Debriefing: Collected Stories

Actor Marlo masters Sontag’s complex literary voice in these 11 stories, effortlessly navigating fractured expressions and disjointed configurations. In “The Letter Scene,” Marlo smoothly handles a collage of back-and-forth shifts among multiple letter writers of multiple eras. In the satirical story “Baby,” she’s able to keep the listener in tune with the mother, the father, and the psychologist, whose questions and comments are unvoiced but implied in the answers. Others, like “An Unguided Tour,” involve disjointed dialogues that meld into internal ruminations. Sontag was first and foremost a brilliant essayist, but these stories are occasions to experiment with other genres such as autobiography, allegory, diary, and even sci-fi. Stories such as the sci-fi piece “Dummy” involve Sontag’s philosophical musings on the vacuous ways of modern life, retaining the underlying pedagogical quality of essays. Marlo’s narrative skills guide listeners through each piece, but anyone who wants to delve into the layered meanings within Sontag’s sentences may want to keep the book in hand for easy reference. [em]A Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover. (Nov.) [/em]