Susan Sontag: Essays of the 1960s & 70s (Library of America)

by Susan Sontag

Hardcover, 2013

Status

Available

Call number

814.54

Genres

Nonfiction

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Your library

Publication

Library of America (2013), Edition: First Edition, Hardcover, 900 pages

Description

With the publication of her first book, Against Interpretation, in 1966, Susan Sontag placed herself at the forefront of an era of cultural and political transformation. "What is important now," she wrote, "is to recover our senses ... In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art." She would remain a catalyzing presence, whether writing about camp sensibility, the films of Jean-Luc Godard and Alain Resnais, her experiences as a traveler to Hanoi at the height of the Vietnam War, the aesthetics of science-fiction and pornography, or a range of modern thinkers from Simone Weil to E.M. Cioran. She opened dazzling new perspectives on any subject she addressed, whether the nature of photography or cultural attitudes toward illness. This volume, edited by Sontag's son David Rieff, presents the full texts of four essential books: Against Interpretation, Styles of Radical Will (1969), On Photography (1977), and Illness as Metaphor (1978). Also here as a special feature are six previously uncollected essays including studies of William S. Burroughs and the painter Francis Bacon and a series of reflections on beauty, aging, and the emerging feminist movement.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member DavidWineberg

Sontagging Society

There is so much to admire in Susan Sontag, I hesitate to begin for fear of being incomplete. She was in permanent sponge mode, absorbing everything cultural and societal, internalizing it and using whatever portion of it was necessary to back or make a point. She was in command

of a vast universe of information. She was so well read it is hard to imagine she had time to interpret, let alone write. Her take was reasoned, rational, and yet, way out of line, a combination that makes for passionate, confident writing by her, and absorbed reading for me.

In an age when 140 characters seems the limit of intellect, Susan Sontag went on forever, delving deeper, relating more widely, and establishing new beachheads.

This collection reprints four whole books: Against Interpretation, Styles of Radical Will, On Photography, and Illness as Metaphor, as well as some uncollected pieces. At nearly 900 pages, it is a huge but valuable compendium of a restless intellect with the added skill of clear communication, a combination too rare. Or as Sontag put it, sounding quite Wilde-ish: “…Some of us wish we were endowed with a good deal less of the excruciating psychological self-consciousness that is the burden of educated people in our time.” It’s an interesting complement to her feminist critiques of beauty.

Sontag is justly remembered for her take on her own world, with which she was ruthless: “I live in an unethical society that coarsens the sensibilities and thwarts the capacities for goodness of most people but makes available for minority consumption an astonishing array of intellectual and aesthetic pleasures.” (1968) She lived in and helped make an era when you could say things like that – and there were no negative votes accompanying her comments to deaden her thoughts.
Unsurprisingly, she was attracted to brilliance, and her critiques of great minds are uncommonly appreciative. Her reviews, nominally of books or films, become reviews of lives, since she made it her business to know everything about the minds she valued. Yet she could tackle the world of science fiction and pornography with equal intensity, and appreciate trash films as if they were masterpieces. You could rely on Susan Sontag for a remarkable analysis.

There’s lots to disagree with; such is the nature of reviews. Even Sontag herself said she no longer agreed with some of her criticism. I’m particularly incensed with continual disparagement of Art Nouveau, my favorite style, and the last time style actually mattered more than function. She dismisses it as “Camp”. Repeatedly.

What would Sontag make of rap music, 500 channel cable, tattoos, social media reaction to everything, and censorship both by social media and because of social media? No, you’re probably wrong; we’re talking about Susan Sontag here.
I was disappointed in the book On Photography for two reasons. First, it is horribly dated. In the sixties, photography was still the magic of experts. Today, everyone and everything takes photos. Everyone can manipulate them, and they are posted in their millions for all to see. Photography has been completely democratized. Canonizing photographers provides no insight; it’s just quaint. Second, the sontagging of photography just doesn’t work. It seems a forced and frivolous attempt to make it fit the Sontag framework. Trying to give photography the Sontag treatment that reveals so much in books and film fails utterly.
Sontag was steeped in her topics. She was not about celebrity. She celebrated accomplishment, even where other critics did not see any. That makes this a great read.

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