| Alice in Bed: A Play in Eight Scenes Contributor(s): Sontag, Susan (Author) |
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ISBN: 0374523851 ISBN-13: 9780374523855 Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux OUR PRICE: $13.50 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: June 1993 Annotation: Alice in Bed is a free dramatic fantasy based on the life of Alice James (1848-92), the brilliant sister of William and Henry James. The waters of depression closed over Alice James when she was nineteen; she tried to summon the courage to commit suicide, she suffered from a variety of vague and debilitating ailments, she went abroad, she stayed in bed, she kept a diary, and she died... at age forty-three. In Susan Sontag's play, Alice James merges imaginatively with the other great Alice of her period, the heroine of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. A tea party is convened where Alice is counseled by Emily Dickinson and Margaret Fuller and by two exemplary angry women from the nineteenth-century stage: Myrtha, the Queen of the Wilis (from Giselle), and Kundry (from Wagner's Parsifal), the guilt-ridden woman who wants to sleep. Alice in Bed is a play about the anguish and grief and rage of women, about mental traveling, about the triumphs and limitations of the imagination. It is a powerful and memorable addition to Susan Sontag's achievement as a writer. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Drama | American - General |
| Dewey: 812.54 |
| LCCN: 93071280 |
| Physical Information: 0.36" H x 4.96" W x 8.1" (0.31 lbs) 117 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Alice in Bed is a free dramatic fantasy which merges the life of Alice James, the brilliant sister of William and Henry James, with the heroine of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. It is a play about the anguish and grief and rage of women; and about the triumphs and limitations of the imagination. |
Contributor Bio(s): Sontag, Susan: - Susan Sontag was the author of four novels, including In America, which won the 2000 National Book Award for Fiction; a collection of stories; several plays; and seven works of nonfiction. She died in New York City on December 28, 2004. |