The novel prepared way for Sontag's essays about art - she stated that people should not attempt to find the 'meaning' in a work of art but experience it as a thing in itself. On the bohemian New York scene of the early sixties, Sontag swiftly acquired a reputation as the radical-liberal American woman, who had not only deep knowledge ancient and modern European culture, but could also reinterpret it from the American point of view. A work of art is a thing in the world, not just text or commentary on the world. Rejecting interpretation, Sontag advocated what she called 'transparency', which means 'experiencing the luminousness of thing in itself, of things being what they are'. The 'meaning' of art lies in the experiencing both style and content together without analysis.
Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.
Sontag developed further the concept of 'transparency'. When anything can be photographed and photography has destroyed the boundaries and definitions of art, a viewer can approach a photograph freely with no expectations of discovering what it means. Sontag's point was that although illness is used often punitatively as a figure or metaphor, the most truthful way is to resist such metaphoric thinking. If consistency is truly the hobgoblin of little minds, Sontag's mind must be very large, for she has never been stopped by her own last pronouncement. But whatever the position or wherever the situation, Sontag has managed to hold the limelight as few of her kind have done.