In her first novel, The Benefactor, published in 1963, a year before "notes on camp" she wrote the following sentence: "I am a homosexual and a wrier, both of whom are professionally self-regarding and sel-esteeming creatures." Admmitley, this line occurs in the voice of her charachter, Jean Jaques" But Susan wrote the sentence not Jean Jacques. I am a homsoexual and a wrer. EAch of her books and essays constains a similar coded declaration. Sontag came out in her own way, forcibly, redpeadedly. Her seeming refusal of queer idenity may have enraged others (eg Adrieene Rich's 1975 quarrel w. Sontage --supposedly on the subject of Leni Refiensthal but covertly on the subject of femminsit and lesbian identification--on the letters page of the New York Review of Books.) But in retrosepct Sontags retience seems pictursque, contaian, and human. And it did not preclude admiration for Gay Lib, even if her theory of sexuality emphsaized the saurine, no the cheerful. Listen to her admiration of ...poet and social critic Paul Goodmans erotic fothrighness. "I admired his courage, which showed itself in so many ways--one of the most admiable being his honesty about his homosexuailty in Five Years, for which he much critized by his s traight friends in the New York intellectual world, that was six ywars ago, befoire the advent of Gay Liberation made coming out of teh clset shcic. I Liked it when he talked about himself and when he mingled his own sad sexual desires with his deisses for the polity." Sad ssexual desires? Allow Sontag that adjectives aptness.

KAustenbaum, on Sontag, ArtForum, this month.
(you know i cant type)_