Susan Sontag (1933–2004)

The endurance and magnificence of this essay collection lie not with their ability to persuade but their stimulating arguments and ideas. However—this is a reductive take on an otherwise complex topic—I completely agree that society's eagerness and obsession to interpret / interpretations ad nauseam may be harmful and art should be felt rather than interpreted. Also controversial in places, Sontag's take on form over content forces sceptics to reconsider, reexamine this seemingly show more insoluble debate much like the unending fights about separation between the art and the artist. I don't agree either that Bresson is a better director than Bergman or the pretentious snob Godard should be put in a pedestal as if Truffaut or Varda, the pioneer of the French New Wave, did not exist. Her essay Resnais' Muriel proposes some good points about the film's issues but admittedly, since he's one of my all time favourite directors whose works I think depict the plane of time and memory brilliantly, it is hard not to snort and take a little offence. How this includes essays about B movies under the sci-fi genre and the "high" and "low" culture prove Sontag as a compelling and admirable polymath.

"In one case, fantasy beautifies the world. In the other, it neutralizes it."

This collection of essays focuses mostly on French and American works it is difficult not to think that works from other countries which are just as deserving have been left out. Of course I do not expect Sontag to touch on everything but it is a bit limiting for me. Overall, I really liked the essays Against interpretation, The artist as exemplary sufferer, The death of tragedy, Going to theater, etc., The imagination of disaster, A note on novels and films, Notes on "Camp" and One culture and the new sensibility. Her wit and biting disapproval on Henry Miller and Eugene Ionesco's works are very amusing. There is so much to absorb from Against Interpretation and Other Essays that a reread is absolutely necessary. Even though I give this collection 3 stars it's not about my disagreement with some of Sontag's criticisms and arguments but rather my lack of knowledge on some of its subjects. Indeed my intellectual infatuation with Sontag persists and with that thick hair of hers I am as smitten as ever. show less

She covers the ground elegantly, in no particular order. Her style is crisp, firm, and writerly, though not without a self-conscious overlay. She has a bit of a diva's pulsating grandeur, but actually she's more like an athletic dancer, picking her spots and impeccably closing in with pleasing quick-step combinations and leaps. She's probably too irregular to be a scholar's expository ideal, but damn she puts on a fine show. Her mind cracks it along like a circus tamer's whip. You don't have show more to like her, but it's hard not to salute her. show less

O amante do vulcão, terceiro romance de Susan Sontag, incorpora contradições no mínimo instigantes. Trata-se de uma história realista, moderna em sua polifonia de vozes narrativas. Nela se agitam personagens históricos desentranhados da fase heróica do período romântico: o final do século XVIII. Sir William Hamilton, embaixador britânico no Reino das Duas Sicílias, sua segunda mulher, Emma, humilde porém belíssima cortesã inglesa guindada à posição de confidente e show more conselheira de uma rainha, e o maior herói marítimo da Inglaterra, lord Nelson, são os míticos protagonistas desta narrativa histórico-ficcional. A compulsão de redesenhá-los em escala humana, imperativo tipicamente ensaístico, só fez aumentar a voltagem dramática das peripécias em que se vêem envolvidos. Sem dúvida, temos aqui uma história apaixonante sobre pessoas apaixonadas. "É um livro de mestre, um belo espetáculo: vasto, colorido, interessante, e que faz pensar."Roberto Schwarz"Um romance de idéias passional e muitas vezes radical que proporciona todos os antigos prazeres do romance histórico tradicional."New York Times show less

In 1876, the celebrated Polish actress Maryna Załężowska and a group of her Warsaw-intellectual friends set off to live on a Fourier-inspired commune in California. As so often happens with idealistic communities, it doesn’t quite work out as they had hoped, and Maryna finds herself going back on stage to create a new career for herself in America.

Sontag uses this historical-fiction framework to explore what it might have meant to be a famous woman, successful in a high-profile show more profession, in late-19th century Europe and America, as well as picking out some of the oddities of American life and thought from a European perspective, and vice-versa, and dissecting the ways that acting on stage intersect with real (family) life and relationships. But also about the way that migration creates opportunities — and pressures — for us to adopt new personas and names. We learn quite a lot about Victorian tastes in theatre, meet some interesting real-life figures from the period, and generally get an awful lot of information thrown at us.

Sontag also has a lot of fun playing around with a range of clever — and sometimes plain theatrical — narrative techniques, most notably in the opening chapter, where the far-from-omniscient narrator finds herself watching from the sidelines of a party taking place in an era and a place far outside her own experience, and trying to piece together who these characters might be and how they fit together. The closing chapter is another tour-de-force, a monologue, with stage directions, addressed to Maryna and delivered by her fellow-actor Edwin Booth (brother of…) as he slips in and out of the roles of himself and an assortment of Shakespearean protagonists.

A demanding read, but also quite a rewarding one, with its share of fun. show less