Susan Sontag occupies a special place in Modern American letters. She
has become our most important critic, while her brilliant novels and
short fiction are, at long last, getting the recognition they deserve.
Sontag is above all a writer, which is only to say that, though the form
may differ, there is an essential unity in all her work. The truth of
this is perhaps more evident in A Susan Sontag Reader than in any of
Sontag's individual books. The writer selected a sampling of her work,
meaning the choice both to reflect accurately a career and also to guide
the reader toward those qualities and concerns which she prizes in her
own writing.
A Susan Sontag Reader is arranged chronologically and draws on most of
Sontag's books. There are selections from her two novels, The
Benefactor and Death Kit, and from her collections of short stories,
I, etcetera. The famous essays from the 1960s--"Against
Interpretation," "Notes on Camp," and "On Style"--which established
Sontag's reputation and can be fairly said to have shaped the cultural
views of a generation are included, as are selctions from her two
subsequent volumes of essays, Styles of Radical Will and *Under the
Sign of Satury.*A part of Sontag's best-selling On Photography is also
included.
It is astonishing to read these works when they are detached from the
books they appeared in and offered instead in the order in which Sontag
wrote them. The connections between various literary forms, the
progression of themes, are revealed in often startling ways. Moreover,
Sontag has included a long interview in which she moves mroe informally
over the whole range of her concerns and of her work. The volume ends
with "Writing Itself," a previously uncollected essay on Roland Barthes
which, in the eyes of many, is one of Sontag's finest achievements.
This collection is, in a sense, both a self-potrait and a key for a
reader to understand the work of one of the most imporant writers of our
time.
