Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview
  • Under the Sign of Saturn

  • Essays
  • By: Susan Sontag
  • Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
  • Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (4 ratings)

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Under the Sign of Saturn

By: Susan Sontag
Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

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.

©2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc. (P)2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc.
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2
activate_samplebutton_t1

Listeners also enjoyed...

Where the Stress Falls cover art
Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors cover art
Styles of Radical Will cover art
The Volcano Lover cover art
On Photography cover art
Autobiography cover art
Against Interpretation and Other Essays cover art
Encounter cover art
Feeling Jewish (A Book for Just About Anyone) cover art
How to Suppress Women's Writing cover art
Democracy, Culture and the Voice of Poetry cover art
The Curtain cover art
The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature cover art
Testaments Betrayed cover art
Defiant Joy cover art
Legendary Philosophers: The Life and Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche cover art

What listeners say about Under the Sign of Saturn

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    2
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Nothing mind-blowing, but all interesting

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.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!