I Know, I Said No More, But These Are Special

Two late-breaking additions to the memorials for Susan Sontag this week: in New York magazine, Franklin Foer discusses Sontag's "reconciling of her responsibilities as an intellectual and the realities of her rock-stardom," a contradiction that began from the moment "she told the New York intellectuals to open their eyes to the world around them--photography, dance, as well as Pop Art and mass culture." Scott McLemee (American Prospect) takes a different tack in exploring how "the timing of Sontag's death seemed to underscore her peculiar role, over the course of four decades, as 'the last intellectual,' to borrow the title of her essay on Walter Benjamin."