Talk:Illness as Metaphor

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NPOV?[edit]

This article seems to reflect an editor's point of view that Sontag's book was overly confrontational. In particular:

The tone of her treatise was angry and combative, and she makes sweeping claims that, while perhaps true to a first approximation, go too far (Donoghue, 1978).

I suggest it be rewritten to clarify whether there are contrary positions on the work, and in any case, to document this point of view from a neutral standpoint.

Nonstandard (talk) 20:07, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I wrote that sentence, and I've read the book, and I thought the book was really interesting. That conclusion is the view of the named source (and other sources not named, actually), not mine. If you want to know my personal views (which have no place in the article), I wouldn't have described the book as particularly angry or combative myself, although I can (kind of) see where the source is coming from. I agree with the source that Sontag did have a tendency (in all her writing, not just this piece) to overstatement.

NPOV means fairly representing the sources, including fairly representing them even when they make strongly worded statements. It does not mean watering them down so that they all sound bland. There do not appear to be any contrary positions.

Additionally, I think it's worth mentioning here that an angry tone isn't a bad thing. Sontag's life was being threatened by breast cancer, and society at that moment was treating breast cancer as a psychosomatic disease. Why shouldn't she be angry about having this purely biological disease dismissed as something that could be cured by talk therapy? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:12, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Congratulations on reading the book but you're not representing the source at all and that sentence is problematic in ways you are evidently too stupid to understand — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.3.175.202 (talk) 17:18, 9 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]