Against Interpretation
Monday, December 17th, 2007 @ 05:11
by Susan Sontag (1967)
A collection of selected Sontag’s essays, published between 1962 and 1965, Against Interpretation cover a range of subjects that today might feel rather outdated and canonical in its fare (Camus, Sartre, Genet, Weil, Sarraute, Pavese, Artaud, Lukacs, Levi-Strauss, Ionesco, Hochhut, Brecht, Beckett, Weiss, Bresson, Antonioni, Godard, Resnais, etc). But it would also be unfair to dismiss the essays as mere historical witnesses to the evolution of an influential tastemaker.
Sontag possessed the exactitude, passions, and dexterity in her incisive insights and (admittedly, sometimes naive, self-righteous) opinions, but her greatest attraction as a celebrity-critic is her timing. When she wrote those pieces, they had the tempting vibrancy and immediacy of “obscurity ” of which the public had only heard and read in as ramblings, rumours, and short reviews. Yet it’s also not just who or what she talks about — it’s also how she writes about them, analyzing them.
With her it’s usually a hit and miss, but when she hits, she strikes with an attractive accuracy. I like her passion on Godard, Bresson, and Barthes, the spot-on comment on Bergman, Sartre’s reverential upstaging attempt in Saint Genet, and the love and comparison of Camus as “the ideal husband” embarrassingly touched me (my excuse: adolescent infatuation) despite its naivete.
I realise the pervasiveness of her influence in hip culture, and likewise I disagree with many of her enthusiasms (Sokurov, Cioran, and Nadas) and the self-righteousness I’ve encountered earlier in my younger days when I was discovering writers and directors (Tarr, Kertesz, Krasznahorkai, Bolano, Imamura, etc.) and finding her popping up all over the place. Like most people, I discover Sontag in bits and pieces of her writings, her reputation and Leibowitz’s photographs, while my further curiosity leads me to a disastrous attempt at Volcano Lover, and On Photography did not particularly impress me. (Neither did the self-righteous Illness as a Metaphor.)
Overall, though, definitely a book I’d love to have, if not for the references, for the lucidity with which she dissects the works and auteurs whose taste seems to encompass an era.
