Susan Sontag passed away

[cema]

[cnn]

Comments

[ex-ilyavinar899.livejournal.com]

RIP. Смелый был человек.

[(Anonymous)]

To the point of saying things without thinking first sometimes. RIP nevertheless.

[paulney.livejournal.com]

I found this to be a interesting little insight into her life.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/forioscribe/225715.html

[cema.livejournal.com]

You probably meant her character. Yes, insightful.

[ben-yakov.livejournal.com]

I don't remember any of her writings that did not provoke an outrage of YHS. De mortuis aut bene aut nihil.

[cema.livejournal.com]

YHS being...?

I can see you chose nihil. Well, she could write; the language of her essays was enjoyable. We all can write, but it helps to be a native speaker. I hope this is bene.

[ben-yakov.livejournal.com]

Your Humble Servant

[ben-yakov.livejournal.com]

P.S. The eloquence is not a substitute for the contents of a writing. I was outraged not by her language, but rather by the way she saw and assessed the world we live in (allegedly the same). One should distinguish between a purely aesthetical essay aimed at self-expression and a paper in NYT which (I already wrote about that) is a policy-in-the-making.

P.P.S. I am not a writer. I am a narrator, an eskimo-type one.

[cema.livejournal.com]

Oh, I can tell aesthetics from the contents. But I am sure some of the NYT authors do not keep them where they belong.

Эскимо на палочке!

[anhinga-anhinga.livejournal.com]

That's probably a "package deal". I think she had to take her own writings seriously and at face value to be able to continue to write like this.

And if she really believed what she wrote in her On Photography book, for example "to photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed", "photographs, which package the world, seem to invite packaging", "there is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera"...

then it's not all that surprising that she was rude to the photographers. It's annoying that this had to be a "package deal", but I am afraid this was inevitable. I am not sure why a strong dose of "left-wing nihilism" seems to always be required for this kind of aesthetic effect, but it seems to be necessary.