[The following excerpt is taken from an essay originally published in The New Republic, May 3, 1969.]

That Susan Sontag is philosophically oriented and has something of a metaphysical impulse to her thinking … is among the reasons why I think her one of the most interesting and valuable critics we possess, a writer from whom it's continually possible to learn, even when you're most dissatisfied with what she's saying, or perhaps especially at those times. For the past several years she has been the chief voice in America of one main tradition of French criticism, which is one of the reasons, I'm convinced, why she is disliked, where she's disliked, with such ferocity and xenophobic scorn. (p. 30)

When she said in the preface to her first book of essays and reviews [Against Interpretation] that "what I have been writing is not criticism at all, strictly speaking, but case studies for...