Anxiety of Influence?
Andrew Sullivan is ragging on all the effusive Susan Sontag obits for not mentioning that she was a lesbian whose most recent significant other was photographer Annie Leibovitz. Not being a major follower of things Sontagian, this is the first I knew of the relationship, which seems quite relevant to Sontag's life and work--not because of her lesbianism but because so much of Sontag's work concerned photography.
Andrew has a point about what the "inning of Susan Sontag" says about the media's continuing assumption that homosexuality is shameful. Of course, the obit writers might argue, it's not like she was married to Annie Leibovitz. From what Andrew says, it sounds like an on-again/off-again relationship of the sort that wouldn't merit mention in an obit if Leibovitz were a man--unless, of course, that man was a world-famous photographer whose work, and conversation about that work, surely influenced Sontag's thinking on the subject.
And while we're on the subject of the late Ms. Sontag, what definition of intellectual makes this sentence from Charles McGrath's Week in Review item true? "Susan Sontag, who died last week at the age of 71, was the pre-eminent intellectual of our time--visible, outspoken, engaged." Surely we can do better.