Against Interpretation by Susan Sontag
Published 1966 · 80,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism, Nonfiction
How hard is Against Interpretation to read?
Against Interpretation scores 57 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 48 out of 100
- Intellectual, critical vocabulary. References to European philosophy and art.
- Sentence structure: 45 out of 100
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- Aesthetic theory and cultural criticism. Sustained engagement with abstract ideas.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Dense with references to film, philosophy, literature, and art.
- Narrative indirection: 25 out of 100
- Argumentative essays with bold, direct claims.
- Symbolic density: 25 out of 100
- Analytical rather than symbolic. Camp itself is a concept being analyzed.
- Ironic distance: 30 out of 100
- Sontag's authority creates distance, and her discussion of camp involves deliberate ironic awareness.
- Resolution withholding: 15 out of 100
- Each essay makes clear, provocative claims.
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- Individual essays, each self-contained. Varied in length and subject.
How Against Interpretation is regarded
Against Interpretation holds a literary regard score of 73 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.