On the other hand, Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade is a play that is a relentless assault of imagery provoking every possible interpretation.
Sontag sees uses of boredom which explore an opaque and hermetic view of life such as Leiris’ as “the most creative stylistic features of modern literature.” Manhood is a catalogue of his failures, inadequacies and humiliations told with fetishistic detail that manages to lull its reader into boredom. In her review of Michel Leiris’ Manhood, she is fascinated by the contrast between Leiris’ brilliance as an anthropologist and ethnographer and the deeply alienated and nihilistic quality of his autobiographical projects. She strives to look beyond meaning and find the future of where art will go through a more open-minded and polyamorous relationship with form. She passionately rejects the simplification of art to summed-up theories of what their content means. Sontag is drawn to artworks that you could obsessively interpret and analyze, but to her the key to appreciating them is by embracing their chaotic quality. She expects a lot from art and makes bold judgements that sometimes don’t feel like they align with her central arguments but that nonetheless fit with her intensive analysis of the artworks in question. Her essays have a refreshing messiness in that you often watch her experiment with her own ideas in real-time. Sontag is polemical with her opinions but, not always yet often, open-minded and forthright about her biases.
So what is this book like as an “experience”? For me it was like finding a friend as excited about literature as I am and then equally as opinionated about mediums that I’ve only had a peripheral interest in thus far. A work of art is a thing in the world, not just a text or commentary on the world. Art is not only about something it is something. However, maybe that’s precisely why I should write about this book in which Susan Sontag argues again and again against over-interpretation and for focusing primarily on an artwork’s aesthetics.Ī work of art encountered as a work of art is an experience, not a statement or an answer to a question. I have not read enough or explored enough art forms and see my thoughts as half-formed things. I feel inadequate to the task of writing about this book.
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