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A new biography of Susan Sontag reveals that the late author’s first published book may well have been released under another name: That of her ex-husband. The sociologist Philip Rieff, whom Sontag married in 1950, launched his career with his 1959 book “Freud: The Mind of the Moralist.” (The book was released in the same…
It’s a wonderful time for fashion mavens, fans of 20th century cultural theory, and anyone who knows that line in “Rent” that goes “To Sontag! To Sondheim! To anything taboo!” For indeed, the .001% have spoken, and the theme of this year’s Met Gala will be none other than the seminal 1964 essay by Jewish…
SHARP: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion By Michelle Dean New York: Grove Press. 362 pages, $26.00 Atop the Acropolis in Athens is the Erechtheion, where six caryatids — pillars in the form of female figures — support the structure sacred to Athena. Michelle Dean’s “Sharp,” the incisive and engaging stories…
Here’s a hot take for you: one of the most influential aesthetic movements of the past 10 years has been the proliferation of “Christian Kitsch.” Looking through this list of “Awkward Christian Music Album Covers” published on Sad and Useless it’s easy find its aesthetic counterpart in the world of public access television. The two…
In October and November 1973, during and shortly after the Yom Kippur War, Susan Sontag travelled to Israel to make a documentary film entitled “Promised Lands.” The movie constituted a mere coda in the recent HBO documentary about her life and work, “Regarding Susan Sontag”, which as Gabe Friedman noted in his review “leaves out…
When Susan Sontag passed away in 2004, her New York Times obituary described her as a “renowned novelist, essayist, and critic.” “Regarding Susan Sontag,” a documentary directed by Nancy Kates that airs on HBO on December 8, shows that Sontag might have appreciated that order, with the word “novelist” leading the way. Despite all of…
● Susan Sontag: A Biography By Daniel Schreiber Translated from the German by David Dollenmayer Northwestern University Press, 296 pages, $35 According to this welcome biography, which originally appeared in German in 2007, the artist Joseph Cornell believed that the American Jewish essayist and filmmaker Susan Sontag was the “great-great-grandmother of [French actor] Jean-Paul Belmondo……
● My 1980s & Other Essays By Wayne Koestenbaum FSG Originals, 336 pages, $16 Why would you read a collection of essays by a critic who writes mostly about artists (of many kinds — filmmakers, painters, poets, singers, etc.) about whom you do not, with a few exceptions, know anything? Maybe because the critic teaches…
Virtual
Dec 7, 2022
7 pm ET ·
A conversation with Julia Haart and her son Shlomo, stars of Netflix's 'My Unorthodox Life,' about the new season and much more.
