Darryl Pinckney discusses the recently-published early journals of the late Susan Sontag ("Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 (Farrar,Straus & Giroux)) in the December 22 & 29 issue of The New Yorker and notes:
"For Sontag, prose was not a vehicle for expressing what she thought; it was itself a form of thinking, and, perhpas more exactingly, of feeling as well.
'I don't know what my real feelings are,' she wrote in 1960. 'That's why I'm so interested in moral philosophy, which tells me (or at least turns me toward) what my feelings ought to be. Why worry about analyzing the crude ore, I reason, if you know how to produce the refined metal exactly?'
Pinckney concludes his piece by suggesting that:
"The realm of literature, to her, was a universal community, a brotherhood of the subversive and the good. 'Reborn' traces that evolving, innocent faith. An entry from 1961: 'Writing is a beautiful act. It is making something that will give pleasure to others later.'"
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