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

drill

syadrina

I had a brain stroke trying to finish this. Mind-expanding. Bought this from the IMMA shop for €2.55 (I've been carrying this book everywhere I go treating it like a little cute accessory, nodding my head every 10 minutes because it wasn't easy for me to keep my thoughts from drifting away mid-reading to make it appear as though i understand all of it just fine, and I initially planned to continue doing so before realizing that I don't want my copy to get worn out.) (Why do I want to keep this tiny book from getting worn you ask: it bears my abroad crush's fingerprints all over it) (Starbucks on Thomas Steers Way, January 20: he shook his head in confusion with a faint playful smile as he flipped through some of the pages, humbly indicating that his engineer's brain isn't quite suited for post-modernism philosophical essays. It will definitely take me five years to forget that evening alone)

Beatriz Aguiar

linda

I really didn't understand Notes on Camp. I am not really sure why Weike had me read this. What is "Camp"? This is what I read: "camp" is a form of refined taste, aestheticism, valuing art not for its purpose but perhaps for its failure. "Camp" is not about sincerity, but style. All style, no substance.

The whole time while I was reading this, I responded to Sontag the same way I did to the narrator from The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Yes, I know you were educated at the University of Chicago, Harvard, Oxford, the Sorbonne - but do you really have to establish your own intellectual superiority over the reader? At the same time, there were moments when I saw Der Rosenkavalier, Donne, Aristophanes, and I smiled to myself and thought, wow, Brearley educated me well. 

And I am super intrigued by the idea of what exactly "Camp" is. I see "Camp" in the people around me: in people like Lily F., maybe even Florence L. I hope to read this in a classroom setting.

Sloan, Kara

loved it....still not sure I have a good grasp on what camp is though hahaha maybe when I read it a third time.

Tanja Hoffmann

I liked the second essay, One Culture and the New Sensibility, a lot better than the first one.

solitones

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aahir

weli 

lily_z_z_z

eris

'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. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

Notes on Camp

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