Sontag, Cousins

The past few days I’ve been thinking about 2 books, Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor, and Norman Cousin’s Anatomy of an Illness (As Perceived by the Patient). I remember reading Sontag’s book when it was published back in the 70s; of all her work, this one has stayed with me over the years. I was more puzzled by why my memory jumped to Cousin’s book; if I read it when it came out in the early 80s it didn’t make as deep an impression as Sontag’s – but here it was, neurons firing in their mysterious way, surfacing the title. I’ve wandered around the Intertubes to remind myself what each of these books were about, and the more I’ve read, the more it begins to make sense.