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Against Interpretation and Other Essays
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
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Publisher's summary
Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and is a modern classic.
Originally published in 1966, it has never gone out of print and has influenced generations of readers all over the world.
It includes the famous essays "Notes on Camp" and "Against Interpretation," as well as, her impassioned discussions of Sartre, Camus, Simone Weil, Godard, Beckett, Levi-Strauss, science-fiction movies, psychoanalysis, and contemporary religious thought.
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Story
By early 1943, it had become increasingly clear the Allies would win the Second World War. Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic thought the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally prepared for their success. These Christian intellectuals - Jacques Maritain, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Simone Weil, among others - sought both to articulate a sober and reflective critique of their own culture and to outline a plan for the moral and spiritual regeneration of their countries in the post-war world.
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The Audible is a Train Wreck
- By John on 09-04-18
By: Alan Jacobs
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The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music
- By: Friedrich Nietzsche
- Narrated by: Duncan Steen
- Length: 6 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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One of Nietzsche’s earliest works, The Birth of Tragedy (1872) is a remarkable source of inspiration. It is here that the philosopher expresses his frustration with the contemporary world and urges man to embrace Dionysian energy once more. He refutes European culture since the time of Socrates, arguing that it is one-sidedly Apollonian and prevents man from living in optimistic harmony with the sufferings of life.
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The Apollonian vs The Dionysian
- By JCW on 02-05-18
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The Givenness of Things
- Essays
- By: Marilynne Robinson
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The spirit of our times can appear to be one of joyless urgency. As a culture we have become less interested in the exploration of the glorious mind, and more interested in creating and mastering technologies that will yield material well-being. But while cultural pessimism is always fashionable, there is still much to give us hope.
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Mostly thoughts on religious things
- By Adam Shields on 01-26-16
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The Long March
- How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America
- By: Roger Kimball
- Narrated by: Raymond Todd
- Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The architects of America's cultural revolution of the 1960s were Beat authors like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and celebrated figures like Norman Mailer, Timothy Leary, Eldridge Cleaver, and Susan Sontag. In examining the lives and works of those who spoke for the 1960s, Roger Kimball conceives a series of cautionary tales, an annotated guidebook of wrong turns, dead-ends, and blind alleys.
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The Long March
- By Suzanne on 05-16-06
By: Roger Kimball
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William Blake vs the World
- By: John Higgs
- Narrated by: John Higgs
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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A wild and unexpected journey through culture, science, philosophy, and religion to better understand the mercurial genius of William Blake.
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Best book ever
- By idamae on 11-04-22
By: John Higgs
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Culture and Imperialism
- By: Edward Said
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 19 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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A landmark work from the intellectually auspicious author of Orientalism, this book explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. This classic study, the direct successor to Said's main work, is read by Peter Ganim ( Orientalism).
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BRAVO, AUDIBLE!! WE NEED MORE SAID!! REAL BOOKS!!
- By AnthonyStevens on 02-27-11
By: Edward Said
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Martin Heidegger
- By: George Steiner
- Narrated by: Robert Blumenfeld
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
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With characteristic lucidity and style, Steiner makes Heidegger's immensely difficult body of work accessible to the general reader. In a new introduction, Steiner addresses language and philosophy and the rise of Nazism. "It would be hard to imagine a better introduction to the work of philosopher Martin Heidegger." (George Kateb, The New Republic)
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Fantastic - very approachable yet competent
- By Bob on 04-15-19
By: George Steiner
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Deep Thought
- 42 Fantastic Quotes That Define Philosphy
- By: Gary Cox
- Narrated by: Richard Mitchley
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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As Douglas Adams points out, if there is no final answer to the question "what is the meaning of life?" 42 is as good or bad an answer as any other. Indeed, 42 quotes might be even better! Gary Cox guides us through 42 of the most misunderstood, misquoted, provocative, and significant quotes in the history of philosophy, providing witty and compelling commentary along the way.
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Best philosophy intro ever
- By Fabian on 04-14-18
By: Gary Cox
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Jewish Comedy
- A Serious History
- By: Jeremy Dauber
- Narrated by: Jeremy Dauber
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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In a major work of scholarship both erudite and very funny, Jeremy Dauber traces the origins of Jewish comedy and its development from Biblical times to the age of Twitter. Organizing his book thematically into what he calls the seven strands of Jewish comedy - including the satirical, the witty, and the vulgar - Dauber explores the ways Jewish comedy has dealt with persecution, assimilation, and diaspora through the ages. He explains the rise and fall of popular comic archetypes such as the Jewish mother, the JAP, and the schlemiel and schlimazel.
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Not funny
- By supermantwo on 08-31-20
By: Jeremy Dauber
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The Hedgehog and the Fox (Second Edition)
- An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History
- By: Isaiah Berlin, Henry Hardy - editor, Michael Ignatieff - foreword
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 2 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Leo Tolstoy and the philosophy of history, the subject of the epilogue to War and Peace. Although there have been many interpretations of the adage, Berlin uses it to mark a fundamental distinction between human beings who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system.
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The Fox Who Tried To Be A Hedgehog
- By Rich S. on 12-14-21
By: Isaiah Berlin, and others
What listeners say about Against Interpretation and Other Essays
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Chris
- 01-23-23
Synesthesia at Its Most Structured
Each essay from Sontag builds on the last through harmonies, counterpoints, and ellipses into a melody of exposition. The goal?
Unify the logos, ethos, and pathos of art as a reflection of the human experience, so as to advocate for a modern theory of aesthetic appreciation. The conclusions Sontag draws inform everything from how artists should approach outlines of works not-yet-started to the value governments and corporations place on ouevres.
The voice talent / reading itself leaves a little to be desired but it's still overall good.
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- Brian Ward
- 10-17-24
The manner in which these essays are read does not truly emphasize the form: essays.
If you, like me, fell in love with Sontag’s work because of On Photography, do not go back and listen to these essays.
I felt like I was at a literary conference. And since she admits she even doesn’t agree with everything she wrote, and these essays are now 60 years old, the only way you should encounter this book is in text form if you are in a literary criticism class writing a paper summarizing criticism of criticism.
Also… the manner in which these essays are read does not emphasize the form: essay. It’s almost jarring to hear the narrator pronounce French authors or Italian authors as if she has no accent at all.
We all know Sontag is revered, and deservedly so, but as someone now retired, revisiting old haunts or selections I might have missed over the years, I was dissatisfied.
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- Dulce Mattos
- 08-14-19
Against interpretation, like, literally.
Sontag's ideas are way more spirituous than this interpretation by Tavia Gilbert. Not only that, but an additional detail: this narrator doesn't pronounce french properly and, since Sontag cites lots of french authors and ouvres, this fact takes me away from the listening every time the opportunity rises.
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11 people found this helpful
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- john burke
- 11-20-20
Excellent Essays Hurt By Labored Narrator
I just don't get this narrator. It's almost like she's trying to channel Susan Sontag but Sontag spoke in an assured, even tone.....This Tavia Gilbert makes her sound somehow snobbish and unsure of herself. She really clings to the sound ending a sentence....maybe this is for enunciation but comes across labored, irritating and untrue to Sontag's speaking style.
I've listened to Jennifer Van Dyck's reading on Sontag's journals and "On Photography". Audible PLEASE HAVE THESE RE-RECORDED with Jennifer Van Dyck.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Pinklotuspolo
- 02-28-22
Distracting Reader serious writing
Sontag is smart and her writing will get your gears turning. The French was difficult to understand which was annoying
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- Fiammetta Rey
- 02-26-22
Worthwhile as a historical document?
She wrote from a place of looking at a world where things were just starting to open up in certain ways, and her perspective a lot of the time seems to be “wait, is this really as open as you think it is? Is it really possible to live without those traditional restrictions, or were our ancestors right that those restrictions are hard-baked into the fabric of the universe?”
In a time some 50-60 years later where more things have opened up, but people — intellectually limited people who have never lived outside of America and Europe, never lived outside of the dominance of the tyranny of YHWH-worshippers — are still asking the same questions, doubting whether or not openness is really possible, these essays seem restrictive.
On the other hand, no one asks deep questions at all anymore. They just live their lives with a fake façade of openness when deep down, they’re terrified of anything outside of the cultural boundaries they’ve been taught.
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1 person found this helpful