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David Rieff

Susan Sontag

Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 Hardcover – December 9, 2008

by Susan Sontag (Author), David Rieff (Editor)

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"I intend to do everything...to have one way of evaluating experience―does it cause me pleasure or pain, and I shall be very cautious about rejecting the painful―I shall anticipate pleasure everywhere and find it too, for it is everywhere! I shall involve myself wholly...everything matters!"

So wrote Susan Sontag in May 1949 at the age of sixteen. This, the first of three volumes of her journals and notebooks, presents a constantly and utterly surprising record of a great mind in incubation. It begins with journal entries and early attempts at fiction from her years as a university and graduate student, and ends in 1964, when she was becoming a participant in and observer of the artistic and intellectual life of New York City.

Reborn is a kaleidoscopic self-portrait of one of America's greatest writers and intellectuals, teeming with Sontag's voracious curiosity and appetite for life. We watch the young Sontag's complex self-awareness, share in her encounters with the writers who informed her thinking, and engage with the profound challenge of writing itself―all filtered through the inimitable detail of everyday circumstance.

Print length

336 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date

December 9, 2008
Dimensions

5.5 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
ISBN-10

0374100748
ISBN-13

978-0374100742
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The first of three planned volumes of Sontag's private journals, this book is extraordinary for all the reasons we would expect from Sontags writing—extreme seriousness, stunning authority, intolerance toward mediocrity; Sontags vulnerability throughout will also utterly surprise the late critic and novelists fans and detractors. At 15, when these journals began, Sontag (1933–2004) already displayed her ferocious intellect and hunger for experience and culture, though what is most remarkable here is watching Sontag grow into one of the century's leading minds. In these carefully selected excerpts (many passages are only a few lines), Sontag details her developing thoughts, her voluminous reading and daily movie-going, her life as a teenage college student at Berkeley discovering her sexuality (bisexuality as the expression of fullness of an individual), and meeting and marrying her professor Philip Rieff, with whom, at the age of 18, she had David, her only child. Most powerful are the entries corresponding to her years in England and Europe, when, apart from Philip and their son, the marriage broke down and Sontag entered intense lesbian relationships that would compel her to rethink her notions of sex, love (physical beauty is enormously, almost morbidly, important to me) and daughter- and motherhood, and all before the age of 30. Watching Sontag become herself is nothing short of cathartic. (Dec.)
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From Booklist

Rieff sensitively portrayed revered critic and novelist Sontag during her last days in Swimming in a Sea of Death (2008) and now continues to navigate the great sea of her legacy as editor of her journals. He didn’t want to open his mother’s private life to public eyes, but because her papers are available to scholars, he does so preemptively, granting readers access to the innermost thoughts of a genuine prodigy. In 1948, at age 15, Sontag asks, “And what is it to be young in years and suddenly awakened to the anguish, the urgency of life?” After starting college at 16, she fills her journals with passionate analysis of books, her intellectual ambitions, her struggle to accept her homosexuality, and the ecstasy and torment of her first lesbian relationship. Then, suddenly, this ardent seeker becomes a wife and mother. She loves her son, but marriage does not suit her, and her battle to reclaim her true self is one of several dramatic rebirths punctuating this electrifying record of Sontag striving to become Sontag. Two more volumes are planned. --Donna Seaman

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First edition (December 9, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0374100748
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0374100742
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #912,435 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,102 in Journalist Biographies
- #4,065 in Author Biographies
- #4,722 in Literary Diaries & Journals

Customer Reviews:
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David Rieff
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Susan Sontag
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Susan Sontag was born in Manhattan in 1933 and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. She is the author of four novels, a collection of stories, several plays, and six books of essays, among them Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors. Her books are translated into thirty-two languages. In 2001 she was awarded the Jerusalem Prize for the body of her work, and in 2003 she received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature and the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. She died in December 2004.
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Customer reviews

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2 star		3%
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Top reviews from the United States

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JaneA

A great diary, which could have been better edited!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 24, 2013

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I really loved Sontag’s diary. It reveals her as a passionate intellectual, in pursuit of full living, one could even say of having it all – loving both sexes, reading all that she can get her hands on, coping with her wish to write, become an author herself. She also revealed herself as an uncertain woman, a woman who doubts her choices and has a hard time making decisions. But I really had trouble with the editor’s interventions. Having read a lot of published women’s diaries, I have never seen an editor’s commentary intervene with the author’s text. The editor’s comments should have been written in endnotes or footnotes, and should not have made a mess of the original text. I do not think the editor had bad intentions, but the result is really troubling, and it sometimes even made me mad! Nonetheless, I am looking forward to reading the second part of the journal, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh.

8 people found this helpful

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Literary

Who's Afraid of Susan Sontag

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 27, 2015

Verified Purchase

Not as substantive as volume two, which I had previously read (her young age a factor, albeit the qualities of her youthful interests and accomishments impresses). At 68, I've long been a student of SS; it adds to my understanding. I saw her in a NYC theatre lobby of Irene Fornes's play (Letters/Cuba), but not a "celebrity worshipper," I stayed away. I now wish I had simply said, thank you.
Nicholas Aharon Boggioni.

4 people found this helpful

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Sarah

Quick and reliable delivery

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 2, 2020

Verified Purchase

Book arrived quickly and as advertised

One person found this helpful

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Private Name

Thank you for the book

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 7, 2020

Verified Purchase

Thank you for the book

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fiona craig

Excellent information regarding her formative years.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 11, 2017

Verified Purchase

Fascinated with Susan Sontag.

One person found this helpful

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Silvershirt

The unkindest cut

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 26, 2009

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Sontag's son has struck again, apparently intent on making his mark by violating her privacy. It is deplorable that such a private woman should be exposed to public scrutiny through her youthful journals, which I have serious doubt she ever intended her readers to see. David Reiff will never be the writer or thinker that his mother was, and I suppose this is his way of piggybacking on her fame, but shame is rather more what he deserves.

11 people found this helpful

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Sandra Mena

Thank you

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 9, 2018

Thank you!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 20, 2013

Verified Purchase

direct insight into the blossoming of an intellectual. and an outsider, from girlhood. riveting, expansive, helplessly sad. particularly poignant when writing about sexuality and love.

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Ana

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on May 10, 2016

Verified Purchase

Fantastic !

Heidi

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 25, 2015

Verified Purchase

Enjoyed 'As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh' more as was more introspective.

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