Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag is widely regarded as one of the most formidable, original, and influential writers of the last century. Against Interpretation is a modern classic, her first-ever collection and the work that launched her storied career when it was published in 1966. It has influenced generations of readers, and still contains some of her best-known essays, including “Notes on Camp,” “Against Interpretation,” and a dazzling range of, well, interpretations. Grand in scope—ranging from philosophy to film to religion to psychoanalysis—and short in length, this pocket-sized, pithy, and profound book introduces “a larger-than-life intellectual powerhouse."

Susan Sontag was the author of four novels, including The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In America, which won the 2000 National Book Award for fiction; a collection of stories, I, etcetera; several plays, including Alice in Bed; and nine works of essays, among them On Photography, which won the National Books Critics Circle Award for criticism. In 2001, Sontag was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work. She died in New York City in 2004.