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http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20494 Notes on Susan

It is the aspect of Sontag that is most difficult to take: the longing, or the pretense, to be a witness, a melancholic standing in the ruins of history, despite the circumstances of her life. As a critic, she was a Roland Barthes who dreamed of being a Walter Benjamin, and moreover, a Walter Benjamin who dreamed of being a Russian novelist. But she was born too late, and in the wrong place.