It was from a weekly visit to the cinema that you learned (or tried to learn) how to strut, to smoke, to kiss, to fight, to grieve. Movies gave you tips about how to be attractive (...). But whatever you took home from the movies was only part of the larger experience of losing yourself in faces, in lives that were not yours - which is the more inclusive form of desire embodied in the movie experience. The strongest experience was simply to surrender to, to be transported by, what was on the screen

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Ellen Lee accused Sontag of plagiarism when Lee discovered at least twelve passages in In America that were similar to or copied from passages in four other books about Helena Modjeska without attribution. The last two novels were set in the past which Sontag said gave her greater freedom to write in the polyphonic voice. She elevated Camp to the status of recognition with her widely-read 1964 essay Notes on 'Camp' which accepted Art as including common absurd and burlesque themes.

". Sontag was active in writing and speaking about or travelling to areas of conflict including during the Vietnam War and the Siege of Sarajevo. Beginning with the publication of her 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp'" Sontag became an international cultural and intellectual celebrity.