Today Farrar, Straus and Giroux launched its new multimedia Work in Progress newsletter with a feature on the late Susan Sontag–including the letter (pictured) that publicists sent to literary critics and authors to promote her first book.
It should cheer up all the aspiring authors in the audience–even Sontag was a struggling writer once. The entry also contains an audio clip from 2000, as Sontag spoke with Robert Stone and William Styron.
The newsletter features a conversation between publisher Jonathan Galassi and author Jeffrey Eugenides, as the publisher struggles to uncover the title of his next novel.
Here’s more from the post: “FSG has published Susan Sontag since her debut novel The Benefactor. Here are a few selections from an archive of almost fifty years of material. Note the pitch-perfect location for the Volcano Lover publication party, and the lines from the teenage Sontag’s diary on the back of At the Same Time.”