Susan Sontag

The ultimate Camp statement- it's good because it's awful.' These two classic essays were the first works of criticism to break down the boundaries between 'high' and 'low' culture, and made Susan Sontag a literary sensation.

Notes on Camp

From Goya's Disasters of War to news footage and photographs of the conflicts in Vietnam, Rwanda and Bosnia, pictures have been blamed for inspiring dissent, fostering violence or instilling apathy in us, the viewers. Regarding the Pain of Others will alter our thinking not only about the uses and meanings of images, but about the nature of war, the limits of sympathy, and the obligations of conscience.

Regarding the Pain of Others

First published in 1973, this is a study of the force of photographic images which are continually inserted between experience and reality. Sontag develops further the concept of transparency. When anything can be photographed and photography has destroyed the boundaries and definitions of art, a viewer can approach a photography freely with no expectations of discovering what it means. This collection of six lucid essays, the most famous being Plato's Cave make up a deep exploration of how the image has affected society.

On Photography

David Rieff

A second volume of journals shares intimate reflections on the writer's artistic and political development during a trip to Hanoi at the peak of the Vietnam War and throughout her film-making years in Sweden before the dawn of the Reagan era.

Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh

journals and notebooks, 1947-1963

Reborn

'A dazzling intellectual performance' Vogue Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and made her name as one of the most incisive thinkers of our time. Sontag was among the first critics to write about the intersection between 'high' and 'low' art forms, and to give them equal value as valid topics, shown here in her epoch-making pieces 'Notes on Camp' and 'Against Interpretation'. Here too are impassioned discussions of Sartre, Camus, Simone Weil, Godard, Beckett, Lévi-Strauss, science-fiction movies, psychoanalysis and contemporary religious thought. Originally published in 1966, this collection has never gone out of print and has been a major influence on generations of readers, and the field of cultural criticism, ever since. 'Sontag offers enough food for thought to satisfy the most intellectual of appetites' The Times

Against Interpretation and Other Essays

A historical romance set in eighteenth-century Naples follows the fortunes of a British ambassador, the ravishing woman he marries, and the young British admiral with whom she falls in love. By the author of the National Book Award-winning In America. Reprint.

A Romance

The Volcano Lover

Presents excerpts from the early writings of the author, with reflections on her meetings with influential writers and intellectuals, her literary ambitions, and her criticisms of other writers.

Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

In eight stories, this singular collection of short fiction written over the course of ten years explores the terrain of modern urban life. In reflective, telegraphic prose, Susan Sontag confronts the reader with exposed workings of an impassioned intellect in narratives seamed with many of the themes of her essays--the nature of knowing, our relationship with the past, and the future in an alienated present.

Stories

I, etcetera

A powerful collection of essays reveals the author's interpretation of aesthetics and morality in film, literature, and politics, and provides a provocative study on pornography. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

Styles of Radical Will

A historical novel follows the efforts of a group of Poles, led by a famous actress, to build a utopian commune in California in the 1870s.

A Novel

In America

A third selection of Sontag's most important critical writings comment on the relation between moral and aesthetic ideas, discussing the works of Antonin Artaud, Leni Riefenstahl, Elias Canetti, Walter Benjamin, and others. Reprint.

Essays

Under the Sign of Saturn

On Women brings together Susan Sontag's most fearless and incisive writing on women, a crucial aspect of her work that has not until now received the attention it deserves. For the most part written in the 1970s during the height of second-wave feminism, Sontag's essays are strikingly relevant to our contemporary conversations. At times powerfully in sync and at others powerfully at odds with them, they are always characteristically original in their examinations of the 'biological division of labour', the double-standard for ageing and the dynamics of women's powerlessness and women's power. As Merve Emre writes in her introduction, 'They offer us the spectacle of a ferocious intellect setting itself to the task at hand: to articulate the politics and aesthetics of being a woman in the United States, the Americas and the world.' 'One of America's greatest public intellectuals' Observer 'Susan Sontag offers enough food for thought to satisfy the most intellectual of appetites' The Times 'At the time she died, she was America's best-known public intellectual. To my mind, she was also the most exemplary' John Gray, New Statesman WITH A PREFACE BY MERVE EMRE

A new collection of feminist essays from the influential writer, activist and critic, Susan Sontag

On Women

Untitled (Essays on Feminism)

Sontag's incisive intelligence, expressive brilliance, and deep curiosity about art, politics, and the writer's responsibility to bear witness have secured her place as one of the most important thinkers and writers of the twentieth century. This collecti

Essays and Speeches

At the Same Time

While on a business trip, a man murders a railroad worker and then seeks compassion and forgiveness from a lonely girl, in a new edition of the author's acclaimed second novel, first published in 1967. Reprint.

Death Kit

Includes the essay "Notes on Camp," the inspiration for the 2019 exhibition Notes on Fashion: Camp at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and is a modern classic. Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world. It includes the groundbreaking essays "Notes on Camp" and "Against Interpretation," as well as her impassioned discussions of Sartre, Camus, Simone Weil, Godard, Beckett, Levi-Strauss, science-fiction movies, psychoanalysis, and contemporary religious thought. This edition has a new afterword, "Thirty Years Later," in which Sontag restates the terms of her battle against philistinism and against ethical shallowness and indifference.

And Other Essays

Against Interpretation

Winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award for Criticism. One of the most highly regarded books of its kind, On Photography first appeared in 1977 and is described by its author as "a progress of essays about the meaning and career of photographs." It begins with the famous "In Plato's Cave"essay, then offers five other prose meditations on this topic, and concludes with a fascinating and far-reaching "Brief Anthology of Quotations."

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From one of the greatest prose stylists of any generation, the essay that inspired the theme of the 2019 Met Gala, Camp: Notes on Fashion Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility—unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but hardly identical with it—that goes by the cult name of “Camp.” So begins Susan Sontag’s seminal essay “Notes on ‘Camp.’ ” Originally published in 1964 and included in her landmark debut essay collection Against Interpretation, Sontag’s notes set out to define something that even the most well-informed could describe only as “I know it when I see it.” At once grounded in a sweeping history (Louis XIV was pure Camp) and entirely provisional, Camp delights in low and high culture alike. Tiffany lamps, the androgynous beauty of Greta Garbo, King Kong (1933), and Mozart all embody the Camp sensibility for Sontag—an almost ineffable blend of artifice, extravagance, playfulness, and a deadly seriousness. At the time Sontag published her essay, Camp, as a subversion of sexual norms, had also become a private code of signification for queer communities. In nearly every genre and form—from visual art, décor, and fashion to writing, music, and film—Camp continues to be redefined today, as seen in the 2019 Met Gala that took Sontag’s essay as the basis for its theme. “Style is everything,” Sontag tells us, and as Time magazine points out, “ ‘Notes on “Camp” ’ launched a new way of thinking,” paving the way for a whole new style of cultural criticism, and describing what is, in many ways, the defining sensibility of our culture today.

Susan Sontag

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