The Furious Spinner

Susan Sontag, who coincidentally grew up in Tucson, died last week. She loved a good argument. She often discovered what she believed, she said, through discussion, which is exactly how I feel about a good argument. I can be persuaded by a cogent, intelligent argument. I love it. I admired Sontag because she wrote fiction and nonfiction and was a human rights activist. She understood the use (and misuse) of language. One of the first things I read by her was "Illness as Metaphor." She talked about how society's perception of cancer, for instance, isolated sufferers of the disease. (In the past, it was often thought that cancer was a disease caused by repression.) The whole idea that people caused their own illnesses was ludicrous to her—and ludicrous to me. One of her last pieces was about the torture at Abu Ghraib. I will miss her truthfulness, her frankness, and her passion. 0 comments

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