Landmark: Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2019

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lauren Elkin, Lisa Appignanesi and biographer Ben Moser debate Susan Sontag's life and ideas with presenter Laurence Scott, focusing in on her 1966 essay collection, which argued for a new way of approaching art and culture.

Ben Moser is the author of Sontag: Her life and work which is out now. Lauren Elkin teaches at the University of Liverpool and is the author of Flâneuse: Women Walk the City. She is researching Sontag's time in Sarajevo in 1993 when she staged Waiting for Godot during the Siege following the declaration of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s independence from Yugoslavia. Lisa Appignanesi is a Visiting Professor in the Department of English at King's College London and Chair of the Royal Society of Literature Council . Her books include Everday Madness, Simone De Beauvoir, Freud's Women.

You can hear more from Lisa including her BBC Radio 3 interview with Susan Sontag if you search for the Sunday Feature Afterwords: Susan Sontag https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00022p1

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.3	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's
0:27.5	out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.
0:32.4	This is the BBC.
0:37.1	Hello, I'm Lauren Scott.
0:38.8	Welcome to BBC Radio 3's Arts and Ideas discussion program, which brings together leading
0:43.7	artists, writers and thinkers in conversation and debate.
0:47.6	If you enjoy what you hear, do subscribe.
0:50.0	Search for the Arts and Ideas podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and while you're there, please rate and review us.
0:55.6	It'll help other people find us.
0:57.7	New York City in the early 60s.
1:00.1	It's hard to say those words without feeling a shiver of nostalgic glamour.
1:04.4	Think Bob Dylan arriving as an ingenue on a winter's day,
1:07.8	Joan Baez playing her first sold-out concert at Town Hall,
1:12.3	Andy Warhol's factory firing up its technicolour smokestacks. And into this capital of artistic experiment burst
1:18.0	an instant literary landmark, the publication of Susan Sontag's book of essays against interpretation
1:24.1	in 1966. So rich was its scope and so huge its impact,
1:29.5	the people looking back on the book decades later have felt compelled to ask,
1:33.4	what was that?
1:34.8	Here's a hapless questionnaire at a public event with Susan Sontag in 2001.
1:39.4	Against interpretation has been mentioned once tonight.
	...

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