SOURCE: "The Critic as Novelist," in Commentary, Vol. 94, No. 5, November, 1992, pp. 62-4.

In the following review, Toynton argues that The Volcano Lover leaves readers with Sontag's opinions but not with an understanding of the characters.

Susan Sontag arrived at her present intellectual eminence with the publication of her first collection of essays, Against Interpretation (1966), a consideration of such chic cultural phenomena as happenings, the nouveau roman, French movies, and camp. In the title essay of that book, she argued for a radical new approach to art, one in which the emphasis would be on form rather than content. Interpretation, she declared, was "reactionary, impertinent, cowardly, stifling" (note the list of adjectives, a characteristic mannerism); the important thing was to "recover our senses … to see more, to hear more, to feel more."

At the time, this essay, like the book as a whole, was seen as a liberating force...