Under the Sign of Saturn — Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag
Farrar, Straus and Giroux · New York · 1980
First Edition · First Printing

The Book:

The first edition, first printing of Susan Sontag's Under the Sign of Saturn, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1980. This collection of seven essays examines the relationship between aesthetics, morality, intellectual life, and political power, including Sontag's influential 1975 essay “Fascinating Fascism,” which challenged the rehabilitation of Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Original quarter red cloth over dark gray paper-covered boards, with silver spine lettering and blind-stamped front-board monogram. Retains the original unclipped $10.95 dust jacket designed by Constance Fogler.

Condition:

Near Fine in a Near Fine original dust jacket. Publisher's binding remains clean and sound, with bright silver spine lettering, well-preserved boards, and clean interior pages. Original illustrated jacket retains strong color, complete front and rear panels, and the unclipped $10.95 publisher's price, with light uneven age toning and minor handling wear at the extremities. No significant tears, chips, paper loss, structural defects, or restoration observed.

Story Of The Book

Fascism doesn't always announce itself with jackboots and swastikas. Sometimes it arrives disguised as beauty.

Susan Sontag understood that authoritarianism's appeal wasn't confined to its political arguments. It could survive in photographs, films, fantasies, and the seductive imagery of power.

In her influential essay “Fascinating Fascism,” Sontag confronted the rehabilitation of Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, questioning how extraordinary artistic achievement could make the visual language of a murderous ideology appear magnificent.

Published in 1980, Under the Sign of Saturn brought that argument together with Sontag's examinations of art, intellectual life, and the uneasy relationship between aesthetics and morality. She challenged readers to confront an uncomfortable possibility: that we can recognize evil in history while continuing to admire the images that helped make it desirable.

Authoritarianism doesn't need us to believe its lies if it can persuade us to fall in love with its beauty.

Why It's In The Collection

Under the Sign of Saturn belongs in Consigned to Darkness because authoritarianism doesn't survive through political doctrine alone. Its imagery, aesthetics, and cultural mythology can remain influential long after the regimes that created them have disappeared.

Sontag's examination of Leni Riefenstahl is especially significant because it asks whether artistic achievement can be separated from the political purposes it once served. Riefenstahl's films helped construct an idealized visual mythology of Nazi power, and their subsequent rehabilitation raised questions about the relationship between artistic admiration and historical responsibility.

The book also provides an important intellectual counterpoint to the collection's counter-thesis objects. Where some publications preserve ideas that helped justify or sustain authoritarian power, Sontag examines how those ideas can remain attractive through culture and memory.

This particular 1980 first printing preserves the original book publication of Sontag's collected arguments while debates over Riefenstahl's rehabilitation were still unfolding. It is a contemporary intervention in the struggle over how societies remember, interpret, and sometimes romanticize their authoritarian pasts.

The danger isn't simply that people forget what authoritarianism did. It's that they may remember its beauty more vividly than its victims.

Collection Categories: Anti-Authoritarianism · Anti-Totalitarianism · Political History · Literature · Free Expression · Publication-Event Object

Authentication Evidence

• Original title page identifies Under the Sign of Saturn by Susan Sontag.

• Title page identifies Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, as publisher.

• Copyright page explicitly states “First printing, 1980,” confirming first-printing status.

• Copyright page records copyrights dated 1972, 1973, 1975, 1976, 1978, and 1980, corresponding to the essays collected in the volume.

• Copyright page identifies the original publication of several essays in The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker.

• Copyright page identifies McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., Toronto, as the Canadian publishing partner.

• Library of Congress cataloging information identifies Susan Sontag as author and records ISBN 0-374-28076-2.

• Original publisher's quarter red cloth over dark gray paper-covered boards retained.

• Original silver-stamped spine lettering and blind-stamped front-board monogram present.

• Original Farrar, Straus and Giroux dust jacket retained.

• Front jacket flap retains the original unclipped $10.95 publisher's price.

• Jacket design credited to Constance Fogler on the rear flap.

• Original jacket typography, black-and-red spine lettering, and illustrated front and rear panels correspond to documented first-edition examples.

• Rear jacket flap retains the publisher's original New York address and ISBN 0-374-28076-2.

• Independent ABAA-affiliated dealer descriptions confirm the first-edition configuration, including the $10.95 dust jacket and publisher's binding.

• No later-printing statement, revised publisher imprint, book-club designation, or facsimile characteristics observed.

• The explicit first-printing statement, original publisher's binding, and correctly priced dust jacket establish the First Edition · First Printing.