Susan Sontag (1933–2004) spoke of the promiscuity of art and literaturethe willingness of great artists and writers to scandalize their spectators through critical frankness, complexity, and beauty. Sontag's life and thought were no less promiscuous. She wrote deeply and engagingly about a range of subjectstheater, sex, politics, novels, torture, and illnessand courted celebrity and controversy both publicly and privately. Throughout her career, she not only earned adulation but also provoked scorn. Her living was the embodiment of scandal.
In this collection, Terry Castle, Nancy K. Miller, Wayne Koestenbaum, E. Ann Kaplan, and other leading scholars revisit Sontag's groundbreaking life and work. Against Interpretation, "Notes on Camp," Letter from Hanoi, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, I, Etcetera, and The Volcano Loverthese works form the center of essays no less passionate and imaginative than Sontag herself. Debating questions raised by the thinker's own images and identities, including her sexuality, these works question Sontag's status as a female intellectual and her parallel interest in ambitious and prophetic fictional women; her ambivalence toward popular culture; and her personal and professional "scandals." Paired with rare photographs and illustrations, this timely anthology expands our understanding of Sontag's images and power.
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations for Commonly Used Titles
- Figures
- INTRODUCTION: Unextinguished: Susan Sontag’s Work in Progress [Barbara Ching and Jennifer A. Wagner- Lawlor]
- CHAPTER ONE: Some Notes on “Notes on Camp” [Terry Castle]
- CHAPTER TWO: Absolute Seriousness: Susan Sontag in American Popular Culture [Dana Heller]
- CHAPTER THREE: “Not Even a New Yorker”: Susan Sontag in America [Barbara Ching]
- CHAPTER FOUR: Romances of Community in Sontag’s Later Fiction [Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor]
- CHAPTER FIVE: Sontag, Modernity, and Cinema: Women and an Aesthetics of Silence, 1960–1980 [E. Ann Kaplan]
- CHAPTER SIX: Sontag on Theater [Julia A. Walker]
- CHAPTER SEVEN: The “Counterculture” in Quotation Marks: Sontag and Marcuse on the Work of Revolution [Craig J. Peariso]
- CHAPTER EIGHT: A Way of Feeling Is a Way of Seeing: Sontag and the Visual Arts [Leslie Luebbers]
- CHAPTER NINE: Metaphors Kill: “Against Interpretation” and the Illness Books [Jay Prosser]
- CHAPTER TEN: The Posthumous Life of Susan Sontag [Nancy K. Miller]
- CHAPTER ELEVEN: In Summa:The Latter Essays—an Appreciation [Sohnya Sayres]
- CHAPTER TWELVE: Susan Sontag, Cosmophage [Wayne Koestenbaum]
- Bibliography
- Contributors
- Index
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