I suppose it’s not wrong that Against Interpretation is read now, or reread, as an influential, pioneering document from a bygone age. But that is not how I read it, or—lurching from nostalgia to utopia—wish it to be read. My hope is that its republication now, and the acquisition of new readers, could contribute to the quixotic task of shoring up the values out of which these essays and reviews were written. The judgments of taste expressed in these essays may have prevailed. The values underlying those judgments did not.
[1996]
* “Thirty Years Later…” was written as the preface to the republication in Madrid in 1996 of the Spanish translation of Against Interpretation.
Also by Susan Sontag
Fiction
THE BENEFACTOR
DEATH KIT
I, ETCETERA
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
THE VOLCANO LOVER
IN AMERICA
Essays
STYLES OF RADICAL WILL
ON PHOTOGRAPHY
ILLNESS AS METAPHOR AND AIDS AND ITS METAPHORS
UNDER THE SIGN OF SATURN
Filmscripts
DUET FOR CANNIBALS
BROTHER CARL
Play
ALICE IN BED
AGAINST INTERPRETATION. Copyright © 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966 by Susan Sontag. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Picador® is a U.S. registered trademark and is used by Farrar, Straus and Giroux under license from Pan Books Limited.
Phone: 1-800-221-7945 extension 763
Fax: 212-677-7456
E-mail: trademarketing@stmartins.com
“Resnais’ Muriel” © 1964 by the Regents of the University of California, Reprinted from Film Quarterly, Vol. XVII, No. 2, pp. 23–7, by permission of the Regents.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sontag, Susan.
Against interpretation, and other essays / Susan Sontag
p. cm.
ISBN 0-312-28086-6
1. Literature, Modern—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Criticism. I. Title.
[PN771.S62 1990]
809'.04—dc20
90—367
CIP
First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
eISBN 9781466853522
First eBook edition: August 2013