Customer Reviews

Against Interpretation

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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Camp is something which should not be either too beautiful or too ugly; it moves the "connaisseur" because, through its outdated or timelessly ridiculous exterior, it can be felt as the product of an earnest endeavour, a result of the investment of human passion.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.

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.

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?

I went to this collection after recently purchasing Camille Paglia's latest critical reading of forty-three poems in Break, Blow, Burn. In the dust cover notes, Paglia is described as "America's premier intellectual provocateur." I had always thought that honor belonged to Sontag.

Sontag's collection contains some of her most famous essays and some rather obscure ones. Instead of the most famous, I found myself re-reading the less widely discussed ones, like the essay "Godard's Vivre Sa Vie" and "Happenings: an art of radical juxtaposition" and "A note on novels and films." These essays gave me something new to think about and re-introduced me to Sontag's renowned intellect. They inspired me to buy a few Godard DVDs from Amazon, to attend the Festival of New French Cinema here in Chicago this past weekend and they caused me to ruminate on the contemporary examples of "happenings."

Whether you agree with Sontag's opinions or not, you will probably agree after reading this selection that the depth and breadth of her interests and knowledge is impressive. And she thought and wrote about things that most, even academics, had not been willing to take on. For that, we should be appreciative. For her willingness to be a true public intellectual, we should be grateful. For her legacy to the realm of critical theory, we are indebted.

America has very few independent intellectuals, that is, intellectuals free of academic responsibilities and tenure. Most grub for life-long jobs and then throw away their careers on campus duties and teaching. Gore Vidal, Richard Rodriguez, Susan Sontag...there are others, I'm sure, but not many. It's nearly impossible to make a living now in journalism, so the call to academic prostitution is great. Sontag got through and deserves our praise. God knows, like other free-lance intellectuals she lacked manners and never learned to grovel the way our teachers do, trained as they are to please the young. Much like Sartre, she could be dumb and silly and arrogant, but in the end she survived the culture wars, praising excellence for its own sake and refusing to bestow the title of greatness on to every bestselling author reviewed in the NY Times. She was great and her genius lay in one small area, as far as I can see. She introduced American readers to some very exciting European film makers, theorists, and writers. She herself is a forgettable author of fiction. She had limited talent as an artist, if any, but like Edmund Wilson she brought the latest European thinkers to the attention of American readers of the New York Review of Books and other periodicals. She wrote breathlessly and exhaustively on authors of all sorts. She was capable of passion and insight. She made you fall in love with writers as diverse as Sartre, Barthes, and Canetti. For this we should be grateful. I am.

"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.

in the late 50s every one worried about the symbolism of Beckett in the theatre , kafka in the novel , and Bergman in film. Every thing also had aMarxist or Freudian interpertation. In this great essay she freed us to enjoy the arts and mass communication forever. a must read

freudian interp

Critical writing serves to introduce a reader to non-mainstream writers when it is well done. This is well done. Sontag was a writer and thinker of high caliber. Her special interests in French literature, film, and psychoanalysis are highlighted in this collection of essays.
Discussions of form and content in art recall the art theory of the Greeks of art as representation. Interpretation is a conscious state of mind interpreting a code. Interpretation is a radical strategy conserving an old text. It is the modern way of understanding something. Flight from interpretation seems to be a feature of modern painting. Films may have a liberating anti-symbolic quality. To be able to experience art on several levels is a matter of redundancy. Unfortunately, the author contends, redundancy is a principal affliction of modern life.

All agree that style and content are indissoluble. The duality persists, nevertheless, particularly in criticism. Style necessarily persists. Even realism is in truth a stylistic convention. Stylization reflects ambivalence. Morality is a code of acts. Art performs a moral task. Genet's books are both works of art and works about art. Great art overrides everything else. Nietzsche held that art is a metaphysical supplement to nature. Art exists at a distance from reality. An artist's style is a particular idiom.

Cesare Pavese showed delicacy, economy, and control. Sontag deems Pavese to have been more gifted than Silone and Moravia. Pavese felt literature was a defense against the attacks of life. The writings of Camus embody moral beauty, not artistic or intellectual beauty. To Claude Lewvi-Strauss being an anthropologist is a total occupation. Anthropologists exploit their own intellectual alienation.

The critic Georg Lukacs had a free-wheeling speculative view of Marxism. He concentrated on nineteenth century authors and for the most part wrote in German, not Hungarian. Sartre practiced criticism as immersion. There are no guidelines. In SAINT GENET he tries to impose commitment on action. Genet's task is self-transfiguration. Ionesco discovered the poetry of cliche and language-as-thing to use in his work. Ionesco's development was the reverse of Brecht's.

Sontag identifies the supreme tragic event of the twentieth century as the murder of six million Jews. She remarks that tragedy is not an art form, but a form of history. It is appropriate to compare Rolf Hochhuth's THE DEPUTY with the Eichmann trial. Among other things, trial is a theatrical form. THE DEPUTY has a documentary intention. In her piece on Miller's AFTER THE FALL Sontag opines that Miller writes on the level of a left-wing newspaper cartoon. The classics of Broadway liberalism were too optimistic. The playwrights thought that problems could be solved. Weiss's MARAT/SADE is a play of ideas. The characters debate in it the meaning of the French Revolution.

Robert Bresson's films have a common theme, liberty and confinement. Godard's films focus on proof, not analysis. Camp, (defined by Christopher Isherwood), is something to which Sontag was drawn. It is a sensibility, a matter of subjective preferences. Taste governs every human response. Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism and it is mannerist.

In this review I have tried to give the prospective reader an impression of some of the excellent writings in this collection.

With its inscrutable title, is this the ultimate intellectuals' coffee-table book? She even manages to namecheck both Godard and the Beatles in the final line of the final piece (a reprint from Mademoiselle)! No doubt we all have our favourites. Mine might be the haunting little piece about 'being religious'. If we think we can salvage the good of religion while rejecting its excesses, we are deluding ourselves; 'an idea becomes.. impotent when it seeks reconciliation'. Battle on, faiths! Unfortunately you'll take us with you. (Of course it's not faith that's bad but fighting. Are you listening, America?) I don't suppose they've stumped up for an index to this new edition - but hey, it's journalism, right?

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!