Where the Stress Falls is divided into three sections: the first, `Reading`, includes ardent pieces on writers from Sontag`s own private canon - Machado de Assis, Barthes, W. G. Sebald, Borges, Tsvetaeva and Elizabeth Hardwick. In the second, `Seeing`, she shares her passions for film, dance, photography, painting, opera and theatre. And in the final section, `There and Here`, Sontag explores her own commitments to the work (and activism) of conscience and to the vocation of the writer.