Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag (January 28, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was a well-known American essayist, novelist, left-leaning intellectual and controversial activist.

Life

Sontag 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 of tuberculosis when she was five years old, Susan's mother married Nathan Sontag, and Susan and her sister Judith took their stepfather's surname. Sontag was a third-generation Lithuanian-American.

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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.

Related Topics:
Tucson - Arizona - High school - Los Angeles - Bachelor of Arts - University of Chicago - Philosophy - Literature - Theology - Harvard - St Anne's College, Oxford

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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.

Related Topics:
Philip Rieff - David Rieff - Farrar, Straus and Giroux - Writer - 1958

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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."

Related Topics:
1980s - Annie Leibovitz - New York Post - February 14 - 2003 - Choreographer - Lucinda Childs - 2000 - Brendan Lemon - Out - Modus operandi - Open secret - Repressed something

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In an interview in the Guardian (U.K.) in 2000, Sontag disputed a romantic involvement with Annie Leibovitz http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story/0,6000,283623,00.html but was quite open about her bisexuality:

Related Topics:
Guardian - Bisexuality

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:"Shall I tell you about getting older?", she says, and she is laughing. "When you get older, 45 plus, men stop fancying you. Or put it another way, the men I fancy don't fancy me. I want a young man. I love beauty. So what's new?" She says she has been in love seven times in her life, which seems quite a lot. "No, hang on," she says. "Actually, it's nine. Five women, four men."

Related Topics:
Beauty - Love - Women - Men

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Sontag died on December 28, 2004, from complications of acute myelogenous leukemia, which may have been caused by the massive doses of radiation to which she had been exposed for treatment some 30-odd years earlier during her battle with advanced breast cancer, a cancer for which Jewish women of Ashkenazi descent have a certain predilection; she also had battled a rare form of uterine cancer.

Related Topics:
December 28 - 2004 - Acute myelogenous leukemia - Uterine cancer

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