seeing a 1062 photo of sontag in the new york times magazine. she is smoking, in 1962, looking at the camera, smoking or at least holding a cigarette...and the way she holds her nands, the directness of her face, the folding of her body, the singularity of her glamour and the clumping of the crowd--she kind of looks like garbo, and like garbo, who's best work is her self, her clothing, the photographs, and the legend, as opposed to films like grand hotel (& the best garbo movies are that which intersect the persona w. the filmic rites, like queen chrstiina), sontag as ikon is the life work there, not sontag as writer.

the story republishes excerpts from her diary and t his is one from 58 in paris: "why is writing important? mainly out of egotisim, I suppose. Because I want to be that personae, a writer, and not because there is something I must say. Yey why not that too? whit a little ego buliding--such as the fait accompli this journal provides--i shall win...

for sontag maybe it wasnt about the ideas, but that the act of writing made her glamourous, her personae iconic, her self famous. like garbo saying i want to be alone, made her immortal; like andy saying i wanna be a machine made him human.