« I think there is something very honorable about the form of the fragment
that points to the gaps, spaces, and silences between things.
On the other hand, one could say that it’s literally decadent
— and not in the moral sense — in that it’s the style of the end of an era,
and by that I mean the end of a civilization or a tradition of thought or a sensibility.
The fragment presupposes that one knows and has experienced
a great deal, and it’s decadent in that sense because you have
to have all that stuff behind you so that you’re making allusions
and commenting on things without having to spell it all out.
It’s not an art form or a thought form of young cultures that need to make things very specific.
But we know a lot and are aware of a multiplicity of perspectives,
and the fragment is one way of acknowledging that. »
in Rolling Stone, October 4th 1979,
“Susan Sontag: The Rolling Stone Interview”, by Jonathan Cott.