Word: essays
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...while briskly patrolling the outer edges of modernity in the early 1960s that Sontag became suddenly, improbably famous, for her essay "Notes on 'Camp,' " a meticulous exertion of reason applied to an apparently weightless topic: the enthusiasm for silly extravagance, for the likes of Busby Berkeley and Mae West. "Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style," she wrote. But more than that, "It incarnates a victory of 'style' over 'content,' 'aesthetics' over 'morality,' of irony over tragedy...
...taking seriously a taste that valued aesthetics over morality, Sontag offended American critics trained to sort through works of art for their moral messages. So be it -- they were the ones she had in mind when, in another famous essay, she declared herself "against interpretation." In her view, interpretation had become a means to reduce unruly art and literature to its manageable "content," a way of rendering art's raw power more digestible. She wanted more attention paid to art's sensual capabilities, to the way it works upon consciousness through the imprint of its form and surfaces...
...Sontag is concerned, her positions have been parodied. She winces at being pegged as a reckless advocate of writers at the edge of madness or extremity. Her essays, she says, give "a skewed notion of my taste" because she only discussed figures about whom she felt more needed to be said. "And the last thing in the world that I am is anti-intellectual. Even in the most high-spirited, somewhat simplifying formulations in some of those essays -- after all, I was in my 20s and full of combative spirit -- I was defending a much more serious approach...
Several high school and college writers were included in the journal, including Christian Neira '91 and Concord high school student Imani Perry. Perry wrote an essay on the differences between private and public secondary school education, the former of which she sees as learning how to conceptualize, the latter a matter of "making things seem correct...
...important battleground. -- Nervous and overprogrammed, Dan Quayle was overmastered by Lloyd Bentsen. -- The electoral- vote map favors Bush. -- Two striking stories from suburban Chicago show racism' s lingering brutality in America. -- Why the U. S. is losing the trade war and what can be done about it -- a campaign essay...