Susan

Sontag, Susan, 1933-2004, American writer and critic, b. New York City. She grew up in Arizona and California, studied philosophy at the Univ. of Chicago, Harvard, and Oxford, absorbed Gallic culture in Paris, and settled (1959) in New York City. Regarded as a brilliant and original thinker and highly visible as one of the most prominent public intellectuals of the second half of the 20th cent., Sontag became known for her vividly written critical essays on avant-garde culture in the 1960s. Most of these were collected in Against Interpretation (1966), in which she popularized the word camp, referring to exaggerated reproductions of the style and emotions of pop culture.

Sontag's essays on radical politics are collected in Styles of Radical Will (1969). She meditated on the nature of photography in On Photography (1977), explored the ways in which disease is demonized in Illness as Metaphor (1978) and AIDS and Its Metaphors (1989), analyzed various modernist writers and filmmakers in Under the Sign of Saturn (1980), and reassessed her ideas on photography's relationship to human suffering in her last book, Regarding the Pain of Others (2003). Many of her short nonfiction pieces from the 1980s and 90s were collected in Where the Stress Falls (2001). The late essays and speeches in the posthumous collection At the Same Time (2007) reflect her often less than sanguine views of post-9/11 political life and culture.

Her other works include short stories and such novels as The Benefactor (1963), Death Kit (1967), and the best-selling historical fictions The Volcano Lover (1992) and In America (2000). Sontag also wrote and directed four motion pictures, including the chamber drama Duet for Cannibals (1969) and the documentary Promised Lands (1974), directed theatrical productions, and was the author of a play, Alice in Bed (1992).

Glaspell, Susan, 1876-1948, American author, b. Davenport, Iowa, grad. Drake Univ. She married the playwright George Cram Cook (1913) and with him organized (1915) the Provincetown Players, an avant-garde theater group in Massachusetts. She wrote several plays for the company, including the one-acts Suppressed Desires (written with her husband, 1916) and Trifles (1916). She also served as actress and producer. Her longer plays include The Inheritors (1921) and Alison's House (1930; Pulitzer Prize). In addition she wrote several novels, short stories, and a biography of Cook, The Road to the Temple (1926).

orig. Susan Rosenblatt

(born Jan. 16, 1933, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Dec. 28, 2004, New York) U.S. writer. She studied at the University of Chicago and Harvard University and taught philosophy at several institutions. In the early 1960s she began contributing to such periodicals as the New York Review of Books, Commentary, and Partisan Review, her French-influenced essays being characterized by a serious philosophical approach to aspects of modern culture rarely taken seriously at the time, including films, popular music, and “camp” sensibility. Collections of her essays include the influential Against Interpretation, and Other Essays (1966) and Styles of Radical Will (1969). Her later critical works include On Photography (1977), Illness as Metaphor (1978), and AIDS and Its Metaphors (1989). She also wrote screenplays and novels, including The Volcano Lover (1992) and In America (2000).

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(born Feb. 15, 1820, Adams, Mass., U.S.—died March 13, 1906, Rochester, N.Y.) U.S. pioneer in the women's suffrage movement. A precocious child, she learned to read and write at the age of three. After attending a boarding school in Philadelphia, she took a teaching position in a Quaker seminary in upstate New York. She taught at a female academy (1846–49) and then settled in her family home near Rochester, N.Y. There she met many leading abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. The rebuff of her attempt to speak at a temperance meeting in Albany in 1852 prompted her to join Elizabeth Cady Stanton in organizing the Woman's State Temperance Society of New York. From this time she was a tireless campaigner for abolition and women's rights. During the early phase of the Civil War she helped organize the Women's National Loyal League, which urged the case for emancipation. After the war, she campaigned unsuccessfully to have the language of the Fourteenth Amendment altered to allow for woman as well as “Negro” suffrage. In 1868 she represented the Working Women's Association of New York, which she had recently organized, at the National Labor Union convention. In January 1869 she organized a woman suffrage convention in Washington, D.C., and in May she and Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). As a test of the legality of the suffrage provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, she cast a vote in the 1872 presidential election in Rochester. She was arrested, convicted (the judge's directed verdict of guilty had been written before the trial began), and fined; though she refused to pay the fine, the case was carried no further. She served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1892–1900) and lectured throughout the country for a federal women's-suffrage amendment.

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orig. Susan Rosenblatt

(born Jan. 16, 1933, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Dec. 28, 2004, New York) U.S. writer. She studied at the University of Chicago and Harvard University and taught philosophy at several institutions. In the early 1960s she began contributing to such periodicals as the New York Review of Books, Commentary, and Partisan Review, her French-influenced essays being characterized by a serious philosophical approach to aspects of modern culture rarely taken seriously at the time, including films, popular music, and “camp” sensibility. Collections of her essays include the influential Against Interpretation, and Other Essays (1966) and Styles of Radical Will (1969). Her later critical works include On Photography (1977), Illness as Metaphor (1978), and AIDS and Its Metaphors (1989). She also wrote screenplays and novels, including The Volcano Lover (1992) and In America (2000).

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orig. Antonia Susan Drabble

(born Aug. 24, 1936, Sheffield, Eng.) British novelist and scholar. Sister of Margaret Drabble, she was educated at Cambridge and taught at University College, London. Her third novel, The Virgin in the Garden (1978), won high acclaim; the sequel Still Life (1985) followed. Possession (1990), a virtuoso double narrative, won the 1990 Booker Prize, and both it and Angels and Insects (1991) were adapted for film. Her story collections include The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye (1995) and Elementals (1998). Degrees of Freedom (1965) was the first major study of Iris Murdoch. In 2002 Byatt published the novel A Whistling Woman, the last of a series of four novels—beginning with The Virgin in the Garden—featuring the character Frederica Potter.

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(born Feb. 15, 1820, Adams, Mass., U.S.—died March 13, 1906, Rochester, N.Y.) U.S. pioneer in the women's suffrage movement. A precocious child, she learned to read and write at the age of three. After attending a boarding school in Philadelphia, she took a teaching position in a Quaker seminary in upstate New York. She taught at a female academy (1846–49) and then settled in her family home near Rochester, N.Y. There she met many leading abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison. The rebuff of her attempt to speak at a temperance meeting in Albany in 1852 prompted her to join Elizabeth Cady Stanton in organizing the Woman's State Temperance Society of New York. From this time she was a tireless campaigner for abolition and women's rights. During the early phase of the Civil War she helped organize the Women's National Loyal League, which urged the case for emancipation. After the war, she campaigned unsuccessfully to have the language of the Fourteenth Amendment altered to allow for woman as well as “Negro” suffrage. In 1868 she represented the Working Women's Association of New York, which she had recently organized, at the National Labor Union convention. In January 1869 she organized a woman suffrage convention in Washington, D.C., and in May she and Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). As a test of the legality of the suffrage provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, she cast a vote in the 1872 presidential election in Rochester. She was arrested, convicted (the judge's directed verdict of guilty had been written before the trial began), and fined; though she refused to pay the fine, the case was carried no further. She served as president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1892–1900) and lectured throughout the country for a federal women's-suffrage amendment.

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"Susan's House" is the second single released by American rock band Eels from their 1996 debut, Beautiful Freak. It was Eels' biggest hit in the UK, where it reached #9 in the charts in May 1997. The piano hook in the chorus is a sample from Gladys Knight and the Pips' 1975 hit 'Love Finds Its Own Way'. The song's lyrics look at such society problems of that era as mental health issues (and the negative attitude towards people with such issues who are screaming for help), violent crime (arson in this case), the murder of a young boy, and teen pregnancy.

Track listing

1. "Susan's House"
2. "Stepmother" (previously unreleased)
3. "Manchester Girl" (BBC Radio 1 version)

External links