Susan Sontag was known for her essays, where she often embraced ideas and art that were considered "difficult." Her essays can be intimidating, so I am going to suggest an entry point for those who have not read them before.

Regarding the Pain of Others is a fairly recent book, and one which should be of interest to nearly everyone. It is in fact very timely, because it deals with the topics of war and human suffering.

Regarding the Pain of Others is in some ways an update on views expressed in Sontag's earlier award-winning book, On Photography. Regarding the Pain of Others however, is not a book about art, as her previous book was. It is about our endless exposure to scenes of horror, disaster, pain, war and torture through the medium of photography.

In the past week, I have spoken with many friends about how difficult it is to comprehend the tsunami disaster in Asia. We see the images on television, one picture of terrible loss after another, until the mind goes numb. We do not want to look, yet we can't stop looking. Sontag writes about such images of suffering with great fervor and sensitivity, drawing on many tragic events in recent history that will be familiar to the average reader.

Regarding the Pain of Others struggles to understand what it means to bear witness to horrible things that are happening to other people--whether the events are accidents of nature, like the tsunami, or inflicted by others, as in war.

The Guardian has two nice pieces on Susan Sontag, a profile and an obituary. A blogger that knew her offers a personal remembrance as well as a striking photo.

The Volcano Lover is I think, Susan Sontag's most accessible book, and was a great pleasure to read. It reminded me so much of my friend Grace, and when, during high school, we first discovered and began to read the European novel of ideas. In addition to enjoying Sontag's novel on its own merits, there was an added layer of pleasure for me in recalling the companionship of my friend and our adolescent encounters with a certain type of novel.

Both a romance and a historical novel, The Volcano Lover recounts the life of a character called simply The Cavaliere, modeled after Sir William Hamilton. It dramatizes the peculiar three-way relationship that Sir William Hamilton fosters with his wife and his friend, famously depicted on screen in That Hamilton Woman. Set in Naples, Italy, a smoldering Vesuvius is an appropriate backdrop to the heated ideas and overwrought emotions that create the atmosphere of the book.

In addition to the retelling of the infamous Hamilton love affair, The Volcano Lover is a meditation on collecting. The Cavaliere is a collector of antiquities, as was Sir William Hamilton, who once provided Sir Josiah Wedgwood with the Portland Vase, which served as an inspiration for his jasperware pottery.

This is where, I think, the book seems relevant to internet culture. Sontag connects the collecting impulse to all acts of enumerating, including counting, classifying, sequencing, and list-making--all of which structure our experience of using and creating the interweb.

Sontag writes, "The list is itself a collection, a sublimated collection. One does not actually have to own the things. To know is to have (luckily for those without great means). It is already a claim, a species of possession, to think about them in this form, the form of a list: which is to value them, to rank them, to say they are worth remembering or desiring."

Yet the collection is always unfinished in Sontag's eyes. Rather than provoking frustration, this unfinished or open-ended aspect is the ideal state of the collection, placing the obsessed collector in a perpetual state of desire. "You think you want to finish it," she writes, "but you don't."

I did not want to finish The Volcano Lover. I lingered over the final chapters, dawdled over its last pages. If you have not read a Susan Sontag book ever, this is an ideal one to start with.

It's surprising, at times, what people are remembered for once they have died. As I read through Susan Sontag's obituaries, I was taken aback at how prominently "Notes on Camp" featured in most of them. When I heard the reference to her essay in a television news segment last night it almost seemed, well, campy.

I am also disappointed that so many obituries seem to have focused in on her public persona rather than her work, emphasizing the controversial. However, Christopher Hitchens offers a substantive and sweet personal remembrance of Sontag that focuses on her bravery, both physical and moral.

I read several obituaries for Susan Sontag today, but the best I thought was at the L.A. Times, which I found through the Wikipedia entry on Sontag. Written by the Times book editor, I felt it had a more personal tone to it than the other pieces. It also gave more space to Sontag's connection to Los Angeles. I especially liked reading about her attachment to the old Pickwick books that once graced Hollywood Boulevard.

A personal hero of mine, Susan Sontag, has just died. She wrote so many books that have inspired me over my lifetime. I am very sad to hear she has passed away. I plan on writing more later about some of her works.

I recently asked Dr. Menlo if I could sign on to his group blog, American Samizdat, as a harbinger. And recently, he announced me as a new harbinger on his own blog.

I decided to join based on my distress over media coverage of the U.S. presidential election, especially on television. The inability (or unwillingness) of the media to counter the disinformation released by the so-called Swift-Boat Veterans for Truth this summer was a turning point for me. As a result, I found myself increasingly turning to alternative outlets for news and opinion, including American Samizdat.

Now that the election is over, I believe the situation of the press in this country is only going to get worse. Already, the conservative marketing of lies has grown bolder: the economy is in great shape, incompetents are praised as heroes, there is no torture happening. My blood ran cold when I heard about William Donahue's recent statements on MSNBC. "And I'm not afraid to say it," he claimed.

It is becoming easier and easier to say these hateful things in the U.S., and eventually we will grow used to hearing them. That's why I've chosen to speak out now, by joining American Samizdat. I hope you'll add it and Dr. Menlo's site to your regular blog reading.

I've just upgraded my Movable Type installation from 2.65 to the latest version. Hopefully nothing here on the site is too whacked. I'm still figuring out what's different with this new version, but I'm hoping I can fix some things that weren't working previously. For example, I haven't been able to assign posts to multiple categories for awhile now, and I'm hoping to fix that soon.

That was a debilitating election. I've been struggling with what to say in the wake of Bush's re-election. The standard responses have been: "we need to keep fighting," "it's not as bad as you think," and "it's been this bad before." All are different ways of saying "stay hopeful, don't get discouraged" to those on the left.

Rather than being prescriptive, I'll be descriptive. Let me tell you what it was like in one of the indigo-blue pockets of the U.S. during the week after the election. It was like being in a zombie movie. A glazed look clouded people's eyes, and people seemed to stagger forward rather than walk, as if unaware of their surroundings. Few broke the mood of heavy gloom by speaking to others. I found it eerie to imagine that huge swaths of the U.S. population were in a similar condition. Pass the soylent green, please.

Did someone just say "time to start the healing"?

An unfortunate thing happened recently involving my computer and a full cup of coffee. I won't go into details, but this event has kept me from my computer for a few days.

I am pleased to direct your attention to my friend Joe's new weblog, Beppeblog. This is the self-same Joe so often mentioned on In Sequence and noted in my Meet the Cast pages. I'm very proud of him for starting his own web log. Now maybe I'll finally get a descendant in my BlogTree.

Beppeblog is a personal blog that covers Joe's many interests, including spirituality, Quakerism, Italian culture, social work, pacifism, and gay issues. The focus is mainly on spirituality, however. Reading his blog is really mind-blowing for me, because it makes me realize that when he's not on the phone with me demanding that I watch America's Next Top Model, he's thinking deep thoughts about the Good Book. Such are the complexities of the human soul.

I really want one of those "I love Teresa" signs from the Democratic National Convention. I would also like an adoring admirer to carry it around behind me at all times. I have some self-esteem issues you know. I guess I'm not going to get either of those things, especially if I don't blog a bit more often.

Via Neilalien, I discovered the Which Marvel Superhero Are You? Quiz. I would like to see all 26 quiz answers at one time--so as to properly compare and contrast my results--but I couldn't figure out how to get to that page, if it exists.

That was a very long time between posts. Sorry for the blog silence. Let's catch up, shall we?

All this time I've been sharing a computer with the Cute Little Red-Headed Girlfriend, but now she has one of her very own. I've been setting it up for her with little tweaks and software and as you may know, that can eat up some time. Especially since the computer is the first Windows unit I've owned since the days of DOS. It's an HP zt3200 notebook, which allows the Cute Little Red-Headed Girlfriend to watch all the Marina/L Word and Xena fan videos made in the proprietary Windows Media format. My Apple can't play them. In the eternal battle between sex (Marina, Lucy Lawless) and good intentions (non-Windows OSs), once again sex has won.

Like everyone else, I've been riveted by national politics, and the spate of hearings and testimony around each new scandal. I spent hours watching Richard Clarke's testimony, which confirmed my suspicion that Alias's Victor Garber patterned Jack Bristow on Clarke. I haven't read Clarke's book yet, but I finished Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack, another testimony-related title. Of course, all these hearings has me feeling nostalgic for my favorite President, Richard Milhouse Nixon. If he were alive today, I'm sure he would advise his party to act as he did in the final days: "We have to prick the god-damned boil and take the heat!"

I've been relying on other bloggers' comics recommendations, including those of Franklin and Johnny Bacardi. It's nice to know you can rely on the comics blogosphere.