In what originated as a lecture series, Sontag reflects on the harmful metaphorical use of poorly-understood illnesses, tuberculosis and cancer, in literature, psychoanalytic discourse, and political rhetoric. Sontag cites example after example from works of literature, psychoanalysts/psychologists and political theorists to support her argument. Five decades later, cancer is in many ways as much a mystery as it was when Sontag wrote these essays, so their content is still timely. ( )

Sontag presents a compelling argument against illness as metaphor, specifically the illnesses of TB and cancer. The majority of the essay focuses on TB and while her insights are well wrought I found the delineation of her argument to be a bit confusing, particularly when she gets into the evolving metaphor of TB. Sontag gives ample evidence, historical and literary, to support her points and at the end I found myself convinced that illness as metaphor is a rather inflammatory and low-hanging fruit when articulating societal malaise. ( )

Some of this is weird from a 2018 vantage point. How we think of cancer has changed and how we think of TB has really changed. But toward the end this hit it's stride for me in her discussion of the "war" on cancer and various military metaphors for illness. Makes a kind of interesting companion to On Being Ill if I remember it right... https://thenewcriterion1926.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/woolf-on-being-ill.pdf

Upsetting my edition doesn't have the add on for AIDS. Could have been a much wider foray -- but what was I going to ask of this woman? To revisit On Illness as she dies in Annie's arm? I'd never ask of her. But only kind of. Because I know I would. ( )

Outstanding work of criticism and history, one loomed over by the coming AIDS epidemic that started a few years after publication.

When the causes and mechanism of disease are mysterious or unknown, metaphoric meaning rushes in to fill the gap. TB (and later, cancer) filled that role for literature and culture at large, and Sontag gets a lot of mileage from tracking depictions of the two, and how they diverge. Granted, by the time Sontag was writing, cancer was knowable enough that its metaphoric power was failing outside of the generic references to uncontrollable, malignant growth. But soon afterwards, the AIDS epidemic would rise up and prove the subject of endless moralizing by all sides. Sontag was more correct than even she could know. ( )