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Susan Sontag - reading/understanding tips?
Hi all,
I've been getting into Susan Sontag's "On Photography" essay collection, and while I feel like I get the general gist of what she's saying, I'm having difficulty understanding a lot of what she's saying.
For example, in her "Melancholy Objects" essay, she says:
>The taste for quotations \[...\] is a Surrealist taste. Thus, Walter Benjamin - whose Surrealist sensibility is the most profound of anyone's on record - was a passionate collector of quotations. \[...\] For it was Benjamin's conviction that reality itself invited - and vindicated - the once heedless, inevitably destructive ministrations of the collector. In a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage."
Like... I'm trying to break this down into smaller chunks and tackle each one, but ultimately so much of her writing feels really dense to me.
It's hard to not feel stupid or down on myself. What tools/etc do you recommend for parsing through her text, and these types of literature in general?
Any help is greatly appreciated!
#entertainment
Hi all,
I've been getting into Susan Sontag's "On Photography" essay collection, and while I feel like I get the general gist of what she's saying, I'm having difficulty understanding a lot of what she's saying.
For example, in her "Melancholy Objects" essay, she says:
>The taste for quotations \[...\] is a Surrealist taste. Thus, Walter Benjamin - whose Surrealist sensibility is the most profound of anyone's on record - was a passionate collector of quotations. \[...\] For it was Benjamin's conviction that reality itself invited - and vindicated - the once heedless, inevitably destructive ministrations of the collector. In a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage."
Like... I'm trying to break this down into smaller chunks and tackle each one, but ultimately so much of her writing feels really dense to me.
It's hard to not feel stupid or down on myself. What tools/etc do you recommend for parsing through her text, and these types of literature in general?
Any help is greatly appreciated!
#entertainment
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