Sontag, Susan (1933–2004)
Sontag, Susan (1933–2004)
American novelist, essayist, critic, film-maker and short-story writer. Born Susan Rosenblatt, Jan 16, 1933, in New York, NY; died Dec 28, 2004, in New York, NY; dau. of Jack Rosenblatt (fur trader, died in China of TB in 1938) and Mildred (Jacobson) Sontag (whose 2nd husband was Nathan Sontag); m. Philip Rieff (instructor in social theory), 1950 (div. 1959); children: Davie Rieff (b. 1952, writer).
Studied at University of California at Berkeley, Harvard University, and University of Paris; taught philosophy at City College of New York, Sarah Lawrence, and Columbia University; provocative liberal commentator on American art and culture, came to prominence with her contentious essay, "Notes on Camp," in the Partisan Review (1964); works include Freud: The Mind of the Moralist (with Philip Rieff, 1959), The Benefactor (1963), Against Interpretation (1966), Death Kit (1967), The Style of Radical Will (1969), On Photography (1976), Illness as Metaphor (1977), I, Etcetera (1978), AIDS and its Metaphors (1988), The Volcano Lover (1992), In America (1999), Where the Stress Falls (2001) and Regarding the Pain of Others (2003); wrote and directed the film Duet for Cannibals (1969). Received National Book Critics Circle Award (1977), Academy of Sciences and Literature Award (Germany, 1979), and fellowship from MacArthur Foundation (1990).