Sontag's landmark essay collection, spanning film, theater, and literature criticism written in the early-to-mid 1960s, that argues against reductive interpretation in favor of attending to art's form and sensuous surface — and introduces her concept of "Camp" to American criticism.
Books mentioned in Against Interpretation and Other Essays (69)
Saint Genet by Jean-Paul Sartre: Discussed at length in Sontag's own essay on Sartre's book.
Life Against Death by Norman O. Brown: “"Brown's Life Against Death" discussed as a real book in her essay on Norman O. Brown.”
The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud: “the excerpts from Nietzsche's The Antichrist and Freud's The Future of an Illusion”
Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre: “the sections on the body and on concrete relations with others of Sartre's Being and Nothingness”
King Lear by William Shakespeare: “If Gielgud's Hamlet was without thought or style, Brook's King Lear came laden with ideas.”
The Essays by Michel de Montaigne: “From Montaigne's Essays and Rousseau's Confessions through Stendhal's journals...”
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “From Montaigne's Essays and Rousseau's Confessions through Stendhal's journals...”
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky: “the two chapters 'Rebellion' and 'The Grand Inquisitor' from The Brothers Karamazov”
Poetics by Aristotle: “Ever since the enterprise of criticism began with Aristotle's Poetics...”
The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli: “The two greatest documents of this attitude are Montaigne's Essays and Machiavelli's The Prince”
The Rebel by Albert Camus: “The celebrated philosophical essays (The Myth of Sisyphus, The Rebel)...”
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka: “...with the ease and harmony of such equally ambitious works as Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Kafka's Metamorphosis.”
The Golden Ass by Apuleius: “Comic plots are stories either of conscious self-manipulation and role-playing (Lysistrata, The Golden Ass, Tartuffe)...”
Iliad by Homer: “By such standards, we appraise The Iliad, Aristophanes' plays...”
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus: “The celebrated philosophical essays (The Myth of Sisyphus, The Rebel)...”
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James: “the quality of excruciation in much of Henry James (for instance, The Europeans, The Awkward Age, The Wings of the Dove)”
Notebooks, 1935-1942 by Albert Camus: “In the Notebooks, 1935-1942, the first of three volumes to be published comprising the notebooks which Camus kept...”
Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry: “Think of the films of Ozu, Jarry's Ubu Roi, Nabokov's Lolita, Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers”
De Rerum Natura by Lucretius: “Not for nothing is Tristes Tropiques prefaced by a motto from Lucretius' De Rerum Natura.”
Hamlet by William Shakespeare: “If Gielgud's Hamlet was without thought or style, Brook's King Lear came laden with ideas.”
Happy Days by Samuel Beckett: “...Beckett is writing, in Waiting for Godot, Krapp's Last Tape, and Happy Days, a kind of comédie noire.”
Krapp's Last Tape by Samuel Beckett: “...Beckett is writing, in Waiting for Godot, Krapp's Last Tape, and Happy Days, a kind of comédie noire.”
Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett: “...Beckett is writing, in Waiting for Godot, Krapp's Last Tape, and Happy Days, a kind of comédie noire.”
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov: “Think of the films of Ozu, Jarry's Ubu Roi, Nabokov's Lolita, Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers”
Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs: “...a chamber concerto by Charles Wuoronin or Burrough's Naked Lunch...”
The Balcony by Jean Genet: “From Prospero to the Police Chief in Genet's The Balcony, the personages of metatheater are characters in search of an action.”
The Cenci by Percy Bysshe Shelley: “...the only stage production which Artaud personally supervised, of Shelley's The Cenci...”
The Clouds by Aristophanes: “...different examples of comedy as Aristophanes' The Clouds, Gulliver's Travels, Tex Avery cartoons, Candide...”
Typee by Herman Melville: “As in Melville's Typee, 'they all think the same.'”
Utopia by Thomas More: “In the classic models of Utopian thinking—Plato's Republic, Campanella's City of the Sun, More's Utopia, Swift's land of the Houyhnhnms...”
Tristes Tropiques by Claude Lévi-Strauss: “I mean the incomparable Tristes Tropiques, a book that became a bestseller when published in France in 1955...”
Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann: “Equally classic is the figure of the scientist as satanist (Doctor Faustus, and stories of Poe and Hawthorne).”
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri: “By such standards, we appraise The Iliad, ... the poetry of Donne, The Divine Comedy, Beethoven's quartets...”
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams: “Thus, in the notes that Elia Kazan published on his production of A Streetcar Named Desire...”
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: “(Candide, Buster Keaton, Gulliver, Don Quixote) playing strange roles which they assent to...”
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman: “Whitman, in the preface to the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass, expresses the disavowal of 'style'...”
Peyton Place by Grace Metalious: “The absence of this love is the reason why such kitsch items as Peyton Place (the book) and the Tishman Building aren't Camp.”
The Awkward Age by Henry James: “the quality of excruciation in much of Henry James (for instance, The Europeans, The Awkward Age, The Wings of the Dove)”
The Castle by Franz Kafka: “...in The Castle is trying to gain access to heaven, that Joseph K...”
The Crucible by Arthur Miller: “...in such plays as Waiting for Lefty, Watch on the Rhine, Tomorrow the World, Deep Are the Roots, The Crucible...”
The Europeans by Henry James: “the quality of excruciation in much of Henry James (for instance, The Europeans, The Awkward Age, The Wings of the Dove)”
The Stranger by Albert Camus: “Sartre has shown, in his excellent review of The Stranger, how the celebrated 'white style' of Camus' novel...”
The Tempest by William Shakespeare: “Most Elizabethan serious drama consists of failed tragedies (Lear, Doctor Faustus) or successful metaplays (Hamlet, The Tempest).”
The Theatre and Its Double by Antonin Artaud: “'No more masterpieces,' Artaud demanded in The Theatre and Its Double, the most daring and profound manifesto of the modern theater.”
The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth: “...Rolf Hochhuth's The Deputy fails because of its intellectual simplicity and artistic naïveté.”
Eros and Civilization by Herbert Marcuse: “Together with Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (1955), it represents a new seriousness about Freudian ideas...”
Marco Millions by Eugene O'Neill: “...just as belabored, trite, and dated in a few years as O'Neill's Marco Millions, the second play in the Lincoln Center Repertory...”
The Killer by Eugène Ionesco: “...the Bérenger plays—The Killer (1957), Rhinoceros (1960), and The Pedestrian of the Air (1962)”
Blues for Mister Charlie by James Baldwin: “...James Baldwin could, with more justice to the overt political message of his Blues for Mister Charlie...”
Among Women Only by Cesare Pavese: “the novels which have been translated and published here—The House on the Hill, The Moon and the Bonfires, Among Women Only, and The Devil in the Hills”
Gogol's Wife and Other Stories by Tommaso Landolfi: “a selection of nine of his short stories, entitled Gogol's Wife and Other Stories”
Primitive Society by Robert Lowie: “it was a reading of Lowie's Primitive Society in 1934 or 1935 which effected his conversion from philosophy to anthropology.”
Psychoanalysis and Religion by Erich Fromm: “Erich Fromm's Terry lectures, Psychoanalysis and Religion, with its distinction between 'humanistic'...religion”
The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud: “Like Montaigne's Essays and Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, it is an intellectual autobiography...”