I’ve been reading Susan Sontag’s Notes on “Camp” these past few weeks. I’ve really enjoyed slowly working my way through it, and taking down notes and interesting quotes from it. These are safely tucked away for now, but there was something interesting that happened, which I’d like to note –
Sontag starts off with –
Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. […]
A sensibility (as distinct from an idea) is one of the hardest things to talk about
Susan Sontag, Notes on “Camp”
When I started reading this essay, I had little idea of what Camp is. Since then, I’ve visited New York, been to the Met, and seen all the things that inspired these thoughts, and things around them.
But to me, writing is the greatest tool humans have ever conceived, and the mark of a great writer is that by the time they’re done telling you about their ideas, you believe them and adopt them.
This is my last note on the essay, made today –
I love this idea. So much has been written about our human history, but the color gets lost almost instantly. The sensibility which informs the era being written about is the most difficult thing to capture, and thus the most valuable thing.
Nitin Khanna
As soon as I wrote it down, I realized that I was echoing an idea I had read three weeks ago from these very pages. That I have wholly adopted the idea Sontag presented, and that it is a part of my thinking is a testament to how powerful a tool writing is.