Yoshie wrote:
> Sontag's approach to the personal and the political was more like
Hannah Arendt's, Michel Foucault's, etc., and that's no surprise, as
they were critics rather than poets or novelists.
So she imitated them. That still doesn't rescue her or her approach.
> Her thought was seldom novel, but who says only novel thoughts
are worthy of being written down and published?
Never said that they had to be original. She is the one who said that. She is a classic case of "Do as I say, not as I do." Also, all her idolators are praising her as an original and not a popularizer.
> In the process of translation from Europe to America, she often
introduced an unfortunate tendency to moralize excessively, but she
was aware of that problem, mocking her own "insufferable moralism."
Maybe she might have tried to correct that tendency. Since she didn't, she obviously thought it was okay.
Be radical Yoshie! Jettison Sontag and the rest of the Eurofrauds. Buy American! Read and grapple with James Baldwin -- a great novelist AND great essayist. Even academia is discovering him (I think they finally ran out of obscure white people). He was dealing with issues of power in the early 1950's. See his essay "Stranger in the Village" and novel "Go Tell It On The Mountain."
Down with detached decaffienated dilletante deconstructionists!!
Up with passionate powerful preachers of progressivity!!
> In my opinion, she made clear that she had been in love with
both men and women, but when she did, many people said, "Oh,
bisexual. So, you must be a lesbian with a foot in the closet."
If you want to explore the roots of her homophobia, I suggest Paul Varnell's "Sour 'Notes on Camp."' A handy url is provided below:
http://www.indegayforum.org/authors/varnell/varnell24.html
> As for the Queen Bee thing, it must be admitted that she was sexy
and photogenic, alluring to both men and women, a kind of Marlene
Dietrich (who, btw, also had affairs and relationships with both men
and women) of intellectual life.
The Divine Dietrich was a great revolutionary. Look at movie stars before Dietrich and after Dietrich. She was as much an auteur of her films as Sternberg was. Marlene was an original; Sontag a smudged carbon copy.
> I personally don't care for Leni Riefenstahl, but in principle there
is no problem with asserting both positions at the same time: a
fascist can produce great art; and fascination with fascism as a prop
for sexual theater is a problem to be tackled politically and
philosophically.
I think art has a moral component and that if the moral component is to promote fascism/fascistic thinking, then the work of art is anything but great. I disagree with the capitalist notion of "art for art's sake."
> Was it because of the actual problem of state socialism or
on account of her following political and intellectual fashions? I'd say both.
Well, I think following intellectual fashion's bouncing ball contradicts her pose of always thinking for herself.
> But that's common to most intellectuals on the left, and
she didn't go as far to the right as a number of intellectuals
of her time ended up.
That's like saying Himmler was a nicer Nazi than Goebbels.
> She would have provided footnotes had she written for
peer-reviewed scholarly journals.
So you can steal with impunity so long as you are not published in a peer-reviewed journal? Well then, I must submit this novel I am working on. It's called Odysseus, about one June day in the life of a gay man. It starts with him watching his roomate/ex-lover shave . . .
> That's a stronger statement than the fact that she was a popularizer.
Did she actually "steal" someone's words, and if so, which words from
whom?
Read about the controversy over her last novel "In America."
Brian Dauth Queer Buddhist Resister