Sontag, Susan (sŏn`täg), 1933–2004, American writer and critic, b. New York City. She grew up in Arizona and California, studied philosophy at the Univ. of Chicago, Harvard, and Oxford, absorbed Gallic culture in Paris, and settled (1959) in New York City. Regarded as a brilliant and original thinker and highly visible as one of the most prominent public intellectuals of the second half of the 20th cent., Sontag became known for her vividly written critical essays on avant-garde culture in the 1960s. Most of these were collected in Against Interpretation (1966), in which she popularized the word camp, referring to exaggerated reproductions of the style and emotions of pop culture. Her other works include short stories and such novels as The Benefactor (1963), Death Kit (1967), and the best-selling historical fictions The Volcano Lover (1992) and In America (2000). Her essays on radical politics are collected in Styles of Radical Will (1969). Sontag meditated on the nature of photography in On Photography (1977), explored the ways in which disease is demonized in Illness as Metaphor (1978) and AIDS and Its Metaphors (1989), analyzed various modernist writers and filmmakers in Under the Sign of Saturn (1980), and reassessed her ideas on photography's relationship to human suffering in her last book, Regarding the Pain of Others (2003). Many of her short nonfiction pieces from the 1980s and 90s were collected in Where the Stress Falls (2001). Sontag also wrote and directed four motion pictures, including the chamber drama Duet for Cannibals (1969) and the documentary Promised Lands (1974), directed theatrical productions, and was the author of a play, Alice in Bed (1992).

Bibliography

See Conversations with Susan Sontag (1995), ed. by L. Poague; biography by C. E. Rollyson and L. Paddock (2000); studies by S. Sayres (1990), L. Kennedy (1995), C. E. Rollyson (2001), and C. Seligman (2004).

Sontag, Susan

orig. Susan Rosenblatt

(born Jan. 16, 1933, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Dec. 28, 2004, New York) U.S. writer. She studied at the University of Chicago and Harvard University and taught philosophy at several institutions. In the early 1960s she began contributing to such periodicals as the New York Review of Books, Commentary, and Partisan Review, her French-influenced essays being characterized by a serious philosophical approach to aspects of modern culture rarely taken seriously at the time, including films, popular music, and “camp” sensibility. Collections of her essays include the influential Against Interpretation, and Other Essays (1966) and Styles of Radical Will (1969). Her later critical works include On Photography (1977), Illness as Metaphor (1978), and AIDS and Its Metaphors (1989). She also wrote screenplays and novels, including The Volcano Lover (1992) and In America (2000).

Sontag, Susan (1933– ) critic, writer; born in New York City. She grew up in Arizona and Los Angeles, took degrees from the University of Chicago and Harvard, then did postgraduate work at Oxford before settling in New York City to teach and write. She first gained attention with her essay, "Notes on Camp" (1964), and went on to publish several novels including The Volcano Lover (1992); but she is best known for her critical essays and cultural analyses such as On Photography (1976) and Illness as Metaphor (1978); she also directed her own movie, Duet for Cannibals (1969). The nature of her concerns and writings have gained her the reputation as America's answer to "Continental intellectuals." Her son by an early marriage, David Rieff, is the author of Los Angeles, Capital of the Third World (1991).