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Missing image Susansontag.gif Susan Sontag Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933–December 28, 2004) was a well-known American essayist, novelist, left-leaning intellectual and controversial activist.
LifeSontag was born Susan Rosenblatt in New York City, the daughter of Jack Rosenblatt and his wife, the former Mildred Jacobsen. After Jack, a Jewish fur trader, died in China, Susan's mother married Nathan Sontag, and Susan and her sister Judith took their stepfather's surname. Sontag was a third-generation Lithuanian-American. Sontag grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and attended high school in Los Angeles. She skipped three grades and graduated from high school at 15. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the College of the University of Chicago and did graduate work in philosophy, literature, and theology at Harvard and St Anne's College, Oxford. At the age of 17 Sontag married Philip Rieff, following a ten-day courtship. The couple had a son, David Rieff, who later became his mother's editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux and, subsequently, a writer. Sontag and Rieff were married for eight years and divorced in 1958. In the late 1980s Sontag began a relationship with photographer Annie Leibovitz which lasted until 2003 (as reported in the New York Post, February 14, 2003). Sontag also had committed relationships with choreographer Lucinda Childs and other women, and in 2000 Ms. Sontag was quoted in a profile of her by Editor-In-Chief Brendan Lemon of Out magazine as saying ""I grew up in a time when the modus operandi was the 'open secret.' I'm used to that, and quite OK with it. Intellectually, I know why I haven't spoken more about my sexuality, but I do wonder if I haven't repressed something there to my detriment. ... Maybe I could have given comfort to some people if I had dealt with the subject of my private sexuality more, but it's never been my prime mission to give comfort, unless somebody's in drastic need. I'd rather give pleasure, or shake things up." In an interview in the Guardian (U.K.), Sontag disputed a romantic involvement with Annie Liebovitz [1] (http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,283623,00.html) but was quite open about her bisexuality:
Sontag died on December 28, 2004, from complications of acute myelogenous leukemia. She struggled with various forms of cancer for over 30 years, including breast cancer and a rare form of uterine cancer. WorkSontag's literary career both began and ended with works of fiction. At age 30, she published an experimental novel called The Benefactor (1963), following it four years later with Death Kit (1967). Despite a relatively small output in the genre, Sontag thought of herself principally as a novelist and writer of fiction. Her short story "The Way We Live Now" was published to great acclaim on November 26, 1986 in The New Yorker. Written in an experimental narrative style, it remains a key text on the AIDS epidemic. She achieved late popular success with The Volcano Lover (1992), and at age 67 published her final novel In America (2000). It was as an essayist, however, that Sontag gained early and lasting fame and notoriety. Sontag wrote frequently about the intersection of high and low art. Her 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp'" examined gay aesthetics, defining the "so bad it's good" concept in popular culture for the first time. She championed European writers such as Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and W. G. Sebald, along with some Americans such as Maria Irene Fornes. Over the course of several decades she would turn her attention to novels, film and photography. In several books, she wrote about cultural attitudes toward illness. Activism In 1989 Sontag was the President of PEN American Center, the main U.S. branch of the International PEN writer's organization, at the time that Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (in this instance a death sentence) against writer Salman Rushdie after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses, which was perceived as blasphemous by Islamic fundamentalists. Her uncompromising support of Rushdie was critical in rallying American writers to his cause. A few years later, Sontag gained attention for directing Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" during the nearly four-year Siege of Sarajevo. Early in that conflict, Sontag referred to the Serbian invasion and massacre in Bosnia as the "Spanish Civil War of our time" and sparked controversy among U.S. Leftists for openly advocating for U.S. and European military intervention. Sontag lived in Sarajevo for many months of the Sarajevo siege. ControversiesSontag sparked controversy and later apologized for her remarks in The New Yorker (September 24, 2001) about the immediate aftermath of the September 11th, 2001 attacks on New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania. Sontag wrote:
Sontag, a widely recognized figure, often prompted strong reactions. For example, in an aside in a December 7, 2002, radio address on anti-Semitism [2] (http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/edkoch.asp), former New York City mayor Ed Koch stated that "Susan Sontag will occupy the Ninth Circle of Hell for her outrageous assaults on Israel. I will no longer read her works." Koch made no mention of specific writings by Sontag which offended him. Koch and Sontag are both Jewish. Fiction
NonfictionCollections of Essays
Sontag has also published nonfiction essays in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, Granta, Partisan Review and London Review of Books Monographs
Awards and Honors
External linksGeneral
Obituaries
da:Susan Sontag de:Susan Sontag es:Susan Sontag fr:Susan Sontag ja:スーザン・ソンタグ nl:Susan Sontag pl:Susan Sontag pt:Susan Sontag fi:Susan Sontag sv:Susan Sontag zh:苏珊·桑塔格 |
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