“The
truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there
were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There
would only be what is.” – Susan Sontag
Sontag, who was born
on this date in 1933, (she died in 2004) was a writer, filmmaker, teacher, and
political activist, who was active in writing, speaking about, and traveling
to key areas of conflict, including the Vietnam War and the Siege of Sarajevo. She has been called "one of the most
influential critics of her generation."
She also was lauded
for her ongoing support of beleaguered Iranian dissident Salmon Rushdie, and as
a leading writer on culture, health issues, and AIDS. Her 1986 short story "The Way We Live
Now,” published to great acclaim in The New Yorker, remains a
significant text on the AIDS epidemic.
While she wrote
mostly nonfiction, her literary career began and ended with fiction,
and she especially liked working on historical fiction. “The past itself, as historical change
continues to accelerate, has become the most surreal of subjects - making it
possible... to see a new beauty in what is vanishing,” she said.
She achieved popular
success as a best-selling novelist in that genre with her late in life works The
Volcano Lover and In America.
And she said she enjoyed linking
her writing to things she’d discovered in her own life.
“I was not looking for my dreams to
interpret my life,” 
she once remarked, “but rather for my life to interpret my
dreams.”
No comments:
Post a Comment