Book review of "Against Interpretation and Others Essays", by Susan Sontag

Abstract

While imagining the universe of fictional characters that inhabited the novel The Benefactor (1963), Susan Sontag felt the need to reflect on the criticism of the work - in particular, the literary universe - and the way in which the observer/public receives it. Written between 1962 and 1965, the texts were published in prestigious magazines, such as The New York Reviw of Books or Book Week, and collected in a book in 1966. In the introduction, Sontag admitted that she needed to restore some sense to what the importance of a work of art and "clarifying the theoretical assumptions underlying certain judgments of value and tastes" (2022, p.9). After a first translation of the work into Portuguese, in 2003, by Gótica, the book appeared, in 2022, with translation by Vasco Teles de Menezes, Quetzal first edition, 56 years after the original work.