It ain't over till it's over

2004 is still with us, but unfortunately Susan Sontag is not. I heard about her death on NPR this morning. She was one of the important voices I listened to in my formative years in academia, yet she was so much more than an academic.

Her position on the 9/11 attacks was very refreshing, especially since she was an American. Claiming that what happened on 9/11 was not a "cowardly attack" on civilization but "an act undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions" made a lot of sense to me and anyone else who was not willing to buy into the nonsense that the Bush administration fed (and continue to feed) to the masses.

Thanks to Susan Sontag I came to appreciate the works of Antonin Artaud better. Her introduction to the anthology of Artaud works she edited explained the complex mind of that amazing Frenchman in ways that no one else was able to do for me before her.

To say that she will be missed is to state the obvious. What a pity she will not be equally missed by many of the people who should really take what she had to say more seriously.

With her gone, there's now one more reason for not wanting to live in New York City anymore.