Sontag has done an able job of editing [A Barthes Reader], and her introduction is thoughtful, an elegiac retrospective, what in the eighteenth century would have been called an éloge—a commemoration of the illustrious dead. This introduction to Barthes forms the concluding essay in her own selection, A Susan Sontag Reader…. It is quite instructive to read the Barthes and Sontag Readers in tandem; the real thing looks even more real beside the imitation.

Sontag's ability to stay one step ahead of Continental Thinking has earned her high marks in the world of intellectual journalism. She is always a half-step ahead of the fashion, with a knack for saying the outrageous thing—à la Barthes—but without the impishness and controlled ambivalence of her master. Where Sontag is correct, she is often sophomoric; where she is wrong, she is irritating and, frequently, pretentious. Her style reflects this pompousness...