Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism -- victimless collecting, as it were. . . in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage.
The writer is either a practising recluse or a delinquent, guilt-ridden one; or both. Usually both.
The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to "the serious." One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.
What is most beautiful in virile men is sometimes feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.
What pornographic literature does is precisely to drive a wedge between one's existence as a full human being and one's existence as a sexual being -- while in ordinary life a healthy person is one who prevents such a gap from opening up.
Research these websites for Susan Sontag
pictures, books, posters & more
Published Sources for Quotations Above:
F:
On Photography," "Melancholy Objects," 1977.
R:
When Writers Talk among Themselves," in "New York Times," (5 Jan 1986).
A:
Against Interpretation, "Notes on `Camp'," Note 41 (1966; first published 1964).
N:
Against Interpretation," in "Notes on 'Camp'," Note 9, 1964.
K:
The Pornographic Imagination," sct. 3, in "Partisan Review."
