Susan Sontag

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

Work

Sontag's literary career both began and ended with works of fiction. At age 30, she published an experimental novel called The Benefactor (1963), following it four years later with Death Kit (1967). Despite a relatively small output in the genre, Sontag thought of herself principally as a novelist and writer of fiction. Her short story "The Way We Live Now" was published to great acclaim on November 26, 1986 in The New Yorker. Written in an experimental narrative style, it remains a key text on the AIDS epidemic. She achieved late popular success with The Volcano Lover (1992), and at age 67 published her final novel In America (2000).

Related Topics:
Fiction - The Benefactor - Death Kit - Novelist - The Way We Live Now - November 26 - 1986 - The New Yorker - Style - AIDS epidemic - The Volcano Lover - In America

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It was as an essayist, however, that Sontag gained early and lasting fame and notoriety. Sontag wrote frequently about the intersection of high and low art. Her 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp'" examined gay aesthetics, defining the "so bad it's good" concept in popular culture for the first time. She championed European writers such as Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, and W. G. Sebald, along with some Americans such as Maria Irene Fornes. Over the course of several decades she would turn her attention to novels, film and photography. In several books, she wrote about cultural attitudes toward illness. Her final nonfiction work Regarding The Pain of Others re-examined photography from a moral standpoint, speaking of how the media affects culture's views of conflict.

Related Topics:
High - Low art - 1964 - Notes on 'Camp' - Gay - Walter Benjamin - Roland Barthes - W. G. Sebald - Maria Irene Fornes - Novels - Film - Photography - Illness - Regarding The Pain of Others

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