Susan Sontag recently died and I have heard a lot about her referenced as a critic over the years and saw her seminal book of criticism, Against Interpretation, at a used bookshop and picked it up. It was a visionary book, published in 1966; many of the essays and subjects are among the intellectual obsessions of the later half of the 20th century. She writes about existentialism, psychoanalysis, anthological theorists, film, avante garde writers, painters and playwrights. These include people like Sartre, Camus, Simone Weil, Beckett, and Levi-Strauss. I think she legitimizes film study long before it gained acceptance as a critical field of study. Here she looks at French new wave directors as well science fiction movies. Her two most famous essays from this collection are the title piece, “Against Interpretation,” and “Notes On Camp.” However, I also found “On Style” and “Piety Without Content” referred to in the past and seminal in their own right. It is an interesting book of essays that challenges conventional concepts and ideas about criticism as well as what is art and what is important about art. Her role as a public intellectual will be missed.
Comments