The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Susan Sontag’s List of Rules and Duties for Being 24

The second published volume of Susan Sontag’s diaries, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980, gave us the celebrated author and thinker’s insights on love (now available as a limited-edition print!), writing, censorship, and aphorisms. But the first installment, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 (public library), is in many ways even more fascinating, as we see a young Sontag begin to take shape as a private person and a public intellectual.

Immediately before turning 24 on January 16, 1957, Sontag produces the following list, a blend of the pragmatic and the aspirational:

Rules + duties for being 24

  1. Have better posture.
  2. Write Mother 3 times a week.
  3. Eat less.
  4. Write two hours a day minimally
  5. Never complain publicly about Brandeis [University] or money.
  6. Teach [SS’s toddler son] David to read.

Then, several weeks later, Sontag resolves:

DON’T

  1. Criticize publicly anyone at Harvard —
  2. Allude to your age (boastfully, mock-respectfully, or otherwise)
  3. Talk about money
  4. Talk about Brandeis

DO

  1. Shower every other night
  2. Write Mother every other day


Published August 27, 2012

https://www.themarginalian.org/2012/08/27/susan-sontag-rules-for-being-24/

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