Susan Sontag Summary

Among the literary stars of the radical 1960s, Susan Sontag (born 1933) produced numerous works evaluating and commenting on contemporary life and literature. Her essays appeared in nearly every major... Read more

Although Susan Sontag is best known as a critic, she has more than once expressed regret for having devoted so much time to having written the essays that brought her renown. As she once explained to ... Read more

Critical Essay by Louis D. Rubin, Jr. Whatever became of Camp, both High and Low? A few years ago, before the Revolution became the fashion in New York, there was a period when just about all you hear... Read more

Critical Essay by John B. Breslin Susan Sontag is best known as a critic who has insistently reminded American readers that a vast contemporary world of thought and imagination continues to evolve on ... Read more

Critical Essay by Jay Parini Sontag has done an able job of editing [A Barthes Reader], and her introduction is thoughtful, an elegiac retrospective, what in the eighteenth century would have been cal... Read more

Critical Essay by Vernon Young In that ideal Republic which is invoked by anyone who writes a criticism of life, Susan Sontag would have no status, since her mind is nourished solely on products of de... Read more

Critical Essay by Elizabeth Hardwick Susan Sontag: the name is a resonance of qualities, of quality itself. The drama of the idea, the composition, a recognition from the past that tells us what the p... Read more

In the following review, Urbanski writes that the subject matter of Alice in Bed is challenging and interesting but the play suffers from numerous limitations. How do you write a play about emptiness,... Read more

In the following interview, Sontag discusses her production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo. [Munk]: What did you hope to achieve, coming here? [Sontag]: My original motivatio... Read more

In the review below, Tonkin suggests how themes in Sontag's career contributed to her writing Alice in Bed. Last year, Susan Sontag defied Serbian gunnery and media mockery to direct Waiting Fo... Read more

In the following interview, conducted in July, 1994, Sontag reveals the authors who have inspired and influenced her literary career, comments on the craft of writing, and elaborates on the different ... Read more

In the following review, Wood contends that in contemporary society the historical novel has become an overworked and tedious genre, but that In America is an exception, characterizing the book as nic... Read more

In the following review, McLemee expresses his disappointment with the essays in Where the Stress Falls, finding Sontag's approach egotistical and clichéd, and asserting the writing lack... Read more

In the following review, Nelson examines the changing tones amongst the essays collected in Where the Stress Falls. You showed that it was not necessary to be unhappy,” Susan Sontag writes in &... Read more

In the following review, Spalding finds that Sontag's essays in Where the Stress Falls appear pessimistic concerning the state of current arts and society, and deems that Sontag is at her best ... Read more

In the following essay, Todorov analyzes human preoccupation with suffering, and categorizes Regarding the Pain of Others as a valuable study in this phenomenon. One of the great platitudes of our epo... Read more

In the following review, Kleinman praises Regarding the Pain of Others for not only displaying human fascination with images of death and pain, but for urging readers to view such images with sympathy... Read more

In the following review, Dyer judges Sontag as a master of the essay form, praising her work AIDS and Its Metaphors as well as the earlier essay Illness as Metaphor. Twelve years ago, when Susan Sonta... Read more

In the following essay, Sayres examines both Sontag's fiction and her essays, focusing on her epigrammatic style, her multilayered studies into contradictions and negations, and modernist theor... Read more

In the following review, Lewis provides a negative assessment of Alice in Bed, contending that the character's words and actions are inaccurate, implausible, and laden with banalities and trite... Read more