35 Facts About Susan Sontag

Susan Lee Sontag was an American writer, philosopher, and political activist.

Susan Sontag wrote extensively about literature, photography and media, culture, AIDS and illness, war, human rights, and leftist ideology.

Susan Sontag's father managed a fur trading business in China, where he died of tuberculosis in 1939, when Susan was five years old.

Seven years later, Susan Sontag's mother married US Army Captain Nathan Susan Sontag.

Susan Sontag did not have a religious upbringing and said she had not entered a synagogue until her mid-20s.

Susan Sontag began her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley but transferred to the University of Chicago in admiration of its prominent core curriculum.

At 17, Susan Sontag married writer Philip Rieff, who was a sociology instructor at the University of Chicago, after a 10-day courtship; their marriage lasted eight years.

Susan Sontag attended Harvard University for graduate school, initially studying literature with Perry Miller and Harry Levin before moving into philosophy and theology under Paul Tillich, Jacob Taubes, Raphael Demos, and Morton White.

Susan Sontag researched for Rieff's 1959 study Freud: The Mind of the Moralist before their divorce in 1958, and contributed to the book to such an extent that she has been considered an unofficial co-author.

In Paris, Susan Sontag socialized with expatriate artists and academics including Allan Bloom, Jean Wahl, Alfred Chester, Harriet Sohmers, and Maria Irene Fornes.

Susan Sontag remarked that her time in Paris was, perhaps, the most important period of her life.

Susan Sontag moved to New York in 1959 to live with Fornes for the next seven years, regaining custody of her son and teaching at universities while her literary reputation grew.

Susan Sontag held a writing fellowship at Rutgers University for 1964 to 1965 before ending her relationship with academia in favor of full-time freelance writing.

Susan Sontag achieved late popular success as a best-selling novelist with The Volcano Lover.

At age 67, Susan Sontag published her final novel In America.

The last two novels were set in the past, which Susan Sontag said gave her greater freedom to write in the polyphonic voice:.

Susan Sontag wrote and directed four films and wrote several plays, the most successful of which were Alice in Bed and Lady from the Sea.

Susan Sontag wrote frequently about the intersection of high and low art and expanded the dichotomy concept of form and art in every medium.

In 1977, Susan Sontag published the series of essays On Photography.

Susan Sontag writes that the convenience of modern photography has created an overabundance of visual material, and "just about everything has been photographed".

Susan Sontag continued to theorize about the role of photography in real life in her essay "Looking at War: Photography's View of Devastation and Death", which appeared in the December 9,2002 issue of The New Yorker.

Susan Sontag became a role-model for many feminists and aspiring female writers during the 1960s and 1970s.

Susan Sontag became politically active in the 1960s, opposing the Vietnam War.

Susan Sontag has become a symbol, interviewed frequently by the local newspapers and television, invited to speak at gatherings everywhere, asked for autographs on the street.

Susan Sontag's mother died of lung cancer in Hawaii in 1986.

Susan Sontag died in New York City on December 28,2004, aged 71, from complications of myelodysplastic syndrome which had evolved into acute myelogenous leukemia.

Susan Sontag is buried in Paris at Cimetiere du Montparnasse.

Susan Sontag became aware of her bisexuality during her early teens.

Susan Sontag was romantically involved with the American artists Jasper Johns and Paul Thek.

Leibovitz has suggested that Susan Sontag mentored her and constructively criticized her work.

Many of Susan Sontag's obituaries failed to mention her significant same-sex relationships, most notably that with Annie Leibovitz.

Susan Sontag drew criticism for writing in 1967 in Partisan Review:.

Susan Sontag's cool self-exile was a disaster for the American women's movement.

Susan Sontag published numerous essays and reviews in The New York Review of Books, Partisan Review, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The New Republic, Art in America, Granta and the London Review of Books.

In February 2023, it was announced that a biographical film by Kirsten Johnson and featuring Kristen Stewart as Susan Sontag was in development.