✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Terry Castle · Desperately Seeking Susan: remembering Susan Sontag

lrb.co.uk · 5,540 words · saved by 1 readers

A few weeks ago I found myself scanning photographs of Susan Sontag into my screensaver file: a tiny head shot clipped from Newsweek; two that had appeared in the New York Times; another printed alongside Allan Gurganus’s obituary in the Advocate, a glossy American gay and lesbian mag usually devoted to pulchritudinous gym bunnies, gay sitcom stars and treatments for flesh-eating strep. It seemed the least I could do for the bedazzling, now-dead she-eminence. The most beautiful photo I downloaded was one that Peter Hujar took of her in the 1970s, around the time of I, Et Cetera. She’s wearing a thin grey turtleneck and lies on her back – arms up, head resting on her clasped hands and her gaze fixed impassively on something to the right of the frame. There’s a slightly pedantic quality to the whole thing which I like: very true to life. Every few hours now she floats up onscreen in this digitised format, supine, sleek and flat-chested. No doubt hundreds (thousands?) of people knew Susan

Vol. 27 No. 6 · 17 March 2005 Desperately Seeking Susan Terry Castle Share on Bluesky Share on Facebook Share Email Print 5281 words Your browser does not support the audio element. A few weeks ago I found myself scanning photographs of Susan Sontag into my screensaver file: a tiny head shot clipped from Newsweek ; two that had appeared in the New York Times ; another printed alongside Allan Gurganus's obituary in the Advocate , a glossy American gay and lesbian mag usually devoted to pulchritudinous gym bunnies, gay sitcom stars and treatments for flesh-eating strep. It seemed the least I cou

Explore this link on the map →

related reading