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 enlarge | Author: Susan Sontag
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $8.15
You Save: $6.85 (46%)
New (28) Used (17) Collectible (2) from $7.45
Avg. Customer Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 42731
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0312280866
Dewey Decimal Number: 809.04
EAN: 9780312280864
ASIN: 0312280866
Publication Date: August 25, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Sontag's best book December 6, 2003
41 out of 51 found this review helpful
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?
Susan Sontag's first bunch of essays. November 11, 2003
26 out of 32 found this review helpful
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Camp is something which should not be either too beautiful or too ugly; it moves the "connaisseur" because, through its outdated or timelessly ridiculous exterior, it can be felt as the product of an earnest endeavour, a result of the investment of human passion.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.
Mature Democracy January 25, 2002
35 out of 71 found this review helpful
Susan Sontag knows what the terrorists knew for sometime. America, in all its arrogant pride and underhanded support of some of the most repressive regimes on the planet, has to realize that we are still a 225 year old experiment. America is flabby and lacks the true insight that doesn't flinch. We could develop this essential quality of a mature democracy, but it will take pain and suffering. America suffers from the puer aeternus flight from the earth. Prolonged adolescence. It doesn't have its feet planted firmly in the earth. Look at what we're doing to it! Ms. Sontag had the guts to say what was bothering her soul. How many Americans can say that and not fear reprisal? Come on people, what the hell is wrong with your perpetual blindness ? It does not bode well for our future as a unified nation willing to encourage and demand free speech!
Down with Conformity! October 6, 2001
15 out of 36 found this review helpful
Susan Sontag is a very intelligent and articulate woman! These essays are brilliant! As is all of her writing. This country needs more thinking people doing his or her patriotic duty which is to question and to debate all sides of EVERY issue.
We have a robotic President who assures us that America still stands tall. A lot of thinking needs to be done, and perhaps is being done in Washington and elsewhere, about the ineptitude of American intelligence and counter-intelligence, and about what constitutes a smart program of military defense. But the public is not being asked to bear much of the burden of reality. The unanimously applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet Party Congress seemed contemptible. The unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing rhetoric spouted by American officials and media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy of a mature democracy.
 A Very Clever Woman... July 24, 2001
20 out of 28 found this review helpful
"Against Interpretation" is a book that should be read by anyone who contradicts, argues, debates, or analyzes. Most of all, it is written as a slap in the face for the upper-class stupids who stare at Kandinsky's and fuss over issues of "control" and "chaos." It is a book for anyone who has been misunderstood or rejected, and it is a reality for editors and critics world-wide.
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