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Notes
INTRODUCTION: AUCTION OF SOULS
1.A. H. Giebler, “News of Los Angeles and Vicinity: 8,000 Armenians in Selig Spectacle,” The Moving Picture World 39, no. 4 (1919).
2.Sontag, I, etcetera (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1978), 23.
3.Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977), 70.
4.Ibid., 20.
5.Cynthia Ozick, “On Discord and Desire,” in The Din in the Head (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 3.
6.Author’s interview with Michael Roloff.
7.Author’s interview with Honor Moore.
8.Sontag, On Photography, 21.
9.Author’s interview with Vincent Virga.
10.Sontag, On Photography, 7.
11.Ibid., 11.
12.Conor Skelding, “Fearing ‘Embarrassment,’ the FBI Advised Agents Against Interviewing Susan Sontag,” Muckrock, June 13, 2014, https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2014/jun/13/susan-sontag-security-matter/.
13.Sontag, On Photography, 165.
14.Sontag, The Benefactor: A Novel (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1963), 1.
15.Ibid., 246.
16.Ibid., 70.
17.Sontag, Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966), 277.
18.“The World as India,” in Sontag, At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches, eds. Paolo Dilonardo and Anne Jump (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).
19.Susan Sontag Papers (Collection 612). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA.
20.Sontag Papers, August 13, [1960].
21.David Rieff, Swimming in a Sea of Death: A Son’s Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 62.
22.Sontag Papers, December 12, 1957.
23.Sontag, On Photography, 164.
24.“Notes on ‘Camp,’” in Sontag, Against Interpretation, 281.
25.Sontag Papers, December 9, 1961.
26.Sontag Papers, April 11, 1971.
27.Sontag to Peter Schneider, June 18, 1993, Sontag Papers.
28.Author’s interview with Admir Glamočak.
29.Author’s interview with Senada Kreso.
CHAPTER 1: THE QUEEN OF DENIAL
1.After her death, they were digitized by UCLA. They may be seen at http://digital2.library.ucla.edu/viewItem.do?ark=21198/zz00151t9g. The shipboard film is cataloged as dating from 1926 on the SS Paris to Beijing, but it more likely dates to 1931, when the couple took that ship from Le Havre to New York. (See U.S. Customs records, listed in note 15.) The sign on the train reads: Stolpce-Warszawa-Poznan-[Zbąszyń?]-Berlin-Hannover-Köln-Liege-Paris.
2.Author’s interview with Judith Cohen.
3.Sontag Papers, “week of Feb. 12, 1962.”
4.Author’s interview with Judith Cohen.
5.Author’s interview with Paul Brown.
6.Nora Ephron, “Not Even a Critic Can Choose Her Audience,” New York Post, September 23, 1967.
7.Sontag Papers.
8.Author’s interview with Judith Cohen.
9.Sontag Papers.
10.Sontag, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors (New York: Doubleday, 1990), 100.
11.Author’s interview with Judith Cohen.
12.Sontag Papers, early 1970s.
13.Author’s interview with Paul Brown.
14.Judith Cohen to Sontag, late 1970s, Sontag Papers.
15.A sample of the records on Ancestry.com includes the following outline of the couple’s travels. There is no record of Mildred’s travel to or arrival from Asia, and the only record of her arrival from Europe was in 1931.
Jack Rosenblatt applied for his first passport on November 17, 1923, declaring his intention to travel to China via Vancouver on the Empress of Asia on November 29, 1923. His occupation was “buyer of furs,” and he was employed by Julius Klugman’s Sons, Inc., 42 West Thirty-Eighth Street, New York City.
He applied for an extension of his passport at Tientsin, as a representative of the Mei Hwa Fur Trading Corporation. This application is not dated. He departed Shanghai on May 19, 1924, arriving in Seattle on June 4, 1924, on the SS President Madison. His address was 950 Noe Avenue, New York. He departed Yokohama for Manila and Vancouver on the SS Empress of Canada on July 9, 1927. He was living at 330 Wadsworth Avenue, New York. He sailed from Kobe to Seattle on July 17, 1928, on the SS President McKinley, arriving on July 30, 1928. His address was the Continental Fur Corporation, 251 West Thirtieth Street, New York. Jack and Mildred departed Le Havre on June 3, 1931, on the SS Paris, and arrived in New York on June 9, 1931. They listed their address as 251 West Thirtieth Street. Jack departed Shanghai on the SS President Coolidge on October 14, 1933, arriving in Honolulu on October 24, 1933. The address given was still 251 West Thirtieth Street. He met Mildred in Honolulu. She had departed Los Angeles on October 18, 1933, on the SS Monterey and reached Honolulu on October 23, 1933. They departed together on November 4, 1933, on the SS Lurline, and reached San Francisco on November 9, 1933. They departed Hamilton, Bermuda, on February 14, 1934, arriving at New York on February 15, on the SS Monarch of Bermuda. The address they gave was the business address, 251 West Thirtieth Street. Judith was born in New York on June 20, 1936. They departed Havana on January 3, 1937, on the SS Oriente, and arrived at New York on January 5, 1937. They now listed their address as 21 Wensley Drive, Great Neck, Long Island. On March 11, 1938, they departed Havana again, on the SS California, and arrived at New York on March 14, 1938. Jack died at Tientsin on October 19, 1938. There are no online records of Mildred’s return to the United States.
16.“China” screenplay, Sontag Papers.
17.Judith Cohen to Sontag, late 1970s, Sontag Papers.
18.Sontag, I, etcetera, 18.
19.Author’s interview with Judith Cohen.
20.“China” screenplay, Sontag Papers; ibid.
21.Author’s interview with Judith Cohen.
22.Sontag Papers, August 10, 1967.
23.Sontag to Mildred Sontag, July 4, 1956, Sontag Papers.
24.Author’s interview with Harriet Sohmers Zwerling.
25.Author’s interview with Judith Cohen.
26.Sontag Papers, March 25, 1986.
27.Sontag Papers, March 25, 1987.
28.Sontag Papers, January 11, 1960.
29.Author’s interview with Judith Cohen.
30.Sontag Papers, n.d.
31.“Project for a Trip to China,” in Sontag, I, etcetera, 23.
32.Sontag Papers, n.d. Among the thousands of pages in the Sontag Papers, no more than these two are in Mildred’s voice.
33.“Project for a Trip to China,” in Sontag, I, etcetera, 24.
34.Sontag, Illness, 7.
&nbs
p; 35.Suzie Mackenzie, “Finding Fact from Fiction,” Guardian, May 27, 2000.
36.“Project for a Trip to China,” in Sontag, I, etcetera, 17.
37.Sontag Papers, n.d. He had been born, the fourth of five children of a poor immigrant family on the Lower East Side in New York City, on March 6, 1906.
38.“Project for a Trip to China,” in Sontag, I, etcetera, 5.
39.Ibid., 7.
40.Ibid.
41.“China” screenplay, Sontag Papers.
42.“Project for a Trip to China,” in Sontag, I, etcetera, 24.
43.Sontag Papers, n.d.
44.Sontag Papers, n.d.
45.Rieff, Swimming, 174.
CHAPTER 2: THE MASTER LIE
1.Author’s interview with Vincent Virga.
2.Author’s interview with Martie Edelheit.
3.Author’s interview with Judith Cohen.
4.Author’s interviews with Terri Zucker and David Rieff.
5.Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964–1980, ed. David Rieff (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013), 72, January 16, 1965.
6.Judith Cohen in Nancy Kates, dir., Regarding Susan Sontag, HBO, 2014.
7.Author’s interview with Judith Cohen.
8.Author’s interview with Don Levine.
9.Sontag, Consciousness, 25, August 29, 1964.
10.Author’s interviews with Don Levine and Judith Cohen.
11.Sontag Papers.
12.Author’s interview with Don Levine.
13.Sontag Papers.
14.Sontag Papers.
15.Sontag, Consciousness, 213, August 9, 1967.
16.Sontag Papers, n.d.
17.Sontag, Consciousness, 226, August 9, 1967.
18.Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947–1963, ed. David Rieff (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008), 302, March 3, 1962.
19.Janet Geringer Woititz, Adult Children of Alcoholics (Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 1983), 3.
20.Sontag Papers.
21.This discussion relies on Woititz, Adult Children of Alcoholics.
22.Ibid.
23.Sontag, “Pilgrimage,” The New Yorker, December 21, 1987.
24.“Project for a Trip to China,” in Sontag, I, etcetera, 7.
25.Ibid., 22.
26.Author’s interview with Paul Brown.
27.Sontag Papers.
28.Author’s interview with Judith Cohen.
29.Author’s interview with Lucinda Childs.
30.Sontag, Consciousness, 222, August 10, 1967.
31.Ibid., 213, August 9, 1967.
32.Ibid., 223, August 10, 1967.
33.Author’s interview with Ferida Duraković.
34.Author’s interview with Vincent Virga.
35.Eva Kollisch in Kates, Regarding Susan Sontag.
36.Sontag, Consciousness, 222, August 10, 1967.
37.Ibid., 223.
38.Sontag, Reborn, 258, February 29, 1960. The person quoted is María Irene Fornés.
CHAPTER 3: FROM ANOTHER PLANET
1.Sontag, Reborn, 106ff.
2.Ibid., 115, January 1957.
3.Sontag, The Volcano Lover: A Romance (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1992), 105.
4.Sontag Papers, dated 1948. Mary is the name Sontag used in fictional accounts of Rosie.
5.Sontag, Reborn, 106, January 1957.
6.David Rieff quoted in Daniel Schreiber, Susan Sontag: Geist und Glamour: Biographie (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 2010), 18.
7.Sontag Papers.
8.Author’s interview with Walter Flegenheimer.
9.Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Writing a Woman’s Life (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988), 21. On page 12, she explains: “In 1984, I rather arbitrarily identified 1970 as the beginning of a new period in women’s biography because Zelda by Nancy Milford had been published in that year. Its significance lay above all in the way it revealed F. Scott Fitzgerald’s assumption that he had a right to the life of his wife, Zelda, as an artistic property.”
10.Carl E. Rollyson and Lisa Olson Paddock, Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 152.
11.Michael Norman, “Diana Trilling, a Cultural Critic and Member of a Select Intellectual Circle, Dies at 91,” New York Times, October 25, 1996.
12.Wendy Perron, “Susan Sontag on Writing, Art, Feminism, Life and Death,” Soho Weekly News, December 1, 1977.
13.Sontag, In America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 11.
14.Author’s interview with Jarosław Anders.
15.Sontag, In America, 26.
16.Sontag, Reborn, 113, January 1957.
17.Quoted in Craig Seligman, Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me (New York: Counterpoint, 2004), 16.
18.Rollyson and Paddock, Making of an Icon, 161.
19.Author’s interview with Don Levine.
20.Author’s interview with Paolo Dilonardo. She told him that the first synagogue she visited was in Florence. Her sister tells of the founding of the synagogue in the Valley.
21.Sontag to Jonathan Safran Foer, May 27, 2003, Sontag Papers.
22.Author’s interview with Judith Cohen; Sontag, Reborn, 107, 116, September 1957.
23.“Literature Is Freedom,” in Sontag, At the Same Time, 207.
24.Author’s interview with Judith Cohen.
25.Sontag Papers.
26.Ibid.
27.“The Desert Sanatorium and Institute of Research: Tucson, Arizona,” http://www.library.arizona.edu/exhibits/pams/pdfs/institute1.pdf.
28.Sontag, In America, 154.
29.Author’s interview with Judith Cohen.
30.Author’s interview with Larry McMurtry.
31.Sontag, Reborn, 108, September 1957.
32.Sontag Papers, March 25, 1987.
33.Sontag, Consciousness, 114–15, September 6, 1965, Tangier.
34.Rieff, Swimming, 74.
35.Sontag, Death Kit (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1967), 260–63.
36.Sontag, “Pilgrimage.”
37.Sontag, Consciousness, 114–15, September 6, 1965, Tangier.
38.Author’s interview with Judith Cohen.
39.Sontag Papers, not included in the published journals.
40.Author’s interview with Stephen Koch.
41.“Literature Is Freedom,” in Sontag, At the Same Time, 207.
42.Ibid.
43.Greg Daugherty, “The Last Adventure of Richard Halliburton, the Forgotten Hero of 1930s America,” Smithsonian, March 25, 2014.
44.“Homage to Halliburton,” in Sontag, Where the Stress Falls: Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), 255; Annie Leibovitz, A Photographer’s Life: 1990–2005 (New York: Random House, 2006).
45.“Homage to Halliburton,” in Sontag, Where the Stress Falls, 255.
46.Judith Cohen to Sontag, Sontag Papers.
47.Cactus Press, vol. I, no. VIII, May 6, 1945, Sontag Papers.
48.Sontag Papers, 1948.
49.Author’s interview with Judith Cohen.
50.Ibid.; Sontag, Reborn, 127, September 1957.
51.Susan Rieff, “Decisions,” Sontag Papers.
52.Sontag, In America, 195.
53.Author’s interview with Larry McMurtry.
CHAPTER 4: LOWER SLOBBOVIA
1.Ephron, “Not Even a Critic Can Choose Her Audience.”
2.Sontag, In America, 120.
3.Rieff, Swimming, 88.
4.Sontag, “Pilgrimage.”
5.Author’s interview with Greg Chandler.
6.Sontag, “Pilgrimage.”
7.Author’s interview with Uwe Michel.
8.Sontag, “Pilgrimage.”
9.Sontag Papers, August 24, 1987.
10.Sontag, Reborn, 70, January 12, 1950.
11.Author’s interview with Florence Malraux.
12.Sontag, “Pilgrimage.”
13.Rieff, Swimming, 142.
14.“The Imagination of Disaster,” in Sontag, Against Interpretation, 211.
15.Ibid.
, 225.
16.Ibid., 224.
17.Ibid., 217.
18.Sontag, “Pilgrimage.”
19.Ibid.
20.Ibid.
21.Author’s interview with Merrill Rodin.
22.Jack London, Martin Eden (New York: Macmillan, 1909).
23.“Time to Get Up,” May 17, 1948, Sontag Papers.
24.Rollyson and Paddock, Making of an Icon, 17.
25.Author’s interview with Merrill Rodin.
26.“Viva la Slobbovia,” The Arcade, April 16, 1948, Sontag Papers.
27.Perron, “Susan Sontag on Writing.” The presence of several encouraging English teachers in her journals makes one wonder if this rather theatrical description is not a piece of the mythmaking to which Sontag was prone.
28.Sontag Papers, March 7, 1947.
29.Sontag Papers, Notebook #5, March 7, 1947–May 6, 1947; Notebook #11, May 28, 1948–May 29, 1948.
30.Sontag Papers, October 18, 1948.
31.Sontag Papers, August 24, 1987.
32.Steve Wasserman quoted in Schreiber, Geist, 33.
33.Margalit Fox, “Susan Sontag, Social Critic with Verve, Dies at 71,” New York Times, December 28, 2004.
34.Norman Birnbaum quoted in James Atlas, “The Changing World of New York Intellectuals,” The New York Times Magazine, August 25, 1985.
35.Zoë Heller, “The Life of a Head Girl,” Independent, September 20, 1992.
CHAPTER 5: THE COLOR OF SHAME
1.Sontag, “Pilgrimage.”
2.Sontag Papers, December 28, 1949.
3.Thomas Mann, Tagebücher 1949–1950, ed. Inge Jens (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1991), 143.
4.From an early draft of “Pilgrimage,” Sontag Papers.
5.Ibid.
6.Sontag, Reborn, 113, January 1957.
7.Sontag Papers, June 9, 1948.
8.Sontag Papers, May 26, 1948.
9.Michael Miner, “War Comes to Rockford/Cartoonist Kerfuffle/Cartoon Recount,” Chicago Reader, June 5, 2003, http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/war-comes-to-rockfordcartoonist-kerfufflecartoon-recount/Content?oid=912271.
10.Sontag Papers, May 26, 1948.
11.Sontag Papers, February 10, 1947–April 20, 1947.
12.Sontag Papers, May 6, 1948.
13.Judith Cohen to author, e-mail.
14.Sontag Papers, Notebook #12, n.d., around 1948.
15.Sontag, Reborn, 11, December 25, 1948.
16.Ibid., 34, May 31, 1949.
17.Ibid., 223, December 24, 1959.