One Last Sontag Recap, Plus More on Eisner
(A Juxtaposition We Think She Would Have Dug, And Maybe Him, Too)

As the controversy surrounding the Sontag obituaries (with any luck) trails off, Terry Teachout points readers to Andrew Sullivan, who has enough pull to get a, you should pardon the expression, straight answer from NYT ombudsman Daniel Okrent:

"Spurred by challenges and queries from several readers, I looked into the charge that The Times had willfully suppressed information about Susan Sontag's relationship with Annie Leibovitz. My inquiry indicates that the subject was in fact discussed before publication of the Sontag obituary, but that The Times could find no authoritative source who could confirm any details of a relationship."

Sullivan also directs his readers to an interview where Sontag declared she had loved "five women [and] four men" during her lifetime, which would seem to suggest that Patrick Moore was engaging in wishful thinking when he suggested her bisexual identity was a "familiar code" that she deployed to closet herself. Meanwhile, Sheelah Kolhatkar gets the best collection of quotes I've seen from Sontag's circle in an entertaining front-pager for the NY Observer, while Gary Indiana does his bit for the Village Voice.

Meanwhile... Will Eisner's passing brings about tributes from Adam Bernstein in WaPo, Rob Elder in the Chicago Tribune, and Sarah Boxer in NYT, as well as more personal accounts from Mark Evanier (note his decade-spanning portraits of the master at work) and Neil Gaiman.