Although Susan Sontag is best known as a critic, she has more than once expressed regret for having devoted so much time to having written the essays that brought her renown. As she once explained to reporter Leticia Kent, "a couple of things you do get singled out as captions, as handles, as labels--and they stand, in a way, for your whole work.... it's somewhat of a burden to be thought of primarily as an essayist" (New York Times, 11 October 1970). Asked in the same interview about two of her well-known critical works, Against Interpretation (1966) and Styles of Radical Will (1969), Sontag remarked, "They don't interest me at all. You see, I don't love my work. I like it.... I'm interested in leaving my past work behind."

But the extent to which her critical essays have influenced and crystallized contemporary cultural paradigms prevents Sontag's readers from sharing her attitude toward...