Susan Sontag immediately became a major figure of our culture with the publication in 1966 of the pathbreaking collection of essays Against Interpretation. She went on to write four novels, a collection of stories, several plays, and seven works of nonfiction, among them On Photography (1977) and Illness as Metaphor (1978). Her many international honors included the Jerusalem Prize (2000) and the Friedenspreis (Peace Prize) of the German Book Trade (2003). She died in New York City on December 28, 2004.
"I intend to do everything...to have one way of evaluating experience—does it cause me pleasure or pain, and I shall be very cautious about rejecting the painful—I shall anticipate pleasure everywhere and find it too, for it is everywhere! I shall involve myself wholly...everything matters!"
So wrote Susan Sontag in May 1949 at the age of sixteen. This, the first of three volumes of her journals and notebooks, presents a constantly and utterly surprising record of a great mind in incubation. It begins with journal entries and early attempts at fiction from her years as a university and graduate student, and ends in 1964, when she was becoming a participant in and observer of the artistic and intellectual life of New York City.
Reborn is a kaleidoscopic self-portrait of one of America’s greatest writers and intellectuals, teeming with Sontag’s voracious curiosity and appetite for life. We watch the young Sontag’s complex self-awareness, share in her encounters with the writers who informed her thinking, and engage with the profound challenge of writing itself—all filtered through the inimitable detail of everyday circumstance.
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. The first of three planned volumes of Sontag's private journals, this book is extraordinary for all the reasons we would expect from Sontags writing—extreme seriousness, stunning authority, intolerance toward mediocrity; Sontags vulnerability throughout will also utterly surprise the late critic and novelists fans and detractors. At 15, when these journals began, Sontag (1933–2004) already displayed her ferocious intellect and hunger for experience and culture, though what is most remarkable here is watching Sontag grow into one of the century's leading minds. In these carefully selected excerpts (many passages are only a few lines), Sontag details her developing thoughts, her voluminous reading and daily movie-going, her life as a teenage college student at Berkeley discovering her sexuality (bisexuality as the expression of fullness of an individual), and meeting and marrying her professor Philip Rieff, with whom, at the age of 18, she had David, her only child. Most powerful are the entries corresponding to her years in England and Europe, when, apart from Philip and their son, the marriage broke down and Sontag entered intense lesbian relationships that would compel her to rethink her notions of sex, love (physical beauty is enormously, almost morbidly, important to me) and daughter- and motherhood, and all before the age of 30. Watching Sontag become herself is nothing short of cathartic. (Dec.)
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From Booklist
Rieff sensitively portrayed revered critic and novelist Sontag during her last days in Swimming in a Sea of Death (2008) and now continues to navigate the great sea of her legacy as editor of her journals. He didn’t want to open his mother’s private life to public eyes, but because her papers are available to scholars, he does so preemptively, granting readers access to the innermost thoughts of a genuine prodigy. In 1948, at age 15, Sontag asks, “And what is it to be young in years and suddenly awakened to the anguish, the urgency of life?” After starting college at 16, she fills her journals with passionate analysis of books, her intellectual ambitions, her struggle to accept her homosexuality, and the ecstasy and torment of her first lesbian relationship. Then, suddenly, this ardent seeker becomes a wife and mother. She loves her son, but marriage does not suit her, and her battle to reclaim her true self is one of several dramatic rebirths punctuating this electrifying record of Sontag striving to become Sontag. Two more volumes are planned. --Donna Seaman
Review
“What ultimately matters about Sontag . . . is what she has defended: the life of the mind, and the necessity for reading and writing as ‘a way of being fully human.’” —Hilary Mantel, Los Angeles Times Book Review
發表於2025-03-11
Reborn 2025 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載
成名前的歲月,讓人看到她是如何成為後來的蘇珊.桑塔格。這個女人是如勇敢地麵對她自己,又是如此無法掩飾地優秀。日記文字的信息量比較大,寫得很濃縮和精練。她不斷鞭策自己而前進,你能看到她是因為優秀而另類、特彆,而不是標榜自己“不一樣”。她就是蘇珊.桑塔格。
評分14歲、15歲、16歲,我們在做什麼?忙於早戀,還是忙於功課,或者忙於應付各種各樣的考試吧,而20多歲之後,絕大多數女子都在忙於戀愛,以及茫然中走進塵埃。在蘇珊·桑塔格的日記裏,這些青澀歲月已經是長長的、縱橫整個人文科學各方麵的書目,她勤勉、銳意、深邃的思考,初露...
評分成名前的歲月,讓人看到她是如何成為後來的蘇珊.桑塔格。這個女人是如勇敢地麵對她自己,又是如此無法掩飾地優秀。日記文字的信息量比較大,寫得很濃縮和精練。她不斷鞭策自己而前進,你能看到她是因為優秀而另類、特彆,而不是標榜自己“不一樣”。她就是蘇珊.桑塔格。
評分重生,蘇珊·桑塔格日記與隨筆 源於對網絡信息的安全性,我決定想些日記,我自己想要錶達的情感,思想,生活等等 第二次,看這本書瞭,第一次是圖書館偶遇看的。 重新看瞭一遍,腦中總是在迴想差距,她從小就開始看書瞭,可能差距在她身邊的資源比較多,我自己傢裏的書,真的好...
評分試圖記下她提到的書和列齣的書單,發現我不知道的太多瞭。卡夫卡、托馬斯曼,其餘的一概不知。我剛讀完《魔山》,覺得好極瞭,而她十五歲已經反復閱讀並且親自拜訪過曼。她說紀德的《日記》有産前陣痛般的共鳴,也許接下來會讀。 就像雄心勃勃的閱讀一樣,她不斷的嚮自己和身...
圖書標籤: SusanSontag 日記 蘇珊·桑塔格 隨筆 美國 英文原版 鮮活生命 文學
日記體的自戀和自我修正.....桑塔格語言的準確性
評分“To write is to exist, to be one's self.”(De Gourmont)
評分it helps my understanding of myself as well
評分To observe and try my self. To further indulgences by distancing. To be whole.
評分天縱英纔
Reborn 2025 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載