Tradução do conto “Unguided Tour”, de Susan Sontag

Abstract

One of the lesser-known facets of the kaleidoscopic Susan Sontag, which has already been called the “total intellectual”, is that of short story writer. Famous in American literary journalism, as an essayist in seminal works, Susan Sontag remains unpublished in Brazil as a short story writer. The purpose of this paper is to present the extreme opposite of the rationality applied to her essays. As in a spin in the kaleidoscope, her controversial and troubled personal life emerges, mirrored in the short story now entitled Turismo sem Guia, originally Unguided Tour, found by chance in a publication by Granta Magazine in 1994. The translation seeks to provide the reader with an aesthetic experience similar to that of the reader of the original. It was necessary to disassemble “Unguided Tour”, as suggested by Derrida in his proposal for “Deconstruction”, to fragment it to identify its specificities, such as the concealment of the gender of characters, descriptions of scenes from the past, mentions of ancient professions, biblical references and other works, and recompose it, with all its polysemy. May this tour be pleasant for those who embark on this experience of Turismo sem Guia.