Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Susan Sontag
Susan
Sontag died Tuesday (28 Dec 2004) in
Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! (29 Dec 2004):
She was one of the country's most celebrated writers and cultural critics. She was also a passionate defender of human rights.
Sontag was born in 1933 and first gained fame 40 years ago with the publication of her essay "Notes on Camp." She would go on to write 17 books and win major awards including the National Book Award.
Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes once compared Sontag to the Renaissance humanist Erasmus. Fuentes said, "Erasmus traveled with 32 volumes, which contained all the knowledge worth knowing. Susan Sontag carries it in her brain! I know of no other intellectual who is so clear-minded, with a capacity to link, to connect, to relate. She is unique."
Sontag was also well known for her political
activism. During the Vietnam War she visited
Shortly
after Sept. 11, Sontag became one of
the first prominent Americans to publicly state the attack was
carried out in response to
She wrote in The New Yorker [17 Sept 2001], "Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or "liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world," but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?"
One of her last published essays, "Regarding the Torture of Others," was written in response to the torture of Iraqi prisoners by Americans at Abu Ghraib. It appeared in the New York Times Magazine in May [23 May 2004, New York Times Magazine].
More on Susan Sontag:
- Susan Sontag dies aged 71 (29 Dec 2004, The Guardian)
- Obituary: Susan Sontag (29 Dec 2004, The Guardian)
- Tributes to Susan Sontag (29 Dec 2004, The Guardian)
- Sontag: A fighter armed with a pen (29 Dec 2004, The Guardian)
- James Fenton on Susan Sontag (29 Dec 2004, The Guardian)
- Observer review: Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag (29 Dec 2004, The Guardian)
- Susan Sontag (Wikipedia)