I’m not the only one to notice how the big media has essentially lied by omission about Susan Sontag’s life. An op-ed in today’s L.A. Times notes the following:
An unauthorized biography written by Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock and published by W.W. Norton in 2000, reports that Sontag was, for seven years, the companion of the great American playwright Maria Irene Fornes (in Sontag’s introduction to the collected works of Fornes, she writes about them living together). She also had a relationship with the renowned choreographer Lucinda Childs. And, most recently, Sontag lived, on and off, with Leibovitz.
Even Hitchens mentions only her ex-husband. Privacy? From a woman who detailed every aspect of her own illnesses? From someone whose best work is redolent with homosexual themes? But, of course, Sontag understood that her lesbianism might limit her appeal in a homophobic culture – even on the extreme left, where she comfortably lived for decades. That was her prerogative. But that’s no reason for the media to perpetuate untruths after her death. And it’s certainly reason to review her own record in confronting injustice. Just as she once defended the persecution of gay people in Castro’s Cuba, she ducked one of the burning civil rights struggles of her time at home. But she was on the left. So no one criticized.
The Dish 