Regarding Susan Sontag Page #8

Maybe that's the problem.

She represents

grandiosity, I think.

And it is a little comic.

And there is an

aspect of Camp.

Susan Sontag is Camp.

Her seriousness is kind of

Camp, because it seems a bit

of a pose, and it's

mannered and stylized.

But that's part of the fun of

the package of Susan Sontag.

MAN:
Does any part of you

wish that you had earlier

focused more

on writing

novels more?

All of me wishes that.

[Thud]

Ha! Don't drop the book,

Charlie!

Yes, isn't that awful?

I wish... I wish I were

just starting now,

but what can I do?

Those essays from the sixties,

they were very insolent,

you know, like a

young person's work.

I wouldn't mind if the

essays eventually evaporated.

I think fiction,

I think literature, I think

narrative is what lasts.

I do believe that there

is such a thing as truth,

but I prefer the mode in

which truth appears in art or

in literature.

In literature, a truth is

something whose opposite is

also true.

The last two novels--one is

called "The Volcano Lover,"

and the more recent one is

called "In America."

I discovered I was

a storyteller.

I felt I could

spread my wings.

I felt I could...I could

even be entertaining.

True, there was still time

for something really vivid

to happen.

Someone might have a heart

attack or whack a dinner

partner over the head or

sob or groan or toss a glass

of wine in an offending face.

But this seemed as unlikely as

my charging out of my window

seat to dance on the table

or spit in the soup or fondle

a knee or bite

someone's ankle.

GORDIMER:

She wouldn't like to hear

this, but her novels were not

received at the standard

at which she wanted.

Because she was so well known,

there was a certain amount

of attention, and I mean

I think it was Gore Vidal who

wrote that, "as a fiction

writer, Susan Sontag has no

talent whatsoever."

I mean,

it was always these very

strong, harsh statements.

NUNEZ:
She did win the National

Book Award for "In America."

"The Volcano Lover"

was a huge critical

and commercial success.

Sometimes awards are given

in recognition of a career as

much as the merits of

a particular book.

[Applause]

But in spite of all these

well-earned awards and all her

accomplishments, a sense

of failure clung to her.

She was not happy.

CASTLE:
She was

haunted by a sense

that her younger self would

not have been satisfied...that

she hadn't been good enough.

I think she was terrorized

by the fact of her own

transience, that she, too, would

become a part of the past...

fade to black.

[Woman speaking]

Certainly not.

MAN:
Anne Leibovitz

is here.

She is perhaps the

best-known American

photographer around.

She has also published 6

books of her photographs.

Her most recent one

is called "9 Pounds."

No, it's called "A

Photographer's Life,

1990-2005."

In it, Annie publishes

celebrity photographs

as well as portraits

of family members,

her 3 children, and

perhaps the most important

person in her life,

Susan Sontag.

My gosh, the years that I'm

supposed to work on the book,

1990-2005, are the years

I was with Susan.

I just got very excited

because I thought I'm going to

look at my work as if Susan

was standing in back of me,

you know, as if she was there

you know, working with me

to put the book together.

RIELL:

My mother had 3 cancers.

She had a breast cancer when

she was in her early 40s.

When she was in her mid 60s,

she had a uterine sarcoma.

Then 7 years later--

or 6 years later,

she was diagnosed with this

disease, MDS, which is this

lethal blood cancer.

COHEN:
She needed to have a

bone marrow transplant.

[Speaking French]

CHILDS:
I had just

gotten back to the States,

and she told me what

was happening, that she had

this leukemia and that it was

just raging and

she was very ill.

And then she said, "Once I'm

over the transplant, maybe you

would come out at that time."

She was assuming that the

transplant would be successful.

And she said, "Of course there's

a risk because of my age,

and because of

the previous illnesses,"

and so forth and so on.

She said, "But it's

my only chance."

If she wanted to believe in...

the idea that she would beat

the odds once more, as

she'd done twice in the

past with cancer,

it wasn't for me

to stand in the way of that.

COHEN:
We had a conversation.

She said "You need to tell

me what I've done that--

how I've wronged you."

Ha ha!

I said, "Well, I'll do it if

you'll do the same thing."

And that's when she told me,

you know, this inane wish

of hers that I'd

become an attorney.

And I thought, well, that's

really soft ball. Ha ha!

I told her the next day that

I very much resented the fact

that she didn't attend our

wedding. Ha ha!

And most of all, I resented

that she spent most of her

life not being honest with me.

And I think I really

did strike home.

And she admitted--she

was sorry she didn't come

to the wedding.

And, uh, she, um...

said that I was right and

she was sorry about that.

RIELL:
My mother was

afraid of extinction.

You are extinguished.

And I think that's what she

felt and I think it terrified her.

So the way that she decided

that she would face it was to

fight to the last breath.

Fight, fight, every moment.

I guess I'm a little like Susan

in that I always thought

she would survive, too.

RIELL:
She had this

transplant in the

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

in Seattle.

And when the doctors came to

tell her it hadn't worked,

she started to scream.

LEIBOVITZ:

I went to Seattle to bring

her home in an air ambulance.

It was really a

harrowing experience.

KOCH:
She then returned

to Sloan-Kettering

because it was over,

and she was being

sent there to die.

Um...and she did.

I immediately went to

the hospital and then I

went in and--

and sat with Susan's

body for a while,

quite a while.

RIELL:
If you're interested in

everything, if you're curious

about everything,

it's a lot harder to die.

KAPLAN:
I saw her one last time

way at the end of her life.

I was walking down

the Boulevard St. Germain,

past the great cafe,

The Flore,

And she was sitting in the

front with her notebook, writing.

Sitting in Paris looking out and

writing in her notebook still.

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