Susan Sontag
Rieff’s Grief: Sontag’s Son, On Her Death
There’s something obscene about sitting at a desk, in a chair that corrects the posture, sipping warm, sugary tea, yawning or scratching, barely aware of the fug of felt life, all the while getting ready to give the thumbs-up or thumbs-down to a book that records a mother’s desperate losing battle against disease and her son’s numb grief when she dies. I am in the realm of the living, foolishly taking it for granted as most of us do; David Rieff has been immersed in death ever since the day nearly four years ago when his mother, Susan Sontag, was diagnosed with a rare, particularly lethal cancer of the blood. Who am I to pass judgment on her mortal struggle, on his howl of pain? read more »
Regarding the Writing of Others
In FSG’s posthumous collection of essays by Susan Sontag, an alert reader finds unattributed borrowings from Roland Barthes, Laura Miller. read more »
Why We Miss Susan Sontag, Volume I
The Emotional Spark: What’s That Thing We All Long For?
Annie Leibovitz, Having Seen
"Walk slowly. Watch your cameras," she said. Microphone booms swung through the air, nearly knocking the photos off the wall. "Careful, we have lots of time," she said as she was followed.
Ms. Leibovitz has recently been profiled in Newsweek, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. She has a new book, "Annie Leibovitz: A Photographers Life, 1990-2005," and a retrospective of her work that will travel the world.
"It was time to look back at my work," Ms. Leibovitz said. She wore a faded black button-up shirt, tapered black jeans, and heavy work boots. "It was like being on an archeological dig finding these pictures," she said.
One entire wall was snapshots of her family at the beach, her parents in bed, her children wet with afterbirth in the delivery room, and hotel rooms with rumpled bed sheets, Susan Sontag included.
On another wall Donald Trump sat in a sports car and a hugely pregnant Ivana sported a gold lame bikini on the stairs of a gigantic jet. A portrait of Colin Powell in full military regalia hung near the Clintons on election night.
Ms. Leibovitz said the idea for the exhibit "came out of a moment," when she faced the deaths of Sontag and her father, plus the birth of her twins, by a surrogate mother.
On one wall Sontag battles cancer in a hospital bed, another shows her being wheeled on a gurney to a private plane in Seattle to be air-evacuated to a hospital in New York. A small print in a corner shows Sontag's corpse at a funeral home. She is dressed in Italian silk.
In "On Photography," Sontag had written: "To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have.""
With every photo, regardless of the narrative, it's clear that sometimes Ms. Leibovitz was an intruder in her own life. The exhibit, which gives such a remarkable window into Ms. Leibovitz's private world, also shows the limits of that view.
Ms. Leibovitz said that she enjoys how her magazine assignments create a sense of history, but that her personal work is her strongest work, in fact because she is know to her subjects.
"Most people don't like to have their picture taken," Ms. Leibovitz said. "They have to confront themselves." Every photo involves problem solving. "It's never easy."
And with that, Ms. Leibovitz left the room, accompanied by two women in black suits. "I mean, you wouldn't expect anything less," said a reporter, who wore a sticker that read Panarama. "She's a living legend." — Kaija HelmetagThursday: The Old Sontag Penthouse, The Old 'New Soho', and a Wall Street Journal Rip-Off
Soho! Just kidding.
- Weeks ago we mathematically disproved the assertion that "The Garment District is the new Soho," though the Post apparently plugged its ears. So what does its cover story report to back up the age-old Garment claim? Only that the the neighborhood has "funky artists"--plus: it's "gritty and delicious." (NY Post)
- For $3.75 million, the late Susan Sontag's penthouse at Chelsea's London Terrace could have been yours. (You would have had to act quickly, though: it stayed on the market for just a few weeks.) And alas you've also missed a chance at grabbing Britney Spears' four-level Silk Building abode (though that's old news). (WSJ)
- Who had any idea that ritzy--and empty--Manhattan condo buildings were dangling gold-plated carrots to lure naive buyers? Those carrots come in shapes and sizes like Turkish baths (cough!--excuse me, sir) or borrowing libraries (lame.) Best of all: pandering to the lazy or gourmet or morbidly obese condo crowd are daily home-delivered meals at Slate on West 18th. (NY Sun)
- It's about seventeen years too late to print a headline like: "The fight over Atlantic Yards heats up." And yet all journalistic sins are excused when a Yards article has Bruce Ratner quotes such as "It's a good cause, and we are going to win." Or any Bruce Ratner quotes at all. (NY Press)
- What does 'Where were you when it happened?' mean? It means that it's been five years since the World Trade Center attacks, and that the WTC Foundation still needs $167 million for its museum and memorial. So of course the group is rolling out an ad campaign "designed to tug on people's heartstrings." And wallets. (Crain's) - Max Abelson read more »
Ozick’s Ongoing Argument, A Dip in the Rollercoaster
