David Annand
The Ecstatic Truth
In her seminal essay ‘Against Interpretation’, Susan Sontag famously argued that ‘in place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art’. It was a mistake, she claimed, to attempt to reduce a work to a single, stable reading, as we have with, say, Animal Farm, the characters of which are generally taken to represent the major players in the early Soviet Union. Such a framing prevents people from experiencing a piece of art for themselves, leading them too narrowly towards the intellectual ‘content’ of the work and away from its sensuousness, its magic.
Sontag’s essay is a crutch for readers of The Flame Alphabet. Settling on a single reading of it would be next to impossible, such are its suggestive possibilities. It seemed to me, at different points, to be about the Jewish pursuit of the ineffable, the impossible demands of the nuclear
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Rivalries are intense and dangerous, and someone has to die.'
@NJCooper_crime on new thrillers by @HenryCPorter, @k_faulkner, @annafbailey, @mserinkelly, @JoelDicker, @AlanJParks, @whartonswords and more.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/april-2021-crime-round-up
This spring, give the gift of reading.
Give a friend a gift subscription to Literary Review for only £33.50.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/spring21/
'It’s long been known that there is an optimum reproductive window and that women enjoy a considerably shorter one than men. For both sexes this window is opening and closing earlier than it used to.' (£)
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-end-of-babies