
Notes on “Camp” (1964) - kmooney
https://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1964.html
======
smalkowicz
Whenever I see anything by her I can't help but remember this encounter with
N.N. Taleb

"I will always remember my encounter with the writer and cultural icon Susan
Sontag, largely because it was on the same day that I met the great Benoit
Mandelbrot. I took place in 2001, two months after the terrorist event, in a
radio station in New York. Sontag who was being interviewed, was pricked by
the idea of a fellow who “studies randomness” and came to engage me. When she
discovered that I was a trader, she blurted out that she was “against the
market system” and turned her back to me as I was in mid-sentence, just to
humiliate me (note here that courtesy is an application of the Silver rule),
while her female assistant gave me the look, as if I had been convicted of
child killing. I sort of justified her behavior in order to forget the
incident, imagining that she lived in some rural commune, grew her own
vegetables, wrote on pencil and paper, engaged in barter transactions, that
type of stuff.

No, she did not grow her own vegetables, it turned out. Two years later, I
accidentally found her obituary (I waited a decade and a half before writing
about the incident to avoid speaking ill of the departed). People in
publishing were complaining about her rapacity; she had to squeeze her
publisher, Farrar Strauss and Giroud of what would be several million dollars
today for a book advance. She shared, with a girlfriend, a mansion in New York
City, one that was later sold for $28 million dollars. Sontag probably felt
that insulting people with money inducted her into some unimpeachable
sainthood, exempting her from having skin in the game."[0]

[0] [https://medium.com/incerto/the-merchandising-of-
virtue-b5487...](https://medium.com/incerto/the-merchandising-of-
virtue-b548762658f0)

~~~
coolandsmartrr
This anecdote really changes my perception of her. It seems like one of the
cases where you have to divorce the author from the author to appreciate the
creation.

I was going to leave some comments about her other interesting works, but I
don't this I can after reading this.

~~~
mellosouls
Why? She may have been like that generally. She may have been having an off
day. It's just one encounter, and one side of the story.

An interesting anecdote, but not something to base an entire life assessment
on.

------
wellpast
Sontag's journals are a fun read. They are like a twitter stream of her random
thoughts, from the 60s and 70s. Weird, fevered, genius stuff.

e.g. She predicted the iPhone:

> A novel about the future. Machines. Each man has his own machine (memory
> bank, codified decision maker, etc.) You "play" the machine. Instant
> everything [1965]

Another:

> What if everything were the same, but no one talked.

It goes on... they're great..

