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toutesleschosesmarguerite's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.75
I think what might best sum up Sontag's collection of essays is that one of primary goals in life now is to be as conscious, as educated and as intelligent as her.
For on those four hundred pages she managed to speak so eloquently about pretty much anything that is related to widely conceived notion of art: about our cultural sensitivity, about tragedy, about form and style, about interpretation, our intellectual paradigmes, happenings, the modern approach to works of art, most influential creators - in one word, she spoke of nearly everything. Yet every conversation she started - whether it be on Camus, the intellectualisation of arts or the nature of tragedy as a genre - was nothing but a start of a much broader, even more ambitious debate she didn't hesitate to begin. A debate on much more intricate qualities of these works and of our world as a whole, that few would be capable of noticing - let alone coherently describing and judging.
As someone who is very much immersed in the world of social sciences, of literature etc, it is quite rare for me to find a book that is genuinely influential, that, due to its complexity, thoughtfulness and the unquestionable talent of the author, manages to teach me so much, to deconstruct the world and put it together again in a way that offers a fresh perspective on everything that surrounds me. She not only manages to describe the new things happening in the world, or to offer the reader some sort of superfluous, unsatisfactory commentary, but she uses her cultural capital and her vast knowledge to put those phenomenons into context, to truly dive deeply into the subjects that she looks into, to analyse them in a wider, socio-historical context, providing truly interesting insight. She picks subjects that others wouldn't even consider worthy of an eloquent, public discussion, and presents them to the reader in a strikingly honest, clever and piercing manner that is bound to influence the very process of reading from now on.
Reading Sontag really is a way to have the whole picture, to see the depth of all the matters we discuss. She teaches the reader how to perceive everything in a more holistic, profound manner, to truly appreciate their complexity. She entices her audience to think more, to be more critical, more aware, more conscious. And while this should be the goal of every essayist, every scholar, every author, very few of them actually manage to do so. Sontag is, indubitably, one of them. Her originality, her firmness and her intelligence are what ensures that it will stay this way forever.
For on those four hundred pages she managed to speak so eloquently about pretty much anything that is related to widely conceived notion of art: about our cultural sensitivity, about tragedy, about form and style, about interpretation, our intellectual paradigmes, happenings, the modern approach to works of art, most influential creators - in one word, she spoke of nearly everything. Yet every conversation she started - whether it be on Camus, the intellectualisation of arts or the nature of tragedy as a genre - was nothing but a start of a much broader, even more ambitious debate she didn't hesitate to begin. A debate on much more intricate qualities of these works and of our world as a whole, that few would be capable of noticing - let alone coherently describing and judging.
As someone who is very much immersed in the world of social sciences, of literature etc, it is quite rare for me to find a book that is genuinely influential, that, due to its complexity, thoughtfulness and the unquestionable talent of the author, manages to teach me so much, to deconstruct the world and put it together again in a way that offers a fresh perspective on everything that surrounds me. She not only manages to describe the new things happening in the world, or to offer the reader some sort of superfluous, unsatisfactory commentary, but she uses her cultural capital and her vast knowledge to put those phenomenons into context, to truly dive deeply into the subjects that she looks into, to analyse them in a wider, socio-historical context, providing truly interesting insight. She picks subjects that others wouldn't even consider worthy of an eloquent, public discussion, and presents them to the reader in a strikingly honest, clever and piercing manner that is bound to influence the very process of reading from now on.
Reading Sontag really is a way to have the whole picture, to see the depth of all the matters we discuss. She teaches the reader how to perceive everything in a more holistic, profound manner, to truly appreciate their complexity. She entices her audience to think more, to be more critical, more aware, more conscious. And while this should be the goal of every essayist, every scholar, every author, very few of them actually manage to do so. Sontag is, indubitably, one of them. Her originality, her firmness and her intelligence are what ensures that it will stay this way forever.
raalux's review against another edition
Against Interpretation and On Style are fantastic essays, but much of the rest is criticism of works I'm not familiar with, so I'll come back to this a while later
heliosphere's review against another edition
5.0
"The world in which these essays were written no longer exists.
Instead of a utopian moment, we live in a time which is experienced as the end—more exactly, just past the end—of every ideal. (And therefore of culture: there is no possibility of true culture without altruism.) An illusion of the end, perhaps—and not more illusory than the conviction of thirty years ago that we were on the threshold of a great positive transformation of culture and society. No, not an illusion, I think."
— Susan Sontag, Against Interpretations and other Essays, Afterword: Thirty Years Later
"notes on camp" remains the best essay in this collection tbh! since summer started, watching movies and reviewing them (badly) on letterboxd has been one of the only things i do in my free time, so this book felt quite pertinent to me. after all, reviewing movies on letterboxd could be considered some form of amateur art criticism. i even watched a few movies for the sole purpose of reading these essays. "against interpretations and other essays" helped inform the way i view art. many of my letterboxd ratings were heavily dependent on the moral underpinnings of a film, and while i still hold that sentiment close to me, susan sontag's ideas offered an alternative way of examining art, one that urged me to appreciate form and style more than i did.
at times, the seemingly ultra-formalist position sontag takes on in the majority of the essays contained in this book seems like a complete dismissal of any critique of art from a moralist standpoint. i could see why sontag was compelled to draw our attention towards style as the centre of art, yet i constantly grappled with this question: if we do not judge a piece of art's moral utility in our criticism, than where do we do so? where do we find space for these conversations? although art is not a vessel of ideas in the way an article, a manifesto, or a speech is, it is perhaps the most widely consumed container of ideas and truth (in the time of post-truth). it was easy, for me at least, to feel defensive and skeptical of sontag's position. but contextualizing these thoughts in the mystic era of "the sixties" helps. sontag's ideas were not an attempt to catalyze the uncritical mass consumption of media without regards to morality that we now witness as part of late-stage capitalism, but an attempt to bring balance to an era that was already highly moralistic. perhaps that undermines its relevance to our current century, although it is no less important in understanding the grand scheme of aesthetics as a whole—if you are willing to engage with the ideas that oppose it, or its present implications.
Instead of a utopian moment, we live in a time which is experienced as the end—more exactly, just past the end—of every ideal. (And therefore of culture: there is no possibility of true culture without altruism.) An illusion of the end, perhaps—and not more illusory than the conviction of thirty years ago that we were on the threshold of a great positive transformation of culture and society. No, not an illusion, I think."
— Susan Sontag, Against Interpretations and other Essays, Afterword: Thirty Years Later
"notes on camp" remains the best essay in this collection tbh! since summer started, watching movies and reviewing them (badly) on letterboxd has been one of the only things i do in my free time, so this book felt quite pertinent to me. after all, reviewing movies on letterboxd could be considered some form of amateur art criticism. i even watched a few movies for the sole purpose of reading these essays. "against interpretations and other essays" helped inform the way i view art. many of my letterboxd ratings were heavily dependent on the moral underpinnings of a film, and while i still hold that sentiment close to me, susan sontag's ideas offered an alternative way of examining art, one that urged me to appreciate form and style more than i did.
at times, the seemingly ultra-formalist position sontag takes on in the majority of the essays contained in this book seems like a complete dismissal of any critique of art from a moralist standpoint. i could see why sontag was compelled to draw our attention towards style as the centre of art, yet i constantly grappled with this question: if we do not judge a piece of art's moral utility in our criticism, than where do we do so? where do we find space for these conversations? although art is not a vessel of ideas in the way an article, a manifesto, or a speech is, it is perhaps the most widely consumed container of ideas and truth (in the time of post-truth). it was easy, for me at least, to feel defensive and skeptical of sontag's position. but contextualizing these thoughts in the mystic era of "the sixties" helps. sontag's ideas were not an attempt to catalyze the uncritical mass consumption of media without regards to morality that we now witness as part of late-stage capitalism, but an attempt to bring balance to an era that was already highly moralistic. perhaps that undermines its relevance to our current century, although it is no less important in understanding the grand scheme of aesthetics as a whole—if you are willing to engage with the ideas that oppose it, or its present implications.
elegantmechanic's review against another edition
DNF 2024-Apparently I'm not in a place to be reading verbose essays right now.
takumo_n's review against another edition
4.0
Against interpretation, On style, Camus' notebooks, The imagination of disaster, and Notes on camp were all fantastic, all the others were very much skipable if you aren't interested especifically in those subjects, because Sontag's prose doesn't let you in as much, they feel too academic and college report like. The 4 stars are for the essays previously mentioned, all the others are 2 stars for me.
logantmartin's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
One thing about Susan Sontag I really enjoy is I often find myself disagreeing with her. She's a very sound writer, and her arguments are valid, but I sometimes just don't like her conclusions. For instance, in Against Interpretation, she argues that we need to resist the urge to ask what a work of art means and instead simply enjoy it as art. She gives several examples, from the Bible to Waiting for Godot, of works that have been evaluated to death, and it's hard to disagree with her that we should pack it up and simply enjoy these as literature rather than try to assign meaning to them; sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and all that. But I think about works like Jeanne Dielman or Happening or the novels of Ursula K. Le Guin. These are all feminist pieces of art, generally with a specific goal in mind. It seems obvious to me that the point of these is interpretation.
But that's what I appreciate about Sontag: she does not intend her essays to be the end of the conversation. She stakes out the parameters of the debate and then situates herself at one point. In other words, I like her not for the answers she comes up with, but for the questions she asks.
But that's what I appreciate about Sontag: she does not intend her essays to be the end of the conversation. She stakes out the parameters of the debate and then situates herself at one point. In other words, I like her not for the answers she comes up with, but for the questions she asks.