Dear Mother, and to a lesser extent Father,
Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility — unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but hardly identical with it — that goes by the name of Camp Kenwood at Winnipesaukee.
To snare a sensibility in words, especially one that is alive and powerful and swarming with first-summer city kids, one must be tentative and nimble. The form of jottings, rather than an essay (with its claim to a linear, consecutive argument), seemed more appropriate for getting down something of this particular fugitive sensibility. It’s embarrassing to be solemn and treatise-like about Camp Kenwood. How can a piece of writing capture the spirit of summer camp? How can, to put it in terms you will understand, an indoor kid write about the most wholly outdoors of activities, namely Camp?
Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation — not judgment. Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy. There is pudding with almost every meal (rice pudding at breakfast). We are not permitted to leave the table without cleaning our pudding cups and singing our respective cabin’s anthem with the greatest show of enthusiasm one can muster at six-thirty AM in New Hampshire. It only seems like malice, cynicism. (Or, if it is cynicism, it’s not a ruthless but a sweet cynicism.) Mother, I have been changing my socks nightly, I can assure you. Camp taste doesn’t propose that it is in bad taste to be serious; it doesn’t sneer at someone who succeeds in being seriously dramatic. What it does is to find the success in certain passionate failures. This is why I refuse to consider my one-woman performance of Death Comes For The Archbishop at last Friday night’s talent show a failure — I was able to wrest a certain sweet dignity from it, and in that sense I was a success.
Camp taste is a kind of love, love for human nature. It relishes, rather than judges, the little triumphs and awkward intensities of “character.” I am making friends here, and no longer wish to come home; several of the girls in Bunk Seven have tastes and interests not altogether foreign to my own. They understand the polyphonic voice and are not altogether lost to my theories on Heidegger. Camp taste identifies with what it is enjoying. People who share this sensibility are not laughing at the thing they label as “a camp,” they’re enjoying it. Camp is a tender feeling. In this respect it is altogether unlike P.S. 119. My camp friends tell me they will write to me during the school year. I wonder.
The way we live now is as follows: reveille at six, breakfast at six-fifteen, morning activity time from seven to nine-thirty, free swim from nine-thirty to ten, bunk inspection from ten to ten-thirty, free play from ten-thirty to noon, lunch at noon, ropes course or guided hikes at one, quiet time from three to four, arts and crafts hour until five (“One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art,” Mr. Kittridge, the craft director, is fond of reminding us), dinner at five-thirty, evening entertainment (skits, singalongs, etcetera) from six-thirty til eight, lights out at nine-thirty.
Not only is there a Camp vision, a Camp way of looking at things; Camp is as well a quality discoverable in objects and the behavior of persons. There are Camp and Non-Camp ways of behaving. Crying over a letter from home is distinctly Non-Camp. Sharing any baked goods found in a care package is Camp. Jumping the Bridge portion of the ropes course without a harness is Camp. Not having a date to the talent show is Not Camp. There are “campy” movies, clothes (thank you for sending me another pair of denim shorts; my usual severe all-black ensemble has served only to make me an object of fun and I have not had occasion to wear my cape even once), furniture, popular songs (have you heard the one about the little lady from Nantucket?), novels, people, buildings (particularly the Game Equipment Hut)…This distinction is important. True, the Camp eye has the power to transform experience. But not everything can be seen as Camp. My bunkmate Rachel, for example. She is hopeless, and I hate her. I wish very much I were bunkmates with Denise, who brought seven different colors of lipgloss with her and is the most popular girl in the cabin.
Random examples of items which are part of the canon of Camp:
Amateur astronomy
Having a crush on Terrance, the goyishe swimming instructor
Cutting out the sides of your camp t-shirt and then tying up the cut ends into little ribbons such that part of your midsection is visible to the naked eye
Athletic socks (no frills)
Getting a sunburn on your first day
Capture the Flag (the actual capturing of the flag is of little importance)
Bellini’s operas
Visconti’s direction of Salome and ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore
the old Flash Gordon comics
Running out of batteries for your flashlight because you stayed up so late talking to the other girls after Counselor Debbie snuck out to visit her boyfriend across the lake
Swan Lake
I have no pictures to send you. Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures. You will have to take me at my word when I say I am getting plenty of sun and fresh air and have successfully completed the swim test.
I have not yet jumped off onto the Blob. I have yet to see a convincing argument for making the leap. Time, that old tattle-tale, will tell.
Best,
Your daughter, Susan Sontag
P.S. The end-of-summer bus arrives at the station at 7 PM next Tuesday night. Please don’t embarrass me in front of my friends.
Tags: I’M SO SORRY, notes on camp, susan sontag, the great outdoors
I was CACKLING at the first line. I haven’t even finished reading it, but it’s already brilliant.
I stopped reading to better appreciate that line. Brilliant.
I deeply hope that this is the first of a very long running series.
I am imagining the great options– I mean, maybe all future campers will be at Camp Kenwood. (and then when, eventually, some group of Toasties creates a week-long Adult Summer Camp Vacation thing where we cackle around the campfire, roasting marshmallows as we imagine roasting the menfolk instead, we will have an obvious name choice.) Or perhaps each camper is different, some writing from Boy Scout Camp, some particularly tender souls writing to their parents, plaintively, from day camp…..
I mean, how can I do any more? Susan LITERALLY WROTE “NOTES ON CAMP”
Well, sure, you’ve got less to go on with ANYONE ELSE. It certainly won’t be exactly the same. But don’t you want to know about how Ayn Rand felt about gluing pasta to pieces of paper? Don’t you want to know about how Eleanor Roosevelt felt about the weird stuff that clings to the bottom of ponds? How Gertrude Stein thought about riding in a school bus with sandy feet inside sneakers?
And when I say “Don’t you want to know”, what I really mean is “I’d like you to tell me about”.
Then again, I’m a little hung up on camp– I met my life partner at camp, when I was eight, although we didn’t get together until after college.
Camp love stories are my favorite.
Alternatively, I’m sure there are similar works that can be adapted in a similar fashion. Walden, maybe? This is surprisingly difficult for me to furtively google while at work, because Elie Wiesel would NOT be a good choice here. But SummerCampCulture.com (omg, that’s a thing!?) suggests that, among others, Margaret Atwood and Noam Chomsky went to camp, and I stopped after the C’s, so clearly there have to be other things I’m not thinking of.
Please do all of Susan Sontag.
“Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun.”
STOP KNOWING MY ANXIETIES, SUSAN SONTAG, OR I’LL HANG YOUR UNDERWEAR FROM THE FLAG POLE.
Please to Ayn Rand next Please do Ayn Rand next Please do Ayn Rand next.
This is glorious.
I also just remembered that I brought Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex” with me to summer camp when I was 12. I was an odd child.
Many of us here at The Toast were odd children. We like you just the way you are.
Awwww!! (basks)
THIS IS A GODDAMN TREASURE.
I’m just going to stop reading now, Mallory. There’s nothing more to read. I’ll be replacing my subscription to Vanity Fair with this.
Allan Sherman’s letter from camp now comes in at a distant second place.
I want Sontag to write ‘Notes on Sherman at Camp.’
This is one of the best things I’ve ever seen. I don’t even know what to say; this is perfection.
Susan Sontag would have loved my Dad’s socialist Labor Zionist camp.
Susan Sontag would have loved my Dad's socialist Labor Zionist camp.
The list of the canon of Camp made me sporfle, especially this bit:
Athletic socks (no frills)
Getting a sunburn on your first day
Capture the Flag (the actual capturing of the flag is of little importance)
Bellini’s operas
Visconti’s direction of Salome and ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore
Suddenly I’m very sad about never having been to sleepaway camp as a child. Can we have a Toastie Summer Camp someday? New Hampshire and rice pudding for breakfast and guided hikes and arts and crafts hour and all. And if there are also Bellini operas, ALL THE BETTER.
A Toastie Summer Camp is everything I never knew I wanted.
I think I would plan a cross-hemispherical trip to attend something so wonderful.
I’ll be there!! I have operas!
Clicked on this at work and let out a bark of surprised and amazed laughter.
Then continued to giggle for a good ten minutes.
Had jaw clenched all day from dealing with inanity and this piece fixed that.
So, double thank you.
ps- she didn’t wear her cape for the one-woman show? Cather DEMANDS a cape, ah the follies of youth.
I just want to mention that I actually went to Camp Ken-Wood. It was an all girls camp. We enjoyed the following regularly:
Having a crush on Terrance, the goyishe swimming instructor
Cutting out the sides of your camp t-shirt and then tying up the cut ends into little ribbons such that part of your midsection is visible to the naked eye
Athletic socks (no frills)
However our brother camp’s bunks were named after birds, so our amateur science was restricted to ornithology.
A Toastie Summer Camp is everything I never knew I wanted.