The first published book to bear her name on the title page was a novel, The Benefactor, issued by Farrar, Straus and Company in 1963. The first book she ever wrote, effectively, was the first volume of her journals: entitled Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 by her son and its editor, David Rieff, it was posthumously published in 2008 by Farrar Straus Giroux. After her death from leukemia in December of 2004, national columnist Richard Lacayo memorialized her paradoxical accomplishment in advocating “a more sensuous, less intellectual approach to art … in paragraphs that were marvels of strenuous intellection” (72). That his remarks appeared in Time magazine is apt because it was a s…

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Citation: Poague, Leland. "Susan Sontag". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 May 2009; last revised 26 May 2022. [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4150, accessed 07 October 2024.]

4150 Susan Sontag 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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