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Under the Sign of Saturn: Essays Paperback – November 9, 2002

by Susan Sontag (Author)

7 customer reviews

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This third essay collection by America's leading essayist brings together her most important critical writing from 1972 to 1980, in which she explores some of the most influential artists and thinkers of our time.

Under the Sign of Saturn: Essays

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Editorial Reviews

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“In this collection, Sontag masters all she chooses to survey. She is a noble appreciator. Integrity, wholeness, large-sighted vision are intrinsic to Sontag's care for the intellectual life....Under the Sign of Saturn includes two long articles that belong together: the famed, polemical, whipping of Leni Riefenstahl's laundered reputation and camp cult of fascist art, and her stunning analysis of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg's Hitler, a Film from Germany.... After this feast, I am eager for her thoughts on anything.” ―Chicago Sun-Times

“A self-described ‘besotted aesthete' and ‘obsessed moralist,' Sontag, more than most writers of her generation, views the everyday business of thinking and feeling as dialectical aspects of one another. Refining that sensibility while attending to the more provocative issues of the day, Sontag has created a body of work of exemplary merit.” ―The Boston Globe

“No one has written more passionately about Antonin Artaud....Nor has anyone before Sontag taken the pains to demolish so thoroughly Hitler's favorite moviemaker, Leni Riefenstahl. This is one of the crack essays in the book.” ―Chicago Tribune

From the Publisher

In her most recent collection of essays, "one of America's foremost critics" (Washington Post ) discusses the relationship between moral and esthetic ideas. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Picador; Reprint edition (November 9, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312420080
ISBN-13: 978-0312420086
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,213,192 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4791 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Essays & Correspondence > Essays
- #5302 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Ethics & Morality
- #6588 in Books > Arts & Photography > History & Criticism > Criticism

Customer Reviews

3.1 out of 5 stars

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ByKrys Kieslowskion October 27, 1999

Susan Sontag is "highbrow." Her essays have scope and intellectual ambition, which readers who have an allergy to these qualities may find "pretentious." She can almost mercilessly point out when something is derivative, weakly conceived, or a sell-out. She has a commitment to cinema as High Art; she takes the contemporary novel to task for being complacent and reactionary; she has a particularly sharp eye for intellectual fraud. Readers who are only interested in marching under one banner or another, or come equipped with biases or blind spots they are proud of, will probably find her annoying.
Sontag may be guilty of "neglecting to take into consideration" entertainment or commercial value, but I'm not sure why it necessarily is a requirement for her to take these things into consideration, since so many others are happily doing so. The fact that a film enjoyed great commercial value does not necessarily exempt it from being an example of "fascist aesthetics"; it simply may mean that it was a fantastically successful example of fascist aesthetics. Sontag was writing at a time when many used the word "fascism" in a very kneejerk way, as though it was this mysterious bad thing, an unknowable plague. Sontag doesn't allow herself such a simplistic attitude. She shows that in fact fascism has many attractive aspects, which is why its aesthetic still turns up everywhere, from Michael Jackson videos to Pink Floyd's The Wall to the WWF. I'm not sure she necessarily thinks this a bad thing; Americans, as we always like to remind the world, are free to enjoy whatever we enjoy, but at least we should not be dishonest about giving things their true names.
The judgement that this writer is a product of "1960s anti-establisment, feminist movement that views anything organized or male-oriented as fascist" is just a inaccurate, vague generalization whose purpose is to dismiss Sontag without having really read or thought about what she is saying. Sontag has skewered "anti-establishment types" and various feminists with the same lack of mercy she dispenses to Arthur Miller and Norman Mailer. Nobody's obligated to read Sontag or like the kind of criticism she practices. But for anyone really interested in cinema, art, theater, the novel, and related subjects, she's essential.

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Very Fine

BySteineron June 18, 2006

Sontag has once again compiled an intelligent collection of essays on widely varying aesthetic topics. Though she begins with a rather artificial and patronizing obituary for the late man of letters Paul Goodman, whose body of work she is evidently less than enthused with, though she feels obliged to compare him to Sartre. The essay rings of false piety.

She moves into an expansive and favorable essay on Antonin Artaud, the great playwright and artist of the avant-garde movement. Sontag reviews the developments of his great career within the context of moralistic philosophic aesthetics, liking him with Nietzsche, then Sade, then Breton.

Yet the most impressive essay in Under the Sign is titled `Fascinating Fascism,' and it is truly fascinating. In it, Sontag overviews the work of filmmaker, actress, and photographer Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi propagandist whose body of work includes the esteemed documentaries Triumph of the Will, and Olympia, the latter about the 1936 Olympic games. Sontag reviews Riefenstahl's book of photography on the Nuba tribe in Sudan, which is apparently breathtaking. Sontag concludes that Reifenstahl, despite her `de-Nazification' and renunciation of her political past is still enamored with a fascist ideal, valuing the masculine strength of the male Nuba and placing their bodies in the foreground, while the women remain vulnerable and tucked away in shadowy corners. The essay is highly provocative.

The title essay is about the great philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin, whom she reviews favorably. This essay provides some interesting tidbits of information that Hannah Arendt neglects to include in her introduction, such as Benjamin's apparent hatred for Heidegger's philosophy.

Also included in this volume is an excellent and terse review of Roland Barthes, and the fine novelist Elias Canetti, whom she holds in great esteem.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Just no a fan.

Just not a fan.

Published 5 months ago by Amazon Customer

Susan kills it, as usual

Sontag, as ever, manages to craft writings of remarkable intellectual range and depth on pretty much anything she focuses.Read more

Published on February 15, 2012 by jafrank

Self-analysis

This volume has been reread by me more than once. Sontag explains that her piece on Paul Goodman is being written in a small room in Paris.Read more

Published on November 20, 2004 by Mary E. Sibley

Indispensable

There are many reasons to read Susan Sontag. Two of them are her brilliant essays on Walter Benjamin and Elias Canetti that appear in this volume.Read more

Published on November 23, 1999

Pretentious, high-brow, dribble

When Sontag analyzes the film making style of Leni Riefenstahl, she makes numerous references to the use of the "fascist aesthetics.Read more

Published on May 23, 1999

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