Reborn: Early Diaries 1947-1963

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

New
Paperback
2009
$12.27

Reborn is the compelling and frank early diary of Susan Sontag. Vivid, exhilarating, often moving ...charts the development of a good writer and an important critic . (Sunday Telegraph). '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, 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. Fascinating. 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). Inspirational. Sontag shows us not just the importance, but the exhilaration of being earnest . (New Statesman). 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). One of the finest American writers, thinkers, and political activists of the past four decades ...an intimate portrait of her early life . (Independent on Sunday). One of America's best-known and most admired writers, Susan Sontag was also a leading commentator on contemporary culture until her death in December 2004. Her books include four novels and numerous works of non-fiction, among them Regarding the Pain of Others, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, At the Same Time, Against Interpretation and Other Essays and Reborn: Early Diaries 1947-1963, all of which are published by Penguin. A further eight books, including the collections of essays Under the Sign of Saturn and Where the Stress Falls, and the novels The Volcano Lover and The Benefactor, are available from Penguin Modern Classics.

Synopsis

Reborn is the compelling and frank early diary of Susan Sontag. "Vivid, exhilarating, often moving ...charts the development of a good writer and an important critic". (Sunday Telegraph). '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, 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. "Fascinating. 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). "Inspirational. Sontag shows us not just the importance, but the exhilaration of being earnest". (New Statesman). "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). "One of the finest American writers, thinkers, and political activists of the past four decades ...an intimate portrait of her early life". (Independent on Sunday). One of America's best-known and most admired writers, Susan Sontag was also a leading commentator on contemporary culture until her death in December 2004. Her books include four novels and numerous works of non-fiction, among them Regarding the Pain of Others, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, At the Same Time, Against Interpretation and Other Essays and Reborn: Early Diaries 1947-1963, all of which are published by Penguin. A further eight books, including the collections of essays Under the Sign of Saturn and Where the Stress Falls, and the novels The Volcano Lover and The Benefactor, are available from Penguin Modern Classics.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 336
Edition: 1
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 01 Oct 2009
ISBN 10: 0141045191
ISBN 13: 9780141045191

Media Reviews

A fascinating document of Sontag's apprenticeship, charting her earnest quest for education, identity, and voice . . . What slowly emerges . . . is a sense of Sontag's ferocious will. . . . She wanted to be a writer and would do almost anything to make that happen. --Darryl Pinckney, The New Yorker A portrait of the artist as a young omnivore, an earnest, tirelessly self-inspecting thinker fashioning herself into the phenomenon she will be . . . Her journal is her true first book, the story of a woman struggling with her consciousness. --Richard Lacayo, Time magazine A revelation . . . As do all the best critics, Sontag gave us new metaphors for how to read and see. Fabulously, surprisingly, Reborn shows she used that skill to understand her own pell-mell life. --John Freeman, NPR.org What's fascinating . . . is that the journal reveals and adolescent and, later, a young woman, in whom 'ambition'--in this case, an overpowering yearning to be surroundede

Author Bio

Susan Sontag was born in Manhattan in 1933 and studied at the universities of Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. Her non-fiction works include Against Interpretation, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, AIDS and its Metaphors and Regarding the Pain of Others. She is also the author of four novels, a collection of stories and several plays. 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.