Sontag Syuzen

Susan Sontag (also spelled Sontag; in English, Susan Sontag; birth surname Rosenblatt) was an American writer, as well as a literary, art, theater, and film critic, and a recipient of national and international awards.

Sontag was born on January 16, 1933, in New York City. Born Rosenblatt, she took the surname Sontag after her mother remarried. Her only childhood companions were books. At the age of 15, she entered the University of California, Berkeley (1948–1949). She graduated from the University of Chicago with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1951 (one of her teachers was Kenneth Burke). There she met the young sociologist F. Rieff, whom she soon married (1952). Rieff was the father of her only son, David.

The family moved to Boston, where Sontag studied English literature at Harvard University and received a Master of Philosophy degree in 1954. It was during this period that Sontag studied the works of classical philosophers. While studying at Oxford in 1957, she encountered sexism, and soon moved to Paris, where she became close to the American intelligentsia gathered around the journal Paris Review. She actively engaged with French cinema and philosophy and wrote extensively.

At the age of 26, in 1958, she returned to America, divorced, and remained alone with her son, refusing financial assistance from her husband. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, she taught philosophy at a number of colleges and universities in the United States, including Columbia University, but later gave up an academic career. In the early 1960s, she moved to New York, beginning work as an editor at the magazine Commentary.

Sontag made her literary debut with the novel Benefactor in 1963, as well as with a number of articles in prestigious American magazines. However, she became widely known after the publication in Partisan Review of the article “Notes on Camp” (1964). Here Sontag introduced the concept of “camp” — the use of vulgar and aesthetically ugly material as an expressive device. Two subsequent collections of essays on the artistic avant-garde of Europe and the United States