Susan Sontag Biography:
Sontag was born Susan Rosenblatt in New York in 1933 and later took her step-father's name. She married sociologist, Philip Rieff, a teacher from the University of Chicago while she was attending school there. In 1952, they had a son, David.
Sontag attended Harvard, and earned a master's in philosophy there. In 1957, she fell into the expatirate community in Paris, where she met Reobert Silvers who helped launched the New York Review of Books, for which Sontag wrote. Her first novel, The Benefactor was published in 1963 and was followed by three more novels.
Susan Sontag wrote 17 books in all. She will be primarily remembered for her essays, her first collection of which, "Against Interpretation," was published in 1966. She wrote about a variety of subject, from film to photography to breast cancer. She helped introduced the notion of "camp," the idea than something could be so bad as to actually be good, to mainstream.
In 1998, Susan Sontag was diagnnosed with uterine cancer from which she died on December 28, 2004.
"She was a unique and courageous woman. Even if you didn't agree with her, she was always courageous and always a unique thinker. She always made you think. What made her unique? She wasn't like anyone else."
Margaret Atwood
