December 28, 2004 SUSAN SONTAG'S DEATH http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2004/12/susan_sontags_d.html
I was quite pained to learn just now of the death of Susan Sontag, who left us this morning at 7:00 AM in New York. I first encountered Susan on the page when I was a teenager, through her groundbreaking essays in the Partisan Review--where she helped introduce Americans to European intellectuals of the first rank, like Barthes, Foucault, and many others. We finally met in the late '70s, and I passed many agreeable hours in her company in the year before I left for France. On several occasions we shared a joint together--although I felt rather guilty about giving it to her, as she had already had lung problems and bouts of cancer. Most of the obituaries will undoubtedly speak of Susan's brilliance. But I also remember her humor and wit, her love of gossip, her openness to the new, her capacity for lucid self-analysis, her ravishing smile, and her distinctive laugh. We often talked about sexuality--she was quite amusing in recounting her own amorous adventures with women. I confess I never cared as much for her fiction, although it was always interesting, as I did for her essays on culture, literature, and politics. Against Interpretation was masterful; Regarding the Pain of Others, which almost won the National Book Award last year, should be in everyone's library.
Susan was the epitome of the intellectuelle engagée. She never shirked the responsibility of living in her time, and brought her acute analysis, and empathy with victims of state oppression wherever it was felt, onto the page with memorable effect. The last time she made headlines was when, during the second U.S. war in Iraq, Susan was pilloried by the philistines after she compared the Congress's applause for George Bush's war speech to the knee-jerk ovations which the Party Congresses in the Soviet Union gave to Stalin. She got it exactly right, of course.
Susan is not replaceable. She will be missed.
Posted by Doug Ireland at 02:38 PM