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'A dazzling intellectual performance.' Vogue
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Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and is a modern classic. Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. It includes some of Sontag's best-known works, among them 'On Style', 'Notes on 'Camp'', and the titular essay 'Against Interpretation', where Sontag argues that modern cultural conditions have given way to a new critical approach to aesthetics.
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3 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Looking at this 45 years on (crikey) one's hard put to see what all the fuss was about - yes, a stimulating collection of cultural-philosophical essays (reviews, actually, in the main) of the type there are so many of these days one thinks of them as belletristic, or maybe humanistic - I'm just now toying with Roger Kimball's Experiments against Reality, and Ozick plugs away manfully - but they don't sell like Sontag. I guess 'attitude' sums it up. Back then academic disciplines kept themselves to themselves; in making a pitch for the 'common reader' or 'educated public' Sontag made the whole thing hip and inadvertently spawned cultural studies. 'One culture' she talks about in the final piece and it's kind of come to pass. She represented a point in the demographic when the thirst for learning post-WW2 - both of the *culture* and the *understanding* varieties - met late 50s/early 60s affluence and everything got way more fun - both more 'important' and less serious. What excited me about the volume at the time (and overcame its forbidding title and vile mauve livery) was not 'Notes on "Camp"' (back then gays were still queers) or the knee-jerk trio Genet/Sarraute/Artaud (yawn) but the presence of *film* on equal terms with these literary heavies, and not Bresson/Resnais (yawn yawn) or the fatous survey of sci-fi film plots either (I tell you, Forbidden Planet was an insult to the intelligence of a 13-year-old in 1956 and retro irony has a lot to answer for) but my beloved Godard - only one film, and very far from his best in my view, but still.. I now see that the article, all 10 pages of it but split into trendy Godardian numbered paragraphs, was reprinted from Moviegoer! Thus are reputations fabricated. An undoubted hotchpotch, if you like this you'll call it steely and if not, dry. It's zeitgeist in spades. Maybe I'll get round to reading it some day!
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12 reviews
40 of 45 people found the following review helpful
Susan Sontag's first bunch of essays.
11 Nov 2003
Format:Paperback
This is historically the first delivery of the now world-renowned essays by Susan Sontag. Mrs Sontag considers herself primarily a novelist: and,of course, she has every right to do so, but I have the feeling that her novels do not come near in any way to her essays' quality.
In this batch, which is arguably her most famous one, although probably not her best, you can feel all young Sontag's vigour and fire. She is often far nastier in tone than in her later works. She tears to pieces John Gielgud's staging of Hamlet, Gyorgy Lukacs's literary criticism, calls George Steiner "superficial"(!), and destroys contemporary American novelists (they're obsessed with "content" intended as a discussion of moral issues).
The most beautiful piece in this collection are probably the "Notes on Camp". Camp is something which should not be either too beautiful or too ugly; it moves the "connaisseur" because, through its outdated or timelessly ridiculous exterior, it can be felt as the product of an earnest endeavour, a result of the investment of human passion.
Some other essays are more superficial than accustomed, and in the Preface, Sontag aknowledges that she maybe could have taken away some, which were written as simple reviews for magazines. But we can still find the characteristic quality of Sontag's "writing" (meaning "écriture" as defined by Roland Barthes, for those who follow...); an endless redefining, putting into perspective each word or concept introduced, which means that really everything is left in suspence and subject to caution, pointing towards new research to be done.
In this batch, which is arguably her most famous one, although probably not her best, you can feel all young Sontag's vigour and fire. She is often far nastier in tone than in her later works. She tears to pieces John Gielgud's staging of Hamlet, Gyorgy Lukacs's literary criticism, calls George Steiner "superficial"(!), and destroys contemporary American novelists (they're obsessed with "content" intended as a discussion of moral issues).
The most beautiful piece in this collection are probably the "Notes on Camp". Camp is something which should not be either too beautiful or too ugly; it moves the "connaisseur" because, through its outdated or timelessly ridiculous exterior, it can be felt as the product of an earnest endeavour, a result of the investment of human passion.
Some other essays are more superficial than accustomed, and in the Preface, Sontag aknowledges that she maybe could have taken away some, which were written as simple reviews for magazines. But we can still find the characteristic quality of Sontag's "writing" (meaning "écriture" as defined by Roland Barthes, for those who follow...); an endless redefining, putting into perspective each word or concept introduced, which means that really everything is left in suspence and subject to caution, pointing towards new research to be done.
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Outstanding Effort
12 Jun 2006
Format:Paperback
This may be Sontag's most rigorous and important collection of essays, complete with topics ranging from Levi-Strauss to Godard. In it is her famous essay "On Camp," which would later make her a superstar in the New York artistic community.
Sontag is worried about intellectual interpretation, the erudite and narrow approach to understanding a work of art. She calls on us to "show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means." Her approach is far reaching and yet acute and highly attuned to the intellectual aspects of the fine arts.
This collection includes fabulous essays on Sartre, Bresson, Beckett, Lukacs, Resnais, and many others. It is evidence of her astonishing ability to think seriously and with tremendous beauty about that which is most important.
Sontag is worried about intellectual interpretation, the erudite and narrow approach to understanding a work of art. She calls on us to "show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means." Her approach is far reaching and yet acute and highly attuned to the intellectual aspects of the fine arts.
This collection includes fabulous essays on Sartre, Bresson, Beckett, Lukacs, Resnais, and many others. It is evidence of her astonishing ability to think seriously and with tremendous beauty about that which is most important.
54 of 64 people found the following review helpful
Sontag's best book
6 Dec 2003
Format:Paperback
To begin with: It is time for people to stop ranting about Ms. Sontag's opinions about 9-11. LET IT GO, PEOPLE! Shut up and read this book. It will open a whole world of art and ideas for you. You will discover a series of brilliant discussions of Sartre, Beckett, Claude Levi-Strauss, Godard, Robert Bresson, Michel Leiris, Alain Resnais and Norman O. Brown. Moreover, read and consider the famous essays "Against Interpretation," "On Style" and "Notes on Camp." In the end, you will find that these essays have greatly influenced your aesthetic sensibilities. You will also find yourself seeking out the works of the writers and filmmakers discussed in this book. What more can a reader ask for?
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