Minsik
Discover
Jan 16, 1933 — Dec 28, 2004· 71 yrs

UNITED STATES AUTHOR · FICTION · HISTORY

Susan Sontag

Also known as: SONTAG Susan, SONTAG SUSAN

32
BOOKS
3.9
AVG RATING (36)
4
READERS

Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, filmmaker, philosopher, teacher, and political activist. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964. Her best-known works include On Photography, Against Interpretation, Styles of Radical Will, The Way We Live Now, Illness as Metaphor, Regarding the Pain of Others, The Volcano Lover, and In America. Sontag was active in writing and speaking about, or travelling to, areas of conflict, including during the Vietnam War and the Siege of Sarajevo. She wrote extensively about photography, culture and media, AIDS and illness, human rights, and communism and leftist ideology. Although her essays and speeches sometimes drew controversy, she has been described as "one of the most influential critics of her generation." Source: [Susan Sontag]( on Wikipedia.

New York City, United States
Wikipedia

THE earliest experience of art must have been that it was incantatory, magical; art was an instrument of ritual.

— from Against Interpretation

Most acclaimed

#2

Illness as metaphor

1978

4.4 (5)

In 1978, while recovering from cancer, Susan Sontag wrote Illness as metaphor, the celebrated essay on the invented and often punitive uses of illness in our culture. It was not surprising that a decade later, after the advent of AIDS, Sontag felt compelled to write a sequel that would counter the almost universal labeling of AIDS as a "plague". Published together in one volume these works are brimming with humane and original ideas about disease and the modern condition.

#1

Against Interpretation

3.7 (7)

"'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 some of Sontag's best-known works, among them "On Style", "Notes on 'Camp", and the titular essay "Against Interpretation", where Sontag argues that modern cultural conditions have given way to a new critical approach to aesthetics."

#3

Italy

0.0 (0)

The author explains why the cradle of western civilization, which has assimilated so many barbarians in its time, endured the tyrant Mussolini and a sack worse than any in its past. He shows how the peasantry and the clergy were at once actors and pawns in the drama of Italy's history, and how the defects in her society led to the internal strife she knows today.

Books

Newest First