SPIEGEL Surfs the Web Remembering Susan Sontag
Earlier this week, American essayist, author and cultural critic Susan Sontag passed away after repeated bouts of cancer. To many here in Europe, Sontag was considered the moral conscience of America, and last year she won the German Publisher's Association peace prize for her life's work. She wrote about everything from art happenings to Vietnam. And after Sept. 11, her tone against US political policies sharpened. Speaking in Frankfurt last year, she said: "The US government saw Sept. 11 as a chance to change the playing rules, and they have radically consolidated power."
Sontag's death has been eclipsed by the even greater tragedy in the Indian Ocean, but a number of papers in Europe have paid her tribute this week. British critics recall the author on The Guardian's Web site. The Financial Times pays tribute to a "brave challenger of conventional thinking." And the London Times recalls her as the "most provocative and prolific of the new wave of New York intellectuals from the 1960s and 1970s."
