A Susan Sontag obituary, written by Elizabeth Hardwick, appeared in the
February 18, 2005 issue of the NYROB. Hardwick writes "Except in
unusually desolating circumstances, human beings do not want to die.
Medicines, hospitals, and so on are called upon to do what they can,
and, that failing, there is not much to do except to surrender. It as
otherwise with Susan Sontag, who fought death, challenged it. Her death
in December is a great sadness for those who loved her personally and
for those who treasured her luminous career as a writer. In the
previous decades she had known serious assaults on her life An illness
sent her to Paris, where in her scholarly fashion she had decided the
most hopeful treatment might be found. This past year, she spent months
in Seattle being treated for a return of cancer. That failing, she was
sent back home to New York, where she underwent further treatment, and
then died."
I probably skipped over this Sontag obituary when I got my copy of the
NYROB because I found such matters depressing, but after the months and
months of taking care of Susan, taking her to specialist after
specialist and the rigor of test after test, and seeing her wither
during the process, I read such things today, maybe to see how others
did it -- nothing in Hardwick's obituary about who took care of her
through all of this.
If a Sontag-like experience occurred to anyone on Lit-Ideas, we might
not know it. Maybe no one wants to talk about an illness on a format
like this, when no one is there to hold one's hand and say, "oh you poor
poor dear." I wrote about (my) Susan's illness and the treatment she
was receiving, partly to complain about it I suppose, but if I developed
an illness, say the inflammation of my Insular Cortex and had only a few
months before it exploded, maybe I wouldn't want to talk about it.
As to that, people have disappeared from Lit-Ideas. After a few months
someone posts a note asking whatever happened to X. Various people
respond with digital shrugs, and since there is nothing more to say no
one says anything and then one day we forget X's name (which is why I
say X and not the real name of someone who disappeared). So before I
forget his name, where is Mike Geary? Some scammer hijacked his email
and periodically sends out advertisements for various things, not to the
whole list but to several people in his address book. I sent Mike a
note at the time telling him of this but never received a reply. Of
course Mike being from Tennessee and restricted a while back from booze,
he may have said the hell with it and gone on a bender, then gotten in a
bar fight and is now serving 12 to 18 months in the local slammer,
something benign like that. But how would we know?
Lawrence
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