Susan Sontag

Presents excerpts from the early writings of the author, with reflections on her meetings with influential writers and intellectuals, her literary ambitions, and her criticisms of other writers.

Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

Reborn

'I intend to do everything . . . I shall anticipate pleasure everywhere and find it too, for it is everywhere! I shall involve myself wholly . . . everything matters!' This first selection from Susan Sontag's diaries (from 1947 - 1963) takes us from early adolescence though to when Sontag was in her early thirties. It is an astonishingly affecting and honest self-portrait which is also a fascinating, revealing account of an artist and critic being born. We see Sontag honing her skills and fashioning herself, by a supreme act of will, into an intellectual force. 'Inspirational. Sontag shows us not just the importance, but the exhilaration of being earnest' New Statesman 'One can feel Sontag's mind beginning to ripen and bloom, and the full force of the intellectual originality that would be her hallmark emerging' Guardian 'A fascinating document of her apprenticeship, charting her earnest quest for education, identity and voice. Reborn is overwhelmingly a record of an inner landscape' New York Review of Books

Reborn Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963