-fi genre, a man creates a dummy with his own likeness. This dummy then takes over his life thereby giving the man freedom to live another life until things go south forcing him to create another dummy. The unforeseen circumstances were not surprising but they're a little funny. It's a question of freedom and how we make use of it when we have it in our hands completely. The man's freedom to make choices for himself, unchained from responsibilities and roles, limits the freedom itself. Another story titled Baby is a one-way conversation; a couple seemingly talk to a therapist about their child. It's a little confusing at first because they share moments about their exceptional child in blurry years and ages. Their contradicting, disjointed memories coalesce into a series of hard-hitting regret and grief. The ending itself is staggeringly magnificent and the reader themselves take the shoes of the therapist. Lastly, The Way We Live Now is a pass-the-message structured narrative of people linked through a person diagnosed with an unnamed disease (though it closely resembles AIDS). Whilst reading this I can't help but imagine everyone in one room walking around whispering successively to each other then change their places for another to whisper again. At the same time as the story progresses I can't help but wonder how this person manages to keep this amount of people in his life. All of them care about him. I don't think the number of people who cares about me surpasses my five fingers. All the paranoia, concern, hearsay, and love here mirror the impact of such a life; it is minuscule yet profound. In the nearness of death there could be bouts of reprieve through people we have touched and that's something painfully beautiful.

Honourable mentions are Project For a Trip to China and Pilgrimage. Project For a Trip to China is a lamentation of knowing a place but not setting a foot there. It's a weak story as it jumps from idea to idea of China yet how Sontag mingles this with her own personal struggle and affliction in obtaining peace with her absent father, a father she only knows through photographs and stories, perhaps trying to know him by wanting/being in a place he lived, is poignant to me. Pilgrimage recounts Sontag's meeting with author Thomas Mann. Her need to appease and impress him turns out to be an ordinary encounter, underwhelming even. How most of us think of someone we admire highly, too highly in fact that we have pre-conceived ideas of the person and a set of expectations to whet the curiosity, based from their works alone. But sometimes it could be disappointing if The Man himself is not as brilliant as his works. Strangely enough, parts of this story could be a cross between fiction and reality. Who knows how it really went? ( )