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Susan Sontag on Disease and Metaphor

The essayist and novelist's new book, called AIDS and Its Metaphors, examines the discourse surrounding the disease. Sontag is a cancer survivor; a previous book about language and sickness is titled Illness as Metaphor. She joins Fresh Air to talk about how cancer changed her thinking and made her a more compassionate person.

26:39
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Other segments from the episode on February 10, 1989

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, February 10, 1989: Interview with Susan Sontag; Commentary on the early career of Adrienne Kennedy; Interview with Ricki Lake; Review of the home video release of the film…
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09:40

Ricki Lake Brings Attitude to the Big Screen

The actress had her big break in John Waters' movie Hairspray, as the teen star Tracy Turnblad. Lake is larger than many of her peers, but has successfully landed roles written for skinny women. She joins Fresh Air to discuss her early influences, her post-Hairspray work, and her relationship with the late drag queen Divine.

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03:09

A Classic Film Captures a Bygone Era

Critic Ken Tucker reviews the home video release The Sweet Smell of Success, which he says features gorgeous shots of 1950s New York City, and an unrelenting narrative intensity.

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22:27

Writer Susan Sontag.

Writer and director Susan Sontag. Sontag is just back from Sarajevo, where she has been directing a performance of Beckett's "Waiting For Godot" in the Serbo-Croatian language. She is one of few arts figures to visit the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, a battle she calls "the Spanish Civil War of our time". Her latest novel is the "Volcano Lover," recently published in paperback by Anchor Books. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

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06:20

Anne Roiphe's 1950s Feminism In 'Art And Madness'

In Art and Madness, her memoir of the literary 1950s, writer Anne Roiphe describes going into labor by herself in a snowdrift, unable to waker her sleeping playwright husband. Over the years, she learns her own power, charting her course through feminism and a life in art.

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52:30

Daughter of Warhol star looks back on a bohemian childhood in the Chelsea Hotel

Alexandra Auder's mother, Viva, was one of Andy Warhol's muses. Growing up in Warhol's orbit meant Auder's childhood was an unusual one. For several years, Viva, Auder and Auder's younger half-sister, Gaby Hoffmann, lived in the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan. It was was famous for having been home to Leonard Cohen, Dylan Thomas, Virgil Thomson, and Bob Dylan, among others.

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43:04

This fake 'Jury Duty' really put James Marsden's improv chops on trial

In the series Jury Duty, a solar contractor named Ronald Gladden has agreed to participate in what he believes is a documentary about the experience of being a juror--but what Ronald doesn't know is that the whole thing is fake.

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08:26

This Romanian film about immigration and vanishing jobs hits close to home

R.M.N. is based on an actual 2020 event in Ditrău, Romania, where 1,800 villagers voted to expel three Sri Lankans who worked at their local bakery.

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