Susan Sontag Deserves Better

What would have made Reborn better?

I love Susan Sontag's work, and I was looking forward to something that showed the progression of her early thinking - so much so that I listened to over eight hours of Reborn: Journals and Notebooks. The books and authors Sontag might have been reading (she often listed future authors to read as well as past) have no record of any kind of engaged dialogue, nor even what triggered her interest. I sat wondering where the writing/essays/work where that accompanied her journal record. With regards to the personal struggles, she didn't explore them, completely appropriate to a personal journal, she simply dumped her anger and frustrations. The preface explains the decision to print the journals by her son, as a statement she made near her death - "you know where the journals are". That may just have well meant - please find them before someone else does. There are works in this genre that are important pieces of literature. In order to be important however, they should help us to understand, more deeply, the ouevre the author has left behind. There is no developmental narrative in these journals. I strongly believe one of the great women intellectuals of our times deserves much better.

Would you ever listen to anything by Susan Sontag again?

Yes

What didn’t you like about Jennifer Van Dyck’s performance?

Her tone was relentlessly caustic which made it difficult to feel any kind of empathy for Sontag.

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Reborn?

I would not have published it. If they had not been Susan Sontags, and posthumous, I don't think they would have been.

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