Letters to the Editor
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I appreciate David's honesty
He seems to tell it like it is. I suppose there will be all kinds of responses suggesting he made the wrong decision on confronting death with his mother. So many people talk about that like it's beautiful and healing. I have nothing to say on that whatsoever since my parents, though old and ill, are still alive. We certainly don't talk about death and plans for death as some people do, so I can relate to David. I do worry about it.
As an aside, it seemed weird that he had his mother cremated when she so feared it. But whatever. Neither was a believer, so what difference did it make? Still.
Anyway, thank you David. By the way, I never read anything your mother ever wrote. Not on purpose, just that I guess she was just a bit before my time. I certainly have heard of her and noted when she died; I just haven't gotten around to reading her. Maybe I'll start with that Volcano novel.
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Geez, only one letter
yet the Cat article generated hundreds....Salon is ridiculous. RIP Ms. Sontag.
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seconds
Wow.Well I am only immensely impressed.
i suppose there are a few topics it would be cool to be noticed.
Like Sontag's staging of Waiting For Godot in Sarajevo under siege. Or the aptness of her old notice: On Photography.But her dear son is as transparently honest as his mom. None of us are Hunter Thompson.
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Faithless Love...
...is love, nonetheless, and it flows both ways.
All we can do is witness and, perhaps, record or recollect.
Well done.
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it reads, lateagain,
"She was buried in Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris, where many famous writers are buried.". she *wasn't* cremated. anyone can make a mistake; i just didn't want mr reiff demeaned. (his relationship wasn't *that* complicated!)
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Sontag the Martyr
I've read and reread all her books, and no doubt will continue to do so. I am only sorry that this magnificent woman suffered; it pains me to hear that she was covered from head to toe in sores--even Simone Weil didn't suffer such torment.
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Denial as a Metaphor
My mother didn't want to acknowledge she was dying, either, and I often wish my family had indulged her denial more fully, as she clearly wished to hold onto hope, however slim, rather than face reality. Nothing takes the wind out of your sails like being told there's no hope.
One thing I've learned about death: when the outcome is the same no matter what, one at least has the choice how one gets from here to there, whether that means clinging to irrational hope or trying to make peace with the facts.
Though I do think it isn't only about the dying. Those of us left behind are impacted too, and as Mr. Rieff says, he paid a steep price in allowing his mother to pretend it wasn't the end. Somehow I imagine being Susan Sontag's son involved an awful lot of putting her needs first. In spite of what he says about wishing he'd accommodated her more, I would guess it was never easy to tell her no.
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Hope and reason?
I attended a lecture by Susan Sontag in March, 2004 at Washington University in St. Louis. I brought my advanced photography class from a state university across the river from Illinois to the event, as we were indeed reading her recently published "Regarding the Pain of Others". I recall filing out of the lecture hall and there near the exit I passed closely by her, she was sitting in a chair, signing copies. By the end of the year she was dead.
Of course her writing on photography is famous and has always been influential in my theory classes both as a student as well as an educator. But her works on illness came to my attention after I went through the utterly surreal experience of "surviving" a cancer death sentence myself. It is neither ironic nor contradictory for one to engage illness and death intellectually, even eloquently, while also maintaining the depravity of the life-after-death escape clause, yet when confronted with the awful inevitability of ones own demise, experience utter terror. After all, terror is instinctual, n'est-ce pas?
S
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You Can't Slander the Dead
It's agonizing to watch this handsome, accomplished middle-aged man betray himself by adopting a sort of tip-toe piss-elegance when discussing his mother, a woman known globally for being a wicked, egomaniacal windbag.
It's as if Christina Crawford, when asked about her mother, had pursed her lips and said, "Joan was a strong woman who perhaps overvalued restraint. We had our ups and downs, but creative women often form complex relationships with their children."
Susan Sontag had an immense and commendable talent for borrowing ideas from European, mostly French, thinkers and popularizing them as her own for an audience unwilling or unable to consult primary sources. A popular touch is nothing to sneeze at.
Sontag's genius, however, was of a different order. No other 20th century author was as exquisitely skilled at belittling, demeaning, humiliating, and degrading underlings and other people who had no recourse to her abuse and tirades. Ask anyone over forty in the New York publishing world: Sontag made Lillian Hellman look like Saint Thérèse, the "Little Flower," of Lisieux.
I have no doubt that Sontag was a loyal and generous friend to people whom she regarded as her equal. And her gift for friendship with A-list individuals might somewhat mitigate her overall awfulness had she not so publicly preened over her refined moral sensitivity in such works as "Regarding the Pain of Others."
Regarding the pain of others. To the extent that Sontag brought any unique insight to bear upon the issue of human suffering, it's because Sontag without question enjoyed making people suffer. Sontag was clear-eyed about "fascinating fascism" because she encountered a kindred spirit in Leni Riefenstahl -- another woman who, deep down, admired the pleasure a powerful person feels when he or she grinds a boot into the face of someone powerless.
I say all this knowing that there will be some folks who will say I've overstated my case, that, yes, Susan could be cranky and maybe sometimes abrupt, but she really had a good heart.
I also know that there are a great many more people who will with reason resent my reticence. They have their own stories to tell, if they dare tell them.
Sontag was a monster. How and why she became, or was allowed to become, a monster is an indictment of literary American that literary America, and those who work in its penumbra, may as yet be unwilling to serve.
We're still afraid that if we told the truth about Susan Sontag, it might come back to haunt us.
Her son, David Rieff, clearly is.