Susan Sontag
January 16, 1933 - New York City
Notes on Camp- 1964
December 28, 2004 - New York City
Susan Sontag's essay Notes on Camp has an important to me only place in my reading life. I was maybe 19 when I somehow read it, a freshman in college. I had been an avid reader for maybe 12 years by then but I just saw things as one book at a time, I did not conceive of a giant set of interconnected works with a history. I had not yet begun to in anyway classify books or see them as part of a larger world. This was before the internet. I was raised by very intelligent people who were concerned with the practicalities of making a living. I had no guidance. Maybe that was for the best but Notes on Camp changed that. I saw very smart people were heavily into reading, treated it as almost a sacred activity. I reread Notes on Camp once more yesterday. I am far from agreeing with all her remarks but her sheer brilliance shines through.
In September of 2015 I read and posted on Why the World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector by Benjamin Moser, a marvelous biography. When I saw he had published a biography on Susan Sontag I added it to my Amazon wish list. The original price was $19.95 but I lucked into a flash sale for $2.95 (it is back up to $19.95).
At 793 pages, this is a very comprehensive biography. Sontag was most famous toward the end for being the personification of New York City public intellectual. If you are interested in Sontag you will be fascinated by this biography as I was. Those who are merely curious will have a hard time finishing. To get the basic out of the way, she was raised by an alcoholic mother. Moser spends a lot of time talking about how this combined with the mental issues of her mother, with several marriages, impacted Sontag.
Sontag was bisexual. I lost count of all the romantic partners mentioned. Most were in literature and the arts. She had an unsuccessful early marriage to a college professor which produced her only child, David. It seems she preferred sex with women. Her relationships were passionate though far from drama free.
Moser details all her books, novels, collections of essays, a work on her trip to Hanoi during the height of America's war there, which she deeply opposed. She wrote a very influential book on photography and all sorts of articles for publications like Commentary, The Partisian Review, and The New York Review of Books.
Sontag seemed to be searching for security and love she did not receive as a child. She was incredibly well read, heavily into one of my favourites, Joseph Roth. Moser described a meeting she had with Thomas Mann, then living in Los Angeles. Later in life she said she found all European literature in The Magic Mountain. She loved science fiction movies, opera. She would sometimes read twenty hours straight. She did drink quite a bit and used the drugs popular in her circles.
I was fascinated by Sontag's
relationship with the very famous very rich photographer Annie Leibovitz. Sontag was striking looking, Leibovitz, who Moser says had sex with many of her famous photo subjects, male and female. She was quite rich and ended up supporting Sontag, spending millions on her. Sontag abused her verbally in public in an almost sadistic fashion.
There is much more in this book. To the curious general reader, you might get bored. For me, it was a deep look at a woman I had long admired.
Mel u
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