Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag (/snt/; January 16, 1933 December28, 2004) was anAmerican writer and lmmaker, teacherand political activist, publishing her rst major work, theessay "Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964. Her best known worksinclude On Photography, Against Interpretation, Styles ofRadical Will, The WayWe Live Now, Illness as Metaphor,Regarding the Pain of Others, The Volcano Lover and InAmerica.Sontag was active in writing and speaking about, or trav-elling to, areas of conict, including during the VietnamWar and the Siege of Sarajevo. She wrote extensivelyabout photography, culture and media, AIDS and illness,human rights, and communism and leftist ideology. TheNew York Review of Books called her one of the most in-uential critics of her generation.[2] However, her essaysand speeches sometimes drew criticism.[3]

1 Early life and educationSontag was born Susan Rosenblatt in New York City,the daughter of Mildred (ne Jacobson) and Jack Rosen-blatt, both Jews of Lithuanian[4] and Polish descent. Herfather managed a fur trading business in China, wherehe died of tuberculosis in 1939, when Susan was veyears old.[1] Seven years later, her mother married U.S.Army Captain Nathan Sontag. Susan and her sister, Ju-dith, were given their stepfathers surname, although henever adopted them formally.[1] Sontag did not have a re-ligious upbringing and claimed not to have entered a syn-agogue until her mid-twenties.[5] Remembering an un-happy childhood, with a cold, distant mother who wasalways away, Sontag lived in Long Island, New York,[1]then in Tucson, Arizona, and later in the San FernandoValley in Southern California, where she took refuge inbooks and graduated fromNorth Hollywood High Schoolat the age of 15. She began her undergraduate studiesat the University of California, Berkeley but transferredto the University of Chicago in admiration of its famedcore curriculum. At Chicago, she undertook studies inphilosophy, ancient history and literature alongside herother requirements. Leo Strauss, Joseph Schwab, Chris-tian Mackauer, Richard McKeon, Peter von Blancken-hagen and Kenneth Burke were among her lecturers. Shegraduated with an A.B.[6] While at Chicago, she becamebest friends with fellow student Mike Nichols.[7]

At 17, Sontag married writer Philip Rie, who was a so-ciology instructor at the University of Chicago, after aten-day courtship; the marriage lasted for eight years.[8]

While studying at Chicago, Sontag attended a summerschool taught by the Sociologist Hans Heinrich Gerth whobecame a friend and subsequently inuenced her studyof German thinkers.[9] Upon completing her Chicago de-gree, Sontag taught freshman English at the Universityof Connecticut for the 195253 academic year. Sheattended Harvard University for graduate school, ini-tially studying literature with Perry Miller and HarryLevin before moving into philosophy and theology underPaul Tillich, Jacob Taubes, Raphael Demos and MortonWhite.[10] After completing her Master of Arts in phi-losophy, she began doctoral research into metaphysics,ethics, Greek philosophy and Continental philosophy andtheology at Harvard.[11] The philosopher Herbert Mar-cuse lived with Sontag and Rie for a year while work-ing on his 1955 book Eros and Civilization.[12]:38 Sontagresearched and contributed to Ries 1959 study Freud:The Mind of the Moralist prior to their divorce in 1958.The couple had a son, David Rie, who later became hismothers editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, as well as awriter.Sontag was awarded an American Association of Uni-versity Women's fellowship for the 19571958 academicyear to St Annes College, Oxford, where she traveledwithout her husband and son.[13] There, she had classeswith Iris Murdoch, Stuart Hampshire, A. J. Ayer and H.L. A. Hart while also attending the B. Phil seminars ofJ. L. Austin and the lectures of Isaiah Berlin. Oxforddid not appeal to her, however, and she transferred afterMichaelmas term of 1957 to the University of Paris.[14]In Paris, Sontag socialized with expatriate artists andacademics including Allan Bloom, Jean Wahl, AlfredChester, Harriet Sohmers and Mara Irene Forns.[15]Sontag remarked that her time in Paris was, perhaps, themost important period of her life.[12]:5152 It certainly pro-vided the basis of her long intellectual and artistic as-sociation with the culture of France.[16] She moved toNew York in 1959 to live with Forns for the next sevenyears,[17] regaining custody of her son[13] and teaching atuniversities while her literary reputation grew.[12]:5354

1.1 Fiction

Sontags literary career began and ended with works ofction. While working on her ction, Sontag taught phi-losophy at Sarah Lawrence College and City Univer-sity of New York and the Philosophy of Religion withJacob Taubes, Susan Taubes, Theodor Gaster, and HansJonas, in the Religion Department at Columbia Univer-

1

2 2 ACTIVISM

sity from 1960 to 1964. Sontag held a writing fellowshipat Rutgers University for 1964 to 1965 before ending herrelationship with academia in favor of full-time freelancewriting.[12]:5657

At age 30, she published an experimental novel calledThe Benefactor (1963), following it four years later withDeath Kit (1967). Despite a relatively small output, Son-tag thought of herself principally as a novelist and writerof ction. Her short story "The Way We Live Now" waspublished to great acclaim on November 24, 1986 in TheNew Yorker. Written in an experimental narrative style,it remains a signicant text on the AIDS epidemic. Sheachieved late popular success as a best-selling novelistwith The Volcano Lover (1992). At age 67, Sontag pub-lished her nal novel In America (2000). The last twonovels were set in the past, which Sontag said gave hergreater freedom to write in the polyphonic voice.She wrote and directed four lms and also wrote severalplays, the most successful of which were Alice in Bed andLady from the Sea.

1.2 NonctionIt was through her essays that Sontag gained early fameand notoriety. Sontag wrote frequently about the inter-section of high and low art and expanded the dichotomyconcept of form and art in every medium. She elevatedcamp to the status of recognition with her widely read1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp', which accepted art as in-cluding common, absurd and burlesque themes.In 1977, Sontag published the series of essays On Photog-raphy. These essays are an exploration of photographs asa collection of the world, mainly by travelers or tourists,and the way we experience it. In the essays, she outlinedher theory of taking pictures as you travel:

The method especially appeals to peoplehandicapped by a ruthless work ethic Ger-mans, Japanese and Americans. Using a cam-era appeases the anxiety which the work drivenfeel about not working when they are on vaca-tion and supposed to be having fun. They havesomething to do that is like a friendly imitationof work: they can take pictures. (p. 10)

Sontag writes that the convenience of modern photogra-phy has created an overabundance of visual material, andjust about everything has been photographed.[18]:3 Thishas altered our expectations of what we have the right toview, want to view or should view. In teaching us a newvisual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notion ofwhat is worth looking at and what we have the right toobserve and has changed our viewing ethics.[18]:3 Pho-tographs have increased our access to knowledge and ex-periences of history and faraway places, but the imagesmay replace direct experience and limit reality.[18]:1024

She also states that photography desensitizes its audienceto horric human experiences, and children are exposedto experiences before they are ready for them.[18]:20

Sontag continued to theorize about the role of photogra-phy in real life in her essay Looking at War: Photogra-phys View of Devastation and Death, which appearedin the December 9, 2002 issue of The New Yorker. Thereshe concludes that the problem of our reliance on im-ages and especially photographic images is not that peo-ple remember through photographs but that they remem-ber only the photographs ... that the photographic imageeclipses other forms of understanding and remember-ing. ... To remember is, more and more, not to recall astory but to be able to call up a picture (p. 94).She became a role-model for many feminists and aspiringfemale writers during the 1960s and 1970s.[12]

2 Activism

The former Sarajevo newspaper building during the Siege ofSarajevo, when Sontag lived in the city

During 1989 Sontag was the President of PEN AmericanCenter, the main U.S. branch of the International PENwriters organization. After Iranian leader AyatollahKhomeini issued a fatwa death sentence against writerSalman Rushdie for blasphemy after the publication ofhis novel The Satanic Verses that year, Sontags uncom-promising support of Rushdie was crucial in rallyingAmerican writers to his cause.[19]

A few years later, during the Siege of Sarajevo, Son-

3tag gained attention for directing a production of SamuelBeckett'sWaiting for Godot in a candlelit Sarajevo theatrein the city, that KevinMyers in theDaily Telegraph calledmesmerisingly precious and hideously self-indulgent.Myers wrote, By my personal reckoning, the perfor-mance lasted as long as the siege itself. [20] However,her involvement with the city was well regarded by manyof its besieged residents:

To the people of Sarajevo, Ms. Sontag hasbecome a symbol, interviewed frequently bythe local newspapers and television, invited tospeak at gatherings everywhere, asked for auto-graphs on the street. After the opening perfor-mance of the play, the citys Mayor, MuhamedKresevljakovic, came onstage to declare her anhonorary citizen, the only foreigner other thanthe recently departed United Nations comman-der, Lieut. Gen. Phillippe Morillon, to be sonamed. It is for your bravery, in coming here,living here, and working with us, he said.[21]

3 CriticismSontag drew criticism for writing in 1967 in the PartisanReview that,

If America is the culmination of West-ern white civilization, as everyone from theLeft to the Right declares, then there must besomething terribly wrong with Western whitecivilization. This is a painful truth; few ofus want to go that far. The truth is thatMozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare,parliamentary government, baroque churches,Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant,Marx, Balanchine ballets, et al., don't redeemwhat this particular civilization has wroughtupon the world. The white race is the can-cer of human history; it is the white race andit aloneits ideologies and inventionswhicheradicates autonomous civilizations wherever itspreads, which has upset the ecological balanceof the planet, which now threatens the very ex-istence of life itself.[22]

According to journalist Mark M. Goldblatt, Sontag laterrecanted this statement, saying that it slandered cancerpatients,[23] though according to Eliot Weinberger, Shecame to regret that last phrase, and wrote a whole bookagainst the use of illness as metaphor.[24]

In a 1970 article titled America as a Gun Culture, thenoted historian Richard Hofstadter wrote:

Modern critics of our culture who, like Su-san Sontag, seem to know nothing of American

history, who regard the white race as a cancerand assert that the United States was foundedon a genocide, may fantasize that the Indi-ans fought according to the rules of the GenevaConvention. But in the tragic conict of whichthey were to be the chief victims, they were ca-pable of striking terrible blows.[25]

In Sontag, Bloody Sontag, an essay in her 1994 bookVamps & Tramps, Camille Paglia describes her initial ad-miration and subsequent disillusionment:

Sontags cool exile was a disaster for theAmerican womens movement. Only a womanof her prestige could have performed the nec-essary critique and debunking of the rstinstant-canon feminist screeds, such as thoseof Kate Millett or Sandra Gilbert and SusanGubar, whose middlebrowmediocrity crippledwomens studies from the start. No patriarchalvillains held Sontag back; her failures are herown.

Paglia mentions several criticisms of Sontag, includingHarold Bloom's comment on Paglias doctoral disserta-tion, of Mere Sontagisme!" This had become synony-mous with a shallow kind of hip posturing. Paglia alsodescribes Sontag as a sanctimonious moralist of the old-guard literary world, and tells of a visit by Sontag toBennington College, in which she arrived hours late, ig-nored the agreed-upon topic of the event, and made anincessant series of ridiculous demands. Similar behaviorwas reported when she staged her Godot; one observerrecalled, I have never seen anything as degrading andinsuerable as her conduct towards the Sarajevans. . . .[S]he never listened to any of them but only uttered lordlypronouncements as she held court in the Sarajevo Holi-day Inn, while outside scores daily died.[26] The literarycritic Terry Castle once wrote of clucking sympatheti-cally at her constant kvetching: about the stupidity andphilistinism of whatever local sap was paying for her lec-ture trip, how no one had yet appreciated the true worth ofher novel The Volcano Lover, how you couldnt nd a de-cent dry cleaner in downtown San Francisco etc, etc.[27]

Ellen Lee accused Sontag of plagiarism when Lee discov-ered at least twelve passages in In America that were simi-lar to, or copied from, passages in four other books aboutHelena Modjeska without attribution.[28][29] Sontag saidabout using the passages, All of us who deal with realcharacters in history transcribe and adopt original sourcesin the original domain. I've used these sources and I'vecompletely transformed them. Theres a larger argumentto be made that all of literature is a series of referencesand allusions.[30]

At a NewYork pro-Solidarity rally in 1982, Sontag statedthat people on the left, like herself, have willingly orunwillingly told a lot of lies.[31] She added that they:

4 5 WORKS

believed in, or at least applied, a doublestandard to the angelic language of Commu-nism.. Communism is FascismsuccessfulFascism, if you will. What we have called Fas-cism is, rather, the form of tyranny that can beoverthrownthat has, largely, failed. I repeat:not only is Fascism (and overt military rule) theprobable destiny of all Communist societiesespecially when their populations are movedto revoltbut Communism is in itself a vari-ant, the most successful variant, of Fascism.Fascism with a human face... Imagine, if youwill, someone who read only the Readers Di-gest between 1950 and 1970, and someone inthe same period who read only The Nationor [t]he New Statesman. Which reader wouldhave been better informed about the realitiesof Communism? The answer, I think, shouldgive us pause. Can it be that our enemies wereright?[31]

Sontags speech reportedly drew boos and shouts fromthe audience. The Nation published her speech, exclud-ing the passage comparing the magazine with ReadersDigest. Responses included accusations that she had be-trayed her ideals.[31]

Sontag received angry criticism for her remarks in TheNew Yorker (September 24, 2001) about the immedi-ate aftermath of the September 11th, 2001 attacks.[32] Inher commentary, she criticized U.S. public ocials andmedia commentators for trying to convince the Ameri-can public that everything is O.K. Specically, she ar-gued that the perpetrators were not cowards and that weshould acknowledge that this was not a 'cowardly' attackon 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world'but an attack on the worlds self-proclaimed superpower,undertaken as a consequence of specic American al-liances and actions.[33]

TomWolfe once dismissed Sontag as just another scrib-bler who spent her life signing up for protest meetings andlumbering to the podium encumbered by her prose style,which had a handicapped parking sticker valid at PartisanReview.[34]

4 Cultural referencesIn the lm Bull Durham, Kevin Costner says that hebelieves the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent,overrated crap.[35]

5 Works

5.1 Fiction (1963) The Benefactor ISBN 0-385-26710-X

(1967) Death Kit ISBN 0-312-42011-0

(1977) I, etcetera (Collection of short stories) ISBN0-374-17402-4

(1991) The Way We Live Now (short story) ISBN0-374-52305-3

(1992) The Volcano Lover ISBN 1-55800-818-7

(1999) In America ISBN 1-56895-898-6 win-ner of the 2000 U.S. National Book Award for Fic-tion[36]

5.2 Plays

The Way We Live Now (1990) about the AIDS epi-demic

A Parsifal (1991), a deconstruction inspired byRobert Wilson's 1991 staging of the Wagneropera[37]

Alice in Bed (1993), about 19th century intellectual,Alice James, who was conned to bed by illness[38]

Lady from the Sea, an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's1888 play of the same name, premiered in 1998 inItaly.[39] Sontag wrote an essay about it in 1999 inTheatre called Rewriting Lady from the Sea".[40]

5.3 Nonction

5.3.1 Collections of essays

(1966) Against Interpretation ISBN 0-385-26708-8(includes Notes on Camp)

(1969) Styles of Radical Will ISBN 0-312-42021-8

(1980) Under the Sign of Saturn ISBN 0-374-28076-2

(2001)Where the Stress Falls ISBN 0-374-28917-4

(2002) Regarding the Pain of Others ISBN 0-374-24858-3

(2007) At the Same Time: Essays & Speeches ISBN0-374-10072-1 (edited by Paolo Dilonardo andAnne Jump, with a foreword by David Rie)

Sontag also published nonction essays in The NewYorker, The New York Review of Books, Times LiterarySupplement, The Nation, Granta, Partisan Review and theLondon Review of Books.

55.3.2 Monographs

(1977) On Photography ISBN 0-374-22626-1 (1978) Illness as Metaphor ISBN 0-394-72844-0 (1988) AIDS and Its Metaphors (a continuation ofIllness as Metaphor) ISBN 0-374-10257-0

(2003) Regarding the Pain of Others ISBN 0-374-24858-3

5.4 Films (1969) Duett fr kannibaler (Duet for Cannibals) (1971) Broder Carl (Brother Carl) (1974) Promised Lands (1983) Unguided Tour AKA Letter from Venice

5.5 Other works (2002) Liner notes for the Patti Smith album Land (2004) Contribution of phrases to Fischerspooner'sthird album Odyssey

(2008) Reborn: Journals and Notebooks 19471963 (2012)AsConsciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Jour-nals and Notebooks, 19641980

6 Awards and honors 1978: National Book Critics Circle Award for OnPhotography

1990: MacArthur Fellowship 1992: Malaparte Prize, Italy 1999: Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Let-tres, France

2000: National Book Award for In America[36]

2001: Jerusalem Prize, awarded every two years toa writer whose work explores the freedom of the in-dividual in society.

2002: George Polk Award, for Cultural Criticismfor Looking at War, in The New Yorker

2003: Peace Prize of the German Book Trade(Friedenspreis des deutschen Buchhandels) duringthe Frankfurt Book Fair (Frankfurter Buchmesse).

2003: Prince of Asturias Award on Literature.

2004: Two days after her death, MuhidinHamamdzic, the mayor of Sarajevo announced thecity would name a street after her, calling her anauthor and a humanist who actively participated inthe creation of the history of Sarajevo and Bosnia.Theatre Square outside the National Theatre waspromptly proposed to be renamed Susan SontagTheatre Square.[41] It took 5 years, however, forthat tribute to become ocial.[42][43] On January 13,2010, the city of Sarajevo posted a plate with a newstreet name for Theater Square: Theater Square ofSusan Sontag.[42]

7 Personal lifeSontags mother died of lung cancer in Hawaii in 1986.[1]

Sontag had a close romantic relationship with photog-rapher Annie Leibovitz. They met in 1989, when bothhad already established notability in their careers. Lei-bovitz has suggested that Sontag mentored her and con-structively criticized her work. During Sontags lifetime,neither woman publicly disclosed whether the relation-ship was a friendship or romantic in nature. Newsweekin 2006 made reference to Leibovitzs decade-plus rela-tionship with Sontag, stating, The two rst met in thelate '80s, when Leibovitz photographed her for a bookjacket. They never lived together, though they each hadan apartment within view of the others.[44] Leibovitz,when interviewed for her 2006 book A PhotographersLife: 1990-2005, said the book told a number of sto-ries, and that with Susan, it was a love story.[45] WhileThe New York Times in 2009 referred to Sontag as Lei-bovitzs companion,[46] Leibovitz wrote in A Photog-raphers Life that, Words like 'companion' and 'partner'were not in our vocabulary. We were two people whohelped each other through our lives. The closest wordis still 'friend.'" [47] That same year, Leibovitz said thedescriptor lover was accurate.[48] She later reiterated,Call us 'lovers. I like 'lovers.' You know, 'lovers soundsromantic. I mean, I want to be perfectly clear. I loveSusan.[49]

Sontag died in New York City on 28 December2004, aged 71, from complications of myelodysplasticsyndrome which had evolved into acute myelogenousleukemia. She is buried in Paris at Cimetire du Mont-parnasse.[50] Her nal illness has been chronicled by herson, David Rie.[51]

7.1 Sexuality and relationships

Sontag became aware of her bisexuality during her earlyteens and at 15 wrote in her diary, I feel I have lesbiantendencies (how reluctantly I write this)". At 16, she hada sexual encounter with a woman: Perhaps I was drunk,after all, because it was so beautiful when H began mak-

6 10 NOTES

ing love to me...It had been 4:00 before we had gottento bed...I became fully conscious that I desired her, sheknew it, too.[52][53]

Sontag lived with 'H', the writer and model HarrietSohmers Zwerling whom she rst met at U. C. Berkeleyfrom 1958 to 1959. Afterwards, Sontag was the partnerof Mara Irene Forns, a Cuban-American avant gardeplaywright and director. Upon splitting with Fornes,she was involved with an Italian aristocrat, Carlotta DelPezzo, and the German academic Eva Kollisch.[54] Son-tag was romantically involved with the American artistsJasper Johns and Paul Thek.[55] During the early 1970s,Sontag lived with Nicole Stphane, a Rothschild bankingheiress turnedmovie actress,[56] and, later, the choreogra-pher Lucinda Childs.[57] She also had a relationship withthe writer Joseph Brodsky.[58] With Annie Leibovitz,Sontag maintained a relationship stretching from the later1980s until her nal years.[59]

In an interview in The Guardian in 2000, Sontag wasquite open about being bisexual: "'Shall I tell you aboutgetting older?', she says, and she is laughing. 'When youget older, 45 plus, men stop fancying you. Or put it an-other way, the men I fancy don't fancy me. I want ayoung man. I love beauty. So whats new?' She says shehas been in love seven times in her life. 'No, hang on,'she says. 'Actually, its nine. Five women, four men.'"[1]Many of Sontags obituaries failed to mention her signi-cant same-sex relationships, most notably that with AnnieLeibovitz. In response to this criticism, New York TimesPublic Editor, Daniel Okrent, defended the newspapersobituary, stating that at the time of Sontags death, a re-porter could make no independent verication of her ro-mantic relationship with Leibovitz (despite attempts to doso).[60] After Sontags death, Newsweek published an ar-ticle about Annie Leibovitz that made clear references toher decade-plus relationship with Sontag.[59]

Sontag was quoted by Editor-in-Chief Brendan Lemonof Out magazine as saying I grew up in a time whenthe modus operandi was the 'open secret'. I'm used tothat, and quite OK with it. Intellectually, I know why Ihaven't spoken more about my sexuality, but I do wonderif I haven't repressed something there to my detriment.Maybe I could have given comfort to some people if Ihad dealt with the subject of my private sexuality more,but its never been my prime mission to give comfort, un-less somebodys in drastic need. I'd rather give pleasure,or shake things up.

8 Digital archive

Sontag used a PowerBook 5300, a PowerMac G4, and aniBook. A digital archive of 17,198 of Sontags emails iskept by the U.C.L.A. Department of Special Collectionsat the Charles E. Young Research Library.[61] Her archiveand the eorts to make it publicly available while protect-

ing it from bit rot, are the subject of the book On Excess:Susan Sontags Born-Digital Archive, by Jeremy Schmidt& Jacquelyn Ardam.[62]

9 DocumentaryAdocumentary about Sontag, titledRegarding Susan Son-tag, premiered in 2014.[63] It was directed by NancyKates, and received the Special Jury Mention for BestDocumentary Feature at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festi-val.[63][64]

10 Notes[1] Finding fact from ction. London: The Guardian.

2000-05-27. Retrieved 2007-06-19.

[2] Susan Sontag, The New York Review of Books, accessedDecember 19, 2012

[3] https://books.google.com/books?id=Qc63EF-mVukC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22hooking+up%22+Tom+Wolfe&hl=en&sa=X&ei=GB1OVcb1G6bjsASJmoGABQ&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22who%20was%20this%20woman%22was%20this%20woman&f=false

[4] http://www.dw.de/susan-sontag-receives-german-peace-prize-criticizes-us/a-994715

[5] Susan Sontag | Jewish Womens Archive. Jwa.org. Re-trieved 2012-06-13.

[6] A Gluttonous Reader, Interview with M. McQuade inPoague, pp. 271278.

[7] Turow, Scott (16 May 2013). A Time When ThingsStarted in Chicago. The New York Times. Retrieved 19May 2013.

[8] Sontag, Susan. Reborn: Journals and Notebooks 19471963, ed. D. Rie, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, p.144.

[9] See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXJe3EcPo1gand http://newfoundpress.utk.edu//pubs/vidich/chp10.pdf.

[10] See Susan Sontag, 'Literature is Freedom' in At the SameTime, ed. P. Dilonardo and A. Jump, Farrar, Strausand Giroux, 2007, p.206 and Morton White, A Philoso-phers Story, Pennsylvania University Press, 1999, p. 148.See also Rollyson and Paddock, pp. 3940 and DanielHorowitz Consuming Pleasures: Intellectuals and Popu-lar Culture in the Postwar World, University of Pennsyl-vania, 2012, p. 314.

[11] See Rollyson and Paddock, p. 39; and J.McLaughlin 'Putting Her Body Into It' athttp://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/Post-Script/172833464.html.

7[12] Rollyson and Paddock.

[13] Sante, Luc. Sontag: The Precocious Years, SundayBook Review, The New York Times, January 29, 2009,accessed December 19, 2012

[14] See Morton White, A Philosophers Story, PennsylvaniaUniversity Press, 1999, p.148; and Rollyson and Paddock,pp. 4345

[15] Field, Edward. TheManWhoWouldMarry Susan Sontag,Wisconsin, 2005, pp. 158170; Rollyson and Paddock,pp. 4550; and Reborn: Journals and Notebooks 19471963, ed. D. Rie, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008, pp.188189.

[16] An Emigrant of Thought, interview with Jean-LouisServan-Schreiber, in Poague, pp. 143164

[17] Moore, Patrick. Susan Sontag and a Case of CuriousSilence, Los Angeles Times, January 4, 2005, accessedDecember 18, 2012

[18] Sontag, Susan, On Photography, 1977

[19] Hitchens, Christopher. Assassins of the Mind, VanityFair, February 2009, accessed December 18, 2012

[20] Personal View (January 2, 2005). I wish I had kickedSusan Sontag. London: Telegraph. Retrieved 2012-06-13.

[21] John F. Burns (August 19, 1993). To Sarajevo, WriterBrings Good Will and 'Godot'". New York Times. Re-trieved 2014-02-25.

[22] Sontag, Susan (1967). Whats Happening to America?(A Symposium)". Partisan Review 34 (1): 578.

[23] Goldblatt, Mark (January 3, 2005). Susan Sontag: Re-membering an intellectual heroine.. The American Spec-tator. American Spectator Foundation. Retrieved March17, 2013.

[24] Weinberger, Eliot (2007). Notes on Susan. The NewYork Review of Books 54 (13): 2729. Retrieved 27March 2014.

[25] Hofstadter, Richard: America as a Gun Culture. Ameri-can Heritage Magazine, October, 1970.

[26] Myers, Kevin (January 2, 2005). I wish I had kickedSusan Sontag. The Daily Telegraph (London).

[27] https://costelevision.wordpress.com/2015/03/23/david-tischllere-susan-sontag-new-york-review-of-books/

[28] Marsh B. (2007) Plagiarism: Alchemy and Remedy inHigher Education, SUNY Press.

[29] Kort C (2007) A to Z of American Women Writers, In-fobase Publishing.

[30] Carvajal, Doreen. (May 27, 2002) SoWhose Words AreThey? Susan Sontag Creates a Stir.NewYork Times BookReview.

[31] Susan Sontag Provokes Debate on Communism. TheNew York Times. 1982-02-27. Retrieved 2010-09-13.

[32] Novelist, Radical Susan Sontag, 71, Dies in New York,TheWashington Times, December 29, 2004, accessed De-cember 19, 2012

[33] Sontag, Susan (24 September 2001). The Talk of theTown. The New Yorker. Retrieved 27 February 2013.

[34] https://books.google.com/books?id=Qc63EF-mVukC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22hooking+up%22+tom+wolfe&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VWqTVb5Hhvf5Aa-egNAJ&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Sontag&f=false

[35] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094812/quotes

[36] National Book Awards 2000, National Book Founda-tion, with essays by Jessica Hicks and Elizabeth Yale fromthe Awards 60-year anniversary blog, accessed March 3,2012

[37] Sontag, Susan (1991). Halpern, Daniel, ed. "A Parsifal".Antaeus (New York: Ecco Press): 180185.

[38] Sontag, Susan (1993). Alice in Bed. New York: Farrar,Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374102739. OCLC28566109.

[39] Curty, Stefano. Sontag and Wilsons Lady from the SeaWorld Premieres in Italy, May 5, Playbill, May 5, 1998,accessed December 26, 2012

[40] Sontag, Susan (Summer 1999). Rewriting Lady from theSea". Theater (Duke University Press) 29 (1): 8991.

[41] accessmylibrary.com Sarajevo City Council accepted theproposal on January 27, 2005.

[42] Sarajevo Theater Square ocially renamed to TheaterSquare of Susan Sontag, sarajevo.co.ba

[43] Carter, Imogen (5April 2009). Desperately thanking Su-san. The Observer. Retrieved 30 January 2015.

[44] Cathleen McGuigan (October 2, 2006). Through HerLens. Newsweek. Archived from the original on Octo-ber 25, 2007. Retrieved July 19, 2007.

[45] Janny Scott (October 6, 2006). From Annie Leibovitz:Life, and Death, Examined. The New York Times. Re-trieved July 19, 2007.

[46] Salkin, Allen (July 31, 2009). For Annie Leibovitz, aFuzzy Financial Picture. The New York Times. RetrievedJune 17, 2014.

[47] Brockes, Emma. My time with Susan. Retrieved 17April 2013.

[48] Tom Ashbrook (October 17, 2006). On Point.Archived from the original on 10 July 2007. RetrievedJuly 19, 2007.

[49] Guthmann, Edward (November 1, 2006). Love, fam-ily, celebrity, grief -- Leibovitz puts her life on display inphoto memoir. The San Francisco Chronicle. RetrievedJuly 19, 2007.

[50] ndagrave.com. Retrieved 2007-06-19.

8 13 EXTERNAL LINKS

[51] Katie Roiphe (2008-02-03). Swimming in a Sea ofDeath: A Sons Memoir David Rie Book Review.The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-02-23.

[52] Susan Sontag: 'It was so beautiful when H began makinglove to me', Paul Bignell, The Independent on Sunday, 16November 2008

[53] Reborn: Early Diaries, 19471964, Penguin, January2009

[54] See Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh,p.262, 269.

[55] see http://www.full-stop.net/2012/04/09/features/essays/luban/the-passion-of-susan-sontag/ and PaulThek Artists Artist ed. H. Falckenberg.

[56] Leo Lerman, The Grand Surprise: The Journals of LeoLerman, NY: Knopf, 2007, page 413

[57] Susan Sontag (2006-09-10). On Self. The New YorkTimes Magazine. Retrieved 2008-02-23.

[58] See Sigrid Nunez, Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Son-tag, p.31.

[59] McGuigan, Cathleen. Through Her Lens, Newsweek, 2October 2006

[60] Michelangelo Signorile. Gay Abe, Sapphic Susan; Onthe diculties of outing the dead.. New York Press.

[61] In the Sontag archives by Sontags biographer BenjaminMoser in The New Yorker magazine, 30 January 2014

[62] On Excess: Susan Sontags Born-Digital Archive, byJeremy Schmidt & Jacquelyn Ardam, in the Los Ange-les Review of Books, 26 October 2014

[63] Los Angeles Times (8 December 2014). "'RegardingSusan Sontag' looks at a rock star of intellectuals. la-times.com.

[64] Here Are Your TFF 2014 Award Winners. April 24,2014. Retrieved August 31, 2014.

11 References Poague, Leland (ed.) Conversations with Susan Son-tag, University of Mississippi Press, 1995 ISBN 0-87805-833-8

Rollyson, Carl and Lisa Paddock, Susan Sontag: TheMaking of an Icon, W. W. Norton, 2000

12 Further reading Sayres, Sohnya. Susan Sontag: The Elegiac Mod-ernist ISBN 0-415-90031-X

Seligman, Craig. Sontag and Kael ISBN 1-58243-311-9.

The Din in the Head. Essays by Cynthia Ozick ISBN978-0-618-47050-1 See Forward: On Discord andDesire.

Swimming in a Sea of Death by David Rie Amem-oir about Susan Sontags death by her son.

Notes on Sontag by Phillip Lopate Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag by SigridNunez

McRobbie, Angela (22 January 2009). Susan Son-tag: holding herself to account. Open Democracy.

13 External links Susan Sontag, ocial website Edward Hirsch (Winter 1995). Susan Sontag, TheArt of Fiction No. 143. The Paris Review.

with Ramona Koval, Books andWriting,ABCRa-dio National, 30/1/2005

Susan Sontag and Richard Howard from TheWriter, The Work, a series sponsored by PEN andcurated by Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag wrote an essay: On American Lan-guage and Culture from PEN American Center

The Politics of Translation: Discussion, with panelmembers Susan Sontag, Esther Allen, Ammiel Al-calay, Michael Hofmann & Steve Wasserman, PENAmerican Center

Susan Sontag Photos by Mathieu Bourgois. The Friedenspreis acceptance speech (2003-10-12) Fascinating Fascism illustrated text of Sontags sem-inal 1974 article on Nazi lmmaker Leni Riefen-stahl's aesthetics, from Under the Sign of Saturn

Sontags comments in The New Yorker, September24, 2001 about the September 11th attack on theUnited States

Terry Castle, Desperately Seeking Susan, LondonReview of Books, March 2005

Sheelah Kolhatkar, Notes on camp Sontag NewYork Observer, January 8, 2005

Susan Sontag at the Internet Movie Database 'Susan Sontag: The Collector', by Daniel Mendel-sohn, The New Republic

A review of Reborn by James Patrick Appearances on C-SPAN

In Depth interviewwith Sontag, March 2, 2003

914 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses14.1 Text

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