Susan Sontag

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Susan Sontag
 Sontag in 1979

Born Susan Lee Rosenblatt

January 16, 1933

New York City, U.S.

Died December 28, 2004 (aged 71)

New York City, U.S.

Resting place Montparnasse Cemetery, Paris, France

Education University of California, Berkeley

University of Chicago (BA)
Harvard University (MA)

• Novelist
Occupations
• essayist
• filmmaker

Years active 1959–2004

Notable work • Against Interpretation (1966)

 • On Photography (1977)
• Illness as Metaphor (1978)
• Regarding the Pain of Others(2003)
Philip Rieff
Spouse

(m. 1950; div. 1959)

[1]

Partner Annie Leibovitz (1989–2004)

Children David Rieff

Website www.susansontag.com

Susan Lee Sontag (/ˈsɒntæɡ/; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an
American writer, critic, and public intellectual. She mostly wrote essays, but also
published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on 'Camp' ", in
1964. Her best-known works include the critical works Against Interpretation (1966), On
Photography (1977), Illness as Metaphor (1978) and Regarding the Pain of Others, as
well as the fictional works The Way We Live Now (1986), The Volcano Lover (1992),
and In America (1999).
Sontag was active in writing and speaking about, or traveling to, areas of conflict,
including during the Vietnam War and the Siege of Sarajevo. She wrote extensively
about literature, photography and media, culture, AIDS and illness, war, human rights,
and left-wing politics. Her essays and speeches drew controversy,[2] and she has been
called "one of the most influential critics of her generation".[3]
Early life and education
Sontag was born Susan Rosenblatt in New York City, the daughter of Mildred (née
Jacobson) and Jack Rosenblatt, both Jews of Lithuanian[4] and Polish descent. Her
father managed a fur trading business in China, where he died of tuberculosis in 1939
when Susan was five years old.[1] Seven years later, Sontag's mother married US Army
Captain Nathan Sontag. Susan and her sister, Judith, took their stepfather's surname,
although he did not adopt them formally.[1] Sontag did not have a religious upbringing
and said she had not entered a synagogue until her mid-20s.[5]
Remembering an unhappy childhood, with a cold, alcoholic, distant mother who was
"always away", Sontag lived on Long Island, New York,[1] then in Tucson, Arizona, and
later in the San Fernando Valley in southern California, where she took refuge in books
and graduated from North Hollywood High School at the age of 15. She began her
undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley but transferred to
the University of Chicago in admiration of its prominent core curriculum. At Chicago, she
undertook studies in philosophy, ancient history, and literature alongside her other
requirements. Leo Strauss, Joseph Schwab, Christian Mackauer, Richard
McKeon, Peter von Blanckenhagen, and Kenneth Burke were among her lecturers. She
graduated at age 18 with an A.B. and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.[6] While at
Chicago, she became best friends with fellow student Mike Nichols.[7] In 1951, her work
appeared in print for the first time in the winter issue of the Chicago Review.[8]
At 17, Sontag married writer Philip Rieff, a sociology instructor at the University of
Chicago, after a 10-day courtship; their marriage lasted eight years.[9] While studying at
Chicago, Sontag attended a summer school taught by the sociologist Hans Heinrich
Gerth [de] who became a friend and subsequently influenced her study of German
thinkers.[10][11] Upon completing her Chicago degree, Sontag taught freshman English at
the University of Connecticut for the 1952–53 academic year. She attended Harvard
University for graduate school, initially studying literature with Perry Miller and Harry
Levin before moving into philosophy and theology under Paul Tillich, Jacob
Taubes, Raphael Demos, and Morton White.[12]
After completing her Master of Arts in philosophy, Sontag began doctoral research in
metaphysics, ethics, Greek philosophy, Continental philosophy, and theology at
Harvard.[13] The philosopher Herbert Marcuse lived with Sontag and Rieff for a year while
working on his 1955 book Eros and Civilization.[14]: 38 Sontag researched for Rieff's 1959
study Freud: The Mind of the Moralist before their divorce in 1958, and contributed to
the book to such an extent that she has been considered an unofficial co-author.[15] The
couple had a son, David Rieff, who went on to be his mother's editor at Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, as well as a writer in his own right. According to
Sontag's biographer Benjamin Moser, Sontag was the true author of the text on Freud,
which she wrote after David's birth, and in the separation the latter was the subject of an
exchange: she handed over the authorship of the book to Rieff, he gave her their son.[16]
Sontag was awarded an American Association of University Women's fellowship for the
1957–58 academic year to St Anne's College, Oxford, where she traveled without her
husband and son.[17] There, she had classes with Iris Mu

Philip Rieff
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Philip Rieff (December 15, 1922 – July 1, 2006) was an American sociologist and
cultural critic, who taught sociology at the University of Pennsylvaniafrom 1961 until
1992, and also, during the 1950s, at the University of Chicago, where he met Susan
Sontag. He was the author of a number of books on Sigmund Freud and his legacy,
including Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959) and The Triumph of the Therapeutic:
Uses of Faith after Freud (1966). He married his 17-year-old student Susan
Sontag after 10 days of courtship in the 1950s. The marriage lasted eight years during
which their son, David Rieff—a writer and editor of his mother's personal journals—was
born.[1] His second wife and widow Alison Douglas Knox died December 12, 2011.[2]
Works
• Freud: The Mind of the Moralist, 1959.
• Collected Papers of Sigmund Freud (ed.). Collier Books, 1963.
• The Triumph of the Therapeutic. Harper & Row, 1966.
• Fellow Teachers. Harper & Row, 1973.
• The Feeling Intellect. University of Chicago Press, 1990.
• My Life Among the Deathworks. University of Virginia Press, 2006.
• Charisma. Pantheon, 2007.
• The Crisis of the Officer Class. University of Virginia Press, 2007.
• The Jew of Culture. University of Virginia Press, 2008.
Notes
1. Glenn, David. "Prophet of the 'Anti-Culture', Chronicle of Higher Education, November 11,
2005; courtesy link, accessed December 11, 2010.
2. "Paid Notice: Deaths KNOX, ALISON DOUGLAS".

Further reading
• Aeschliman, M.D., “The Aesthetics of Moloch,” National Review, 17 July 2006, 41–2.
• Imber, Jonathan B. (ed.). Therapeutic Culture: Triumph and Defeat. Transaction, 2004.
• Manning, Philip. Freud and American Sociology. Polity Press, 2005.
• Zondervan, A. A. W. Sociology and the Sacred. An Introduction to Philip Rieff's Theory of Culture.
University of Toronto Press, 2005.

External links
 Wikiquote has quotations related to Philip Rieff.

• Beer, Jeremy. Pieties of Silence, The American Conservative

• Philip Rieff correspondence at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries
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Philip Rieff
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Philip Rieff (December 15, 1922 – July 1, 2006) was an American sociologist and
cultural critic, who taught sociology at the University of Pennsylvaniafrom 1961 until
1992, and also, during the 1950s, at the University of Chicago, where he met Susan
Sontag. He was the author of a number of books on Sigmund Freud and his legacy,
including Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (1959) and The Triumph of the Therapeutic:
Uses of Faith after Freud (1966). He married his 17-year-old student Susan
Sontag after 10 days of courtship in the 1950s. The marriage lasted eight years during
which their son, David Rieff—a writer and editor of his mother's personal journals—was
born.[1] His second wife and widow Alison Douglas Knox died December 12, 2011.[2]
Works
• Freud: The Mind of the Moralist, 1959.
• Collected Papers of Sig