FAREWELL SUSAN SONTAG

From the Los Angeles Times via Newsday:

Shortly after Susan Sontag died Tuesday in New York, an obituary on the BBC's World Service described her as "the high priestess of the American avant-garde."

So she was, in part.

But to take that topic sentence and its implications as the sum of her 71 years is to discount the example of an inspiring -- and uniquely American -- life.

Much that will be written about her in the weeks ahead will focus on her aesthetic and political legacy and, as the British Broadcasting Corporation's description suggests, on her status as an icon of what some would describe as the international intellectual elite. It also is worth considering, however, that she willed and worked herself into all that she achieved.

And

Susan's similarly ruthless pursuit of what she believed was truest and best inevitably conveyed a kind of elitism. Yet no matter how rarified the company, it was open to anybody willing to do the work to join. Her own drive for self-improvement -- and the conviction that knowledge and critical thinking were the tools to accomplish it -- never ceased.

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In addition to her amazing and influential career, it is important to note that Sontag was one of the first on the left to stick her neck on the chopping block in order to say what needed to be said: "Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a 'cowardly' attack on 'civilization' or 'liberty' or 'humanity' or 'the free world' but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?" Alas, I was not so brave at the time, fearing the loss of my job and general political persecution. Voices such as hers gave me the courage to eventually speak out myself, both at work as a high school teacher and on this blog. Her death is truly a drag.

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