In spring 2004, Susan Sontag was diagnosed with the incurable blood cancer which would kill her later the same year. In this fiercely honest and beautifully written memoir, her son David Rieff chronicles the last months of Sontag's life. Sontag had fought off two previous bouts of cancer, against all the odds, and had developed a sense of herself as somehow charmed, able to beat this disease. She also had a huge appetite for experience, and a wild, extravagant desire to live. Rieff details her reaction to the diagnosis, and the way that her friends and doctors responded to her shock and grief.He writes movingly about being by her side during that last year and at her death, and about his own contradictory emotions: his guilt both for not consoling her enough, and for somehow colluding with her in her belief that she could beat the disease. Drawing on Sontag's journals and letters, which Rieff read after her death, and on the writings about death of other great thinkers, "Swimming in a Sea of Death" provides a vivid portrait of Sontag in the last year of her life and a haunting meditation on mortality.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
At age 70, Susan Sontag was diagnosed with a virulent form of blood cancer, her third bout with cancer over the course of 30 years and one she would not win. Her son, journalist Rieff (At the Point of a Gun), accompanied her through her final illness and death, and offers an extraordinarily open, moving account of the trial and journey. Sontag's avidity for life had prompted her to beat the advanced breast cancer that devastated her in 1975; she now resolved to fight the statistical odds of dying from myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), despite the pessimistic prognosis from doctors. Rieff, who admits he was not close to his mother over the preceding decade, is silenced by Sontag's refusal to reconcile herself to dying and unable to console her. Both mother and son are by turns angered by doctors' infantilizing treatment of terminally ill patients and by their squelching of hope. Anxious, chronically unhappy and obsessed with gathering information about her disease, Sontag was unable to be alone, and Rieff becomes one in a circle of devotees who rotate staying with her at her New York City apartment. A doctor is found who does not believe her case is hopeless, and in Seattle she undergoes a bone-marrow transplant. In this sea of death, Sontag took her son with her—conflicted, wracked, but wrenchingly candid, Rieff attempts to swim out. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Susan Sontag was fiercely, exuberantly alive, and uncompromising in her life no less than her work. David Rieff's fine, tender, and unflinching portrait of her final illness brings home her absolute determination to survive to the last -- to survive against the odds and live creatively despite a devastating disease and an unproven cancer treatment. At once a report from the frontlines of experimental oncology and a moving, absorbing personal account of his mother's last illness, Swimming in a Sea of Death is a courageous and darkly beautiful book." -- Oliver Sacks
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
56 of 59 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Memoirs written after the death of a loved one can either be elegies radiant with poetic inspiration or they can be self-serving eulogies. David Rieff, a thoughtful and intelligent writer, happens to be the son of Susan Sontag, one of America's most brilliant authors and essayists, a woman of great courage with the gift of exploring concepts of our society that she found in need of our attention while at the same time a being novelist able to spin meaningful tales about the indomitable human spirit. SWIMMING IN A SEA OF DEATH: A SON'S MEMOIR is far more than a rehash of an artist's life and exit from life: this book is a work of sensitive evaluation of not only a great woman but also of the myriad aspects of our healthcare system, both good and bad, and the delicate yet coarsely bumpy path that begins with the diagnosis of a terminal disease and ends with the sigh that completes mortality. From this book we learn not only the trials of Susan Sontag's battle with three attacks of cancer (breast cancer in 1975 with radical surgery and chemotherapy, uterine sarcoma in 1998, and Myelodysplastic Syndrome in 2004), but we also learn about the relationship of a son and mother and the challenges to each in coping with threatening diseases and ultimately death.
What makes this 'memoir' so different is the frank honesty of the author David Rieff. He reflects on the avid love for living that ruled Sontag's life, her refusal to give in when she felt that fighting the odds was better than the alternative of doing nothing. Rieff took on the role of supporting his mother's belief that all of the chemotherapy, mutilating surgery, radiation, bone marrow transplantation - all accompanied by severe physical and psychological pain - was worth the effort if the methods of attacking the disease process held any degree of hope of remission. It is a lesson for all of us who have dealt or are dealing with being there for loved ones who face medical decisions, times when the patient needs the support of those who care and are willing to accept the fact that the patient is very much alive - until life is no longer an option.
The reader comes away from this book with a profound respect for the spirit of Susan Sontag, the courage of her various physicians who respected her participation in her decisions, and the quiet and gentle love of a son who can now see the giant who was his mother as he passes her grave in Paris. Toward the end of this book Rieff quotes form Sontag's journals: '"I write the way I live and my life is full of quotations." Then she adds: "Change it." But she never did.' This memoir is an Elegy. Highly recommended reading. Grady Harp, February 08
What makes this 'memoir' so different is the frank honesty of the author David Rieff. He reflects on the avid love for living that ruled Sontag's life, her refusal to give in when she felt that fighting the odds was better than the alternative of doing nothing. Rieff took on the role of supporting his mother's belief that all of the chemotherapy, mutilating surgery, radiation, bone marrow transplantation - all accompanied by severe physical and psychological pain - was worth the effort if the methods of attacking the disease process held any degree of hope of remission. It is a lesson for all of us who have dealt or are dealing with being there for loved ones who face medical decisions, times when the patient needs the support of those who care and are willing to accept the fact that the patient is very much alive - until life is no longer an option.
The reader comes away from this book with a profound respect for the spirit of Susan Sontag, the courage of her various physicians who respected her participation in her decisions, and the quiet and gentle love of a son who can now see the giant who was his mother as he passes her grave in Paris. Toward the end of this book Rieff quotes form Sontag's journals: '"I write the way I live and my life is full of quotations." Then she adds: "Change it." But she never did.' This memoir is an Elegy. Highly recommended reading. Grady Harp, February 08
30 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
How does a son respond when told that his mother is dying? Is there a difference when this is not the first time? What does it mean to the soul when the cure itself kills?
American writer Susan Sontag died in 2004 of a form of cancer brought on by her earlier aggressive treatments for advanced breast cancer. She was told of her fatal condition as she was accompanied by her son, David Rieff. Nine months later she was dead.
Is there any difference between fighting for life and fighting against death? In Sontag's case, it seems that her goal was to survive and to live life to the fullest. She was a believer in a "take no prisoners" approach to her cancer treatments... a serious disease required an equally serious treatment, and a dedication to this treatment. For her, according to Rieff, death was not an option.
"But with the greatest respect [for her oncologists], the brute fact of mortality means that there are limits on how much better we can realistically expect to do" (p. 166).
This is a book of two viewpoints: what Rieff as a son saw of his mother and himself as the MDS progressed, and how Sontag approached life and death during this period.
Both were brave, and reflective.
"During the months I watched my mother die, I was increasingly at a loss as to how I could behave toward her in ways that actually would be helpful. Mostly, I felt at sea" (p. 103).
"She told me at one point that she was tormented by the amount of time she had wasted during her life on what she called her 'Girl Scout-ish' obsession with doing 'worthy' things" (p. 106).
"And in the end, those of us who loved her failed her as the living always fail the dying, for we could not actually do the only thing she really wanted, which was to stave off extinction for just some time longer, let alone give her what I'm afraid is all too accurately called a new lease on life. Only her doctors could do that" (p. 136-137).
Sontag's philosophy toward treatment was simple in its complexity:
Search for every treatment option.
Take every chance.
Survive.
She watched friends die because they did not heed this advice. But as the sand inexorably runs through the hourglass, the options disappear, the menu of treatments is taken away, and the final endpoint appears.
Rieff collects his thoughts from his observations and reflections, and from both his pre-death conversations with his mother and his post-death review of her journals. This is not a biography of Susan Sontag. It is a mourning of a son for his mother.
"Mostly, I felt at sea."
It is a tough decision, financially, emotionally, and practically, to be aggressive in fighting disease. Sontag was always a fighter, and her experiences fighting breast cancer shaped her to the end. For Rieff, his mother was... his mother. There is no expectation of a reunion in the afterlife, or a reincarnation and reinvention. You live your life, and then you die.
Sontag refused to be passive in life, and in her approach to the prospect of death.
And she is missed by her son.
American writer Susan Sontag died in 2004 of a form of cancer brought on by her earlier aggressive treatments for advanced breast cancer. She was told of her fatal condition as she was accompanied by her son, David Rieff. Nine months later she was dead.
Is there any difference between fighting for life and fighting against death? In Sontag's case, it seems that her goal was to survive and to live life to the fullest. She was a believer in a "take no prisoners" approach to her cancer treatments... a serious disease required an equally serious treatment, and a dedication to this treatment. For her, according to Rieff, death was not an option.
"But with the greatest respect [for her oncologists], the brute fact of mortality means that there are limits on how much better we can realistically expect to do" (p. 166).
This is a book of two viewpoints: what Rieff as a son saw of his mother and himself as the MDS progressed, and how Sontag approached life and death during this period.
Both were brave, and reflective.
"During the months I watched my mother die, I was increasingly at a loss as to how I could behave toward her in ways that actually would be helpful. Mostly, I felt at sea" (p. 103).
"She told me at one point that she was tormented by the amount of time she had wasted during her life on what she called her 'Girl Scout-ish' obsession with doing 'worthy' things" (p. 106).
"And in the end, those of us who loved her failed her as the living always fail the dying, for we could not actually do the only thing she really wanted, which was to stave off extinction for just some time longer, let alone give her what I'm afraid is all too accurately called a new lease on life. Only her doctors could do that" (p. 136-137).
Sontag's philosophy toward treatment was simple in its complexity:
Search for every treatment option.
Take every chance.
Survive.
She watched friends die because they did not heed this advice. But as the sand inexorably runs through the hourglass, the options disappear, the menu of treatments is taken away, and the final endpoint appears.
Rieff collects his thoughts from his observations and reflections, and from both his pre-death conversations with his mother and his post-death review of her journals. This is not a biography of Susan Sontag. It is a mourning of a son for his mother.
"Mostly, I felt at sea."
It is a tough decision, financially, emotionally, and practically, to be aggressive in fighting disease. Sontag was always a fighter, and her experiences fighting breast cancer shaped her to the end. For Rieff, his mother was... his mother. There is no expectation of a reunion in the afterlife, or a reincarnation and reinvention. You live your life, and then you die.
Sontag refused to be passive in life, and in her approach to the prospect of death.
And she is missed by her son.
24 of 29 people found the following review helpful
By C. Hartmann
Format:Hardcover
The New York Times review of this book concluded that Susan Sontag's death was the kind of death most people would want to avoid--a hard death. Yes, but that aside, this book by her son offers readers little other than the chronicle of one unreflective perspective on a series of difficult events.
To begin, the book is poorly edited, which is a great shame. (One brief example: "Remembering how my mother had behaved during her previous cancers, her close friends also began to search online, and were soon e-mailing to Anne the most informative or promising materials or links that they had found online.")
Also, it is highly repetitive in content. One entire chapter is almost exclusively focused on maligning a brochure put out by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Rieff devotes page after page to berating it for essentially adopting his own attitude toward his mother during her illness: "a refusal to write as if bad news were bad news and despair were despair." Additionally, he revisits in almost every chapter the main theme of the book--that he does not know whether giving her the answers that he thought she wanted to hear (that is, lying to her about her chances for survival) was what he should have done. Once, or maybe twice, would have been poignant. But one can surmise that a briefer treatment would not have given this volume the length to justify publication.
In addition, the narrative portrays Rieff's experiences in detail but with little insight. He attempts to present his mother's thoughts about death, but since he did not know her well, he could only do this through a conjectured reading of her diaries. Interestingly, he does write that during her illness she talked with others about her approaching death but not with him, which calls into even greater question his ability to generalize from the perspective of his admittedly strained relationship with her. He writes that he is still angry about her death, but he does not attribute this to the process of grief. For him, grief does not seem to be a process at all but rather an onslaught of emotions which he would much rather suppress. Why then did he write a book about grieving?
And, finally, Rieff insists that both his and his mother's reactions to her experience were universally applicable. He belabors the other choices they both could have made. He describes other paths his mother could have taken. But in the end, he presents the past as inevitable and his mother's decisions as largely correct. (Reacting other than with despair upon being given a terminal diagnosis would be "insane," according to Rieff.) In doing so, he does a severe injustice to the myriad of experiences possible under similar circumstances, and in the process he runs the risk of alienating readers whose choices were or will be different, whose reactions do not mirror his or his mother's own.
Susan Sontag was a justly famous person. This book sheds light on an aspect of her life that her writings may not have revealed: her myopic failure to accept an important part of her own humanity. Had her son been able to look beyond her limited perspective, this would have been a far better book.
To begin, the book is poorly edited, which is a great shame. (One brief example: "Remembering how my mother had behaved during her previous cancers, her close friends also began to search online, and were soon e-mailing to Anne the most informative or promising materials or links that they had found online.")
Also, it is highly repetitive in content. One entire chapter is almost exclusively focused on maligning a brochure put out by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Rieff devotes page after page to berating it for essentially adopting his own attitude toward his mother during her illness: "a refusal to write as if bad news were bad news and despair were despair." Additionally, he revisits in almost every chapter the main theme of the book--that he does not know whether giving her the answers that he thought she wanted to hear (that is, lying to her about her chances for survival) was what he should have done. Once, or maybe twice, would have been poignant. But one can surmise that a briefer treatment would not have given this volume the length to justify publication.
In addition, the narrative portrays Rieff's experiences in detail but with little insight. He attempts to present his mother's thoughts about death, but since he did not know her well, he could only do this through a conjectured reading of her diaries. Interestingly, he does write that during her illness she talked with others about her approaching death but not with him, which calls into even greater question his ability to generalize from the perspective of his admittedly strained relationship with her. He writes that he is still angry about her death, but he does not attribute this to the process of grief. For him, grief does not seem to be a process at all but rather an onslaught of emotions which he would much rather suppress. Why then did he write a book about grieving?
And, finally, Rieff insists that both his and his mother's reactions to her experience were universally applicable. He belabors the other choices they both could have made. He describes other paths his mother could have taken. But in the end, he presents the past as inevitable and his mother's decisions as largely correct. (Reacting other than with despair upon being given a terminal diagnosis would be "insane," according to Rieff.) In doing so, he does a severe injustice to the myriad of experiences possible under similar circumstances, and in the process he runs the risk of alienating readers whose choices were or will be different, whose reactions do not mirror his or his mother's own.
Susan Sontag was a justly famous person. This book sheds light on an aspect of her life that her writings may not have revealed: her myopic failure to accept an important part of her own humanity. Had her son been able to look beyond her limited perspective, this would have been a far better book.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Swimming or drowning in arrid emotions
A son writing about his mother's dying. The mother is Susan Sontag, the son a writer. As such you expect this book to be well written, it is. Read more
Published 23 days ago by "Belgo Geordie"
3.0 out of 5 stars
Deathly Prose
This memoir of Susan Sontag by her son was a study in discomfiture: in Sontag's because she did not want to die, nor face "extinction" as her son frames the concept of death; and... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Eden
4.0 out of 5 stars
"One mourns those one has loved who have died until one joins them."
Siddartha Mukherjee's amazing The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer led me to this book, for which I am grateful. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Julee Rudolf
1.0 out of 5 stars
A Vague and Distant Portrait
I wanted to love this memoir, but finally had to admit that it was basically page after page of sentences. The tone is cautious and details scant. Read more
Published on January 31, 2010 by Betsy Bowen
4.0 out of 5 stars
Makes You Think
A somewhat digressive but nonetheless penetrating essay dealing with the philosophy and reality of terminal illness. Read more
Published on August 1, 2008 by Cary B. Barad
2.0 out of 5 stars
Tedious Repetition
This book takes 180 pages to repeat the same theme over and over:his mother was dying of a blood cancer,and she was in denial about it being incurable. Read more
Published on July 30, 2008 by Mitchell E. Davis
2.0 out of 5 stars
There are no easy deaths
I can understand very well that Mr Rieff felt the need to write about his mother's death. That such a writing should take the form of a published book is a totally different... Read more
Published on May 22, 2008 by F. J. Craveiro de Carvalho
2.0 out of 5 stars
Rieff should get out of the water
This book is one of the most depressing and pessimistic books I have ever had the misfortune to read. Read more
Published on April 14, 2008 by N. King
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fine Memoir
This short and well written, sometimes eloquent, memoir is an extended reflection on the death of Rieff's mother, the great critic Susan Sontag. Read more
Published on March 24, 2008 by R. Albin
5.0 out of 5 stars
A son's tribute to his mom
A well written book,not over sentimental. It tells of a talented woman who wanted to live and who happened to be the author's mother.
Published on February 27, 2008 by Irma Perlman
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