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Under the Sign of Saturn

Essays

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Under the Sign of Saturn

By: Susan Sontag
Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
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About this listen

Sontag's most important critical writings from 1972 to 1980 are collected in Under the Sign of Saturn. One of America's leading essayists, Sontag's writings are commentaries on the relation between moral and aesthetic ideas, discussing the works of Antonin Artaud, Leni Riefenstahl, Elias Canetti, Walter Benjamin, and others. The collection includes a variety of her well-known essays.

In "Fascinating Fascism", Sontag eviscerates Leni Riefenstahl's attempts to rehabilitate her image after working for Adolf Hitler on propaganda films during World War II. "Approaching Artaud" reflects on the work and influence of French actor, director, and writer Antonin Artaud. The title essay is a study of the life and temperament of Walter Benjamin, who Sontag describes as a sad and lonesome man. The book also includes the essays "On Paul Goodman", "Syberberg's Hitler", "Remembering Barthes", and "Mind as Passion".

Susan Sontag's writings are famously full of intellectual range and depth, and are at turns exhilarating, ominous, disturbing, and beautiful. Under the Sign of Saturn manages to touch on all of these notes and more.

©1973, 1975, 1976, 1978, 1980 by Susan Sontag (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc. Art Celebrity Solar System Nonfiction Visual Art
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Nothing can really live up to the Against Interpretation collection of Sontag's essays, it seems - but there were some interesting ones here.

The piece on Leni Riefenstahl said little that's new (now or at the time, bar an impassioned please not to gloss over her Nazi past), but is a solid contribution to the (currently very contemporary) debate over whether art can be separated from problematic artist. Albeit in Riefenstahl's case the answer is pretty obvious...

Of the others, the title essay left me unengaged, the piece on Antonin Artaud convinced me life's too short for some artists, 'Syerberg's Hitler' surprisingly got me wanting to watch a 7-hour pretentious-sounding pseudo-documentary, her brief eulogy to Roland Barthes was both sweet and enlightening, and the final essays on Elais Canetti made me want to read this philosopher about whom I'd previously known nothing. So all in all, a success.

As with the other two Sontag essays collections I've listened to, the narrator is fine if gushing, but the lack of proper titles on the chapters - and lumping all the notes to every essay in a single chapter at the end - is unforgivable in a professional production.

Nothing mind-blowing, but all interesting

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