I felt uneasy watching the film but wasn’t sure quite why. . .The many lovers, the many art forms she dips her toe in, the adoring critics and bohemians saying worshipful things. There is something attractive about that New York literary scene… and also something about it all that makes me queasy. Then Susan Sontag’s sister appears, and drops her bombshell. “She wasn’t honest with me.” And that flipped some switch in my brain. Whoa! The sister strikes me as funny, decent, lively and kind. How could Sontag do that to her? What kind of fantasy bubble was Susan living in, and how could the people she knew let her live in that bubble? Were they so dazzled that they gave her a pass on…

She was the intellectual that wrote in language that I could embrace, made me believe I could be a thinker without being a snob.  She was the tough cookie
that could dish it out and be beautiful and smart and show the boys a thing or two.  She made Derrida seem silly but made me fall in love with Barthes.  She
was a rock when I was ill and I could remind myself that it was not my fault cause Susan said so. I was not a metaphor, and there was no rationalizing 
cause and effect because of some literary fatal flaw. Sontag’s work shaped me, I even believe that the conversation has changed because of her.  But it’s like the everlasting question what makes a good book and what…