Ця книжка, здається, має амбівалентну назву. Адже інтерпретувати - означає витлумачувати, надавати словесної форми тому, що було сприйняте. Отже, будь-які судження критичного характеру так чи інакше можна сховати під парасолю інтерпретації. І важко повірити, що упродовж наступних сторінок сама Ав...
It's interesting. Sontag is such a compelling critic when she writes about writing: fiction, nonfiction, poetry. Famously, she wrote an essay on photography (which I haven't read). But with painting, you get the sense she's flailing around, searching for a vocabulary and a syntax. She seems o...
Meh. Like the stars say: "it was ok." This was my first time reading anything by Susan Sontag, and after hearing so much positive about her, I guess I was expecting more. She's lauded as this great social critic, but I read things more insightful than anything in here about 394 times a day around...
In America is an historical novel, yet it is more. It is a novel about identity, about names and words and people who leave their homeland for a new unknown and undiscovered land called America. The novel is one where the stage and all that it represents mirrors life -- a story set near the end...
The book is so close to great. . . I was reading Sontag's Paris Review interview afterward, which is fascinating, obviously--at 13, she was apparently reading the journals of Gide--and I think it opened me up to the flaw in the book, which is structural. She had in mind this balletic structure mo...
I've never read anything by Susan Sontag, but encountered mentions of her book On Photography numerous times in various contexts. It's hailed as "one of the most highly regarded books of its kind". I like taking photographs myself, and thought I would find it interesting.Those seeking a well-cons...
One model scenario proceeds through five phases. (1) The arrival of the thing. (Emergence of the monsters, landing of the alien spaceship, etc.) This is usually witnessed or suspected by just one person, a young scientist on a field trip. Nobody, neither his neighbors nor his colleagues, will bel...
(No armored generalities here. Just a few remarks.) First, because to write is to practice, with particular intensity and attentiveness, the art of reading. You write in order to read what you’ve written, and see if it’s OK and, since of course it never is, to rewrite it—once, twice, as many time...
Alas, you have to care about politics, even if you don’t want to. But there are many other important things to care about. For instance, the choice of what to wear may be of great import. What to wear to flatter obesity—no, to hide pregnancy. A pregnancy best hidden, since everyone will correctly...