سوزان سانتاگ در جدال با مرگ

by David Rieff, فرزانه قوجلو (Translator)

Both a memoir and an investigation, Swimming in a Sea of Death is David Rieff's loving tribute to his mother, the writer Susan Sontag, and her final battle with cancer. Rieff's brave, passionate, and unsparing witness of the last nine months of her life, from her initial diagnosis to her death, is both an intensely personal portrait of the relationship between a mother and a son, and a reflection on what it is like to try to help someone gravely ill in her fight to go on living and, when the time comes, to die with dignity.

Rieff offers no easy answers. Instead, his intensely personal book is a meditation on what it means to confront death in our culture. In his most profound work, this brilliant writer confronts the blunt feelings of the survivor -- the guilt, the self-questioning, the sense of not having done enough.

And he tries to understand what it means to desire so desperately, as his mother did to the end of her life, to try almost anything in order to go on living.

Drawing on his mother's heroic struggle, paying tribute to her doctors' ingenuity and faithfulness, and determined to tell what happened to them all, Swimming in a Sea of Death subtly draws wider lessons that will be of value to others when they find themselves in the same situation.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography, Death, Biography Memoir, Grief, American

149 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

David Rieff is an American polemicist and pundit. His books have focused on issues of immigration, international conflict, and humanitarianism.

Reviews

[KamRun · Rating 3 out of 5]

آگاهی قدرت است یا محکومیت و بیداد؟ کم‌ترین ستمِ مرگ در حق مادرم آن بود که آنچه در طول زندگی امیدوارش ساخته و به او الهام و آگاهی بخشیده بود، همان چیز مرگ را برایش دشوارتر ساخت

سوزان سانتگ در طول عمر خود سه بار به سرطان مبتلا شد. بار نخست به سرطان سینه، بار دوم به سرطان رحم و بار سوم به سرطان خون ناشی از شیمی درمانی سال‌های قبل. سرطان سوم در نهایت او را به وضع تراژیکی از پا درآورد. آنچه در این کتاب آمده، روزهای پایانی زندگی او به قلم فرزندش است، صادقانه و بدون ابهام تمام اضطراب‌ها، افسردگی، خشم، بیم و امید و مبارزه مادرش تا روز آخر و سرانجام مردن در حالی که هرگز با مرگ آشتی نکرده و ذره‌ای برای آن آماده نبوده را روایت می‌کند

مرگش به هیچ‌وجه مرگی آسان نبود. در مورد مرگ مادرم هیچ چیز به آسانی نگذشت مگر آخرین ساعت‌های زندگی‌اش. دشوار بود و کند، گاهی به‌نظر می‌آمد که لاک‌پشت‌وار به سوی مرگ پیش می‌رفت. درست پیش از مرگ رو به سوی یکی از پرستاران کرد و گفت: "دارم می‌میرم" و بعد زد زیر گریه. اگر بیماری‌اش بی‌رحمانه بود، مرگش هم بی‌رحمانه بود. تا عصر آن روز دیگر در میان ما حضور نداشت، گرچه هنوز زنده بود. پزشکان آن را موقعیت پیش از پایان می‌نامند. بی‌هوش نبود، بلکه به جایی ژرف در درون خودش رفته بود، شاید به آخرین پناهگاه هستی‌اش و بعد به سادگی رفت. نخست نفسی عمیق برآورد، چهل ثانیه وقفه بود، چه زمان بی‌انتها و رنج‌آوری است وقتی که پایان هستی یک انسان را تماشا می‌کنیم، و بعد نفس عمیق دوم. همه‌ی این‌ها چند دقیقه بیشتر طول نکشید. سپس وقفه دائمی شد و برای همیشه از هستی واماند

حالا بعد از خواندن کتاب، تصوری که از سانتگ داشتم کاملا دستخوش تغییر شده. اگر پیش‌تر با نقاط قوت سانتگ در کتاب‌هایش آشنا شده بودم ،حالا سانتگ عریان را در این کتاب دیدم، تنها مانده با ضعف‌هایش. باورم نمی‌شود آن زنی که جسورانه علیه بیماری و مرگ در تمام طول عمر شوریده، چنین دردآور از مرگ فرار کند و در نهایت بطرز تراژیکی در چنگالش گرفتار شود. باور کردنی نیست نویسنده‌ای که منتقد سرسخت هرگونه کاربرد استعاری از بیماری بود، خودش روزی بگوید: بیماری به مثابه‌ی استعاره... لوسمی تنها مرگ روشن و بی‌پیرایه‌ای از سرطان است که می‌توان درباره‌اش خیال‌پردازی کرد
میل به زندگی و هست بودن جاودانه در او به‌قدری زیاد بوده که حتی به احتمالات ذخیره سازی بیولوژیک (خواب مصنوعی، فریز شدن، حفظ عصاره‌ حیات فردی بصورت شیمیایی و ...) هم امید داشته. نمی‌دانم، شاید این این فرار از مرگ، همان تسلیم نشدن و مبارزه کردن تا آخرین نفس باشد. نکته‌ی ارزشمند دیگری که با خواندن کتاب متوجه‌اش شدم، این بود که بیماری به مثابه‌ی استعاره نه آنطور که خودش گفته نوعی شرح حال از دوران بیماری، که ضد خاطراتی از آن دوران بوده، نه چیزهایی که واقع شده و بلکه چیزهایی که حقیقت داشته و باید واقع می‌شده. البته هیچ کدام این‌ها در علاقه‌ام به سانتگ به‌عنوان منتقد و نویسنده‌ای تاثیرگذار و اندیشه‌ساز خللی ایجاد نمی‌کند

یکی از چالش‌هایی که کتاب برایم ایجاد کرد، شیوه اطلاع رسانی به بیمار در حال مرگ از وضعیت بیماری و تهدید حیات‌اش است، اینکه اگر طبق شواهد پزشکی مرگ کسی نزدیک و قطعی بود، باید او را از این قطعیت مطلع کرد یا اینکه روزنه‌ی امیدی برای او باقی گذاشت؟ نویسنده در این کتاب بطور جسته و گریخته به این چالش و احکام اخلاقی‌اش می‌پردازد، ولی در نهایت پاسخی برایش پیدا نمی‌کند

پی‌نوشت: واکنش مخاطب در مواجهه با این کتاب از این دو حالت خارج نیست: کتاب یا می‌تواند بی‌نهایت جذاب، نفس‌گیر و دردآور واقع شود یا کاملا خسته‌کننده، بی‌معنی و بدون هرگونه ظرافت لازم و تصور می‌کنم عامل اصلی چنین برانگیزش صفر و صدگونه‌ای، آگاهی از اندیشه‌ی او در مورد مفاهیم بیماری و مرگ است که به روشنی در جستارهای بیماری به مثابه‌ی استعاره و ایدز و استعاره‌هایش بیان شده. از این رو خواندن این کتاب در صورتی که آن جستار‌ها خوانده نشده باشد وقت تلف کردن است

[sAmAnE · Rating 2 out of 5]

کتاب به کوشش و به قلم پسر سانتاگ نوشته شده، او از زمانی که مادرش میفهمد درگیر سرطان شده و بیماری‌های متعددی را هم پشت سر گذاشته تمام حالات روحی و جسمی وی را شرح می‌دهد. او از شوق مادر و ترس او از مرگ و نپذیرفتن آن می‌گوید. حقیقتش من خیلی کتاب رو سخت خوندم و برخلاف تصوراتم خیلی دوستش نداشتم.

[Khush · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a very long but powerful book. What I liked about the book is that David never strays from the main focus of this book, namely, her mother's struggle with cancer. Even if the this book is not about Susan Sontag's death, it would still be a great read as it talks about death, dying, disease, friends, passion, life. As a reader, one does not Only think about what David and Sontag go through, but also how close anyone can be at any moment to that kind of experience. Also, reading about Sontag's cancer, one is reminded of one's own immortality.

One hostile reviewer on GR commented that the kind of money that was spent on Sontag's treatment could have been instead used to save thousands of babies in Africa. Clearly, this reviewer has least sympathy for African children, but palpable hatred for Sontag. Also, many found the book badly written, I didn't. It does what it is supposed to do. It matches the 'visuality' that Annie Leibovitz, the great photographer, captured through Sontag's 'last' pictures. In a way, such intense engagement with 'death' is a kind of education that makes us more realistic about both life and death.

I admire Sontag's hunger for life.

I wonder if her 'last days' and how she responded to cancer and its 'tough' treatment can be added to her 'CAMP' essay. It is so CAMP-LIKE in the most positive sense.

[M. D. Hudson · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book deals with the death of Rieff’s mother, intellectual celebrity Susan Sontag, and so I was expecting a harrowing experience, as serious as cancer as the expression goes. And it was. And I felt guilty even reading it in a gruesome death-porn way. But there is much to think about here, gruesome as it is. As a reader, you have to first get around the fact that the book is poorly written. Rieff is a professional writer/journalist, with seven books to his credit, but his prose was often appalling. Clichés (we even get to go on an “emotional roller coaster” ride at one point) abound. In many cases, the cliches are acknowledged as being clichés, and then are self-consciously employed anyway which if anything makes them even worse. The brief quotes from Sontag’s journals demonstrate who the real writer in the family was.

Also, the beginning of the tale is cluttered with starchy, unreasonable complaints about the medical establishment, shaggy dog stories and a certain lack of focus (despite the rather simple narration). As for the medical establishment shaggy dog story, a villain is introduced early on, one “Dr. A. - feeling as I do about him, I prefer not to name him.” This Dr. A is treated particularly harshly right at the start, but I kept waiting for the revelation to come that would justify Rieff’s emnity, the cruel or inept thing Dr. A did to add to Sontag’s misery or hasten her death. And yet nothing ever comes of it. All Dr. A did was tell Sontag that she was going to die and that there was no feasible treatment for her disease. Rieff complains that he was condescending, but perhaps Dr. A felt that speaking to Sontag as a willful child (rather than as a fellow rational giant brain) was the only way he could get through to her. Sontag was acting like a spoiled, willful child, so I can’t really fault Dr. A his approach. But of course someone like Susan Sontag does not have to put up with this, so she found, of course, other doctors willing to dice their diagnoses into hard-to-parse bits of fraudulent hope. I suppose seeing Sontag’s famous big beautiful piercing eyes across your desk, hanging on to every word you say, would be quite flattering to many in the upper ranks of New York-European medicine. “Well yes Ms. Songtag…call you Susan? Okay then. Yes Susan, there are some experimental treatments being developed in Paris we could try…”

And this brings me to what is perhaps the real story here. If you have enough money, and in Sontag’s case, enough cultural clout, you can find medical treatment for anything, no matter how doomed you are. What makes hers a hard case is the fact that Sontag beat really bad breast cancer back in the ‘70s by undergoing radical, experimental treatment. It is hard to argue with that kind of success, and it was this astonishing recovery (I know – “remission”) that fuelled her frantic search for a cure for her leukemia some thirty years later. And of course doctors were found who were willing to go to any effort to keep her alive. And to tell her, kind of, what she wanted to hear. But with this later leukemia from which she later died, there came a point where she should have resigned herself to death; as Rieff reports, as a blistered skeleton a day or two before the end, Sontag was still making plans for when she gets out. There is courage and foolhardiness, hope and bullshitting yourself.

Rieff, to his credit, addresses, if only fleetingly, this uncomfortable fact: just how much money did all this cost? And how much of a futile burden did this place on the health care system? Sontag was a complicated person, and I’m sure her opinions on just about anything can not be easily nutshelled, but would it be safe to assume that her political opinions on health care in the USA might not quite align with the fact that because of her financial and cultural clout she was able to get far, far better health care than some poor cancer-ruddled 71 year old woman over in the Bronx. And if Sontag did hold utopian healthcare ideals, the fact is if all the 70-something terminally ill patients on earth got the same treatment Sontag got, the whole world would go bankrupt in about a week. Sontag wanted to live at all costs, and she was able – and willing, apparently without ever questioning it – to spend a lot in an effort to do so. So isn’t there an ethical component to any of this? Er, what would Walter Benjamin do? Or Sontag’s pal E. M. Cioran?

Another surprising revelation in this book was how susceptible Sontag came in her later years to intellectual flakiness of various sorts. It seems she had a lot of friends who were Buddhists of some American stripe or otherwise New Agey types. They gave her crystals! A Buddhist told her she was in some kind of “circle of protection!” This is Susan Sontag, the embodiment of the thinker as a product of the radical will (or whatever – I’ve never been smart enough to figure out any intellectual’s actual plan; this is my own lazy, stupid fault and I am not trying to make excuses for my lapse here). Not to trash Buddhists, but I have to go along with Reiff’s take on most of the American kinds: “Perhaps a good Buddhist can really take in the full reality of human unimportance and still remain compassionate, though if the American Buddhists I knew in my twenties are at all representative, the creed is more often a rationale for existential selfishness than self-abnegation in any real sense of the term.” (page 157 – but note in this quote the ending phrase “in any real sense of the term” – there is a lot of compositional filler like this throughout the book). Of course “existential selfishness” is an interesting phrase in relation to Sontag’s own frantic efforts to stay alive.

Despite the infelicities and outright gob-stoppers of his prose, Reiff manages an astonishing degree of emotional tact and nuance. He manages to let us know that Susan Sontag was a top-shelf pain-in-the-ass and impending death made her no easier to get along with. He also lets us know he loved his mother, helplessly so (the way a son should). More importantly, he put across a fairly old-fashioned idea, if only by providing a poor example: the idea of a “good” death. Just what does that mean? I don’t know, but I suspect it has something to do with accepting the inevitable, making peace with your God (or with yourself if you have no God) and not clinging to the edge of the pot until the very last minute kicking and screaming. It is disappointing to see our cultural and artistic heroes go out with such a lack of grace – and I am an admirer of Susan Sontag’s (especially her essays – I liked The Volcano Lover, but it was more or less a bodice-ripper for the New Yorker reader), although the older I get, the more suspicious and weary I get about her “radical” poses. But a writer’s got to establish herself, I guess. But wasn’t her shtick to be the uncompromising radical, the fearless artistic gadabout who put on a play in besieged Sarajevo (a gesture that still baffles me although I respect the courage it took to pull it off)? So what happened? Again, is there is such a thing as a “good” death? Was it Samuel Beckett who refused painkillers when he was dying because he wanted to be alert right up to the very end? Not that people should be judged on how they die…or should they? Or should those who profess great moral courage or spirituality (and spiritual resignation) be expected to die courageously, or at least resignedly? While reading this book, I kept thinking of George Harrison, who spent his last months being jetted all over the world in search of a miracle cure for his terminal cancer…the guy who was always counseling “all things must pass” and the dangers of the material world. But then Harrison had more money than God. And he no doubt found doctors who were Beatles-besotted and would tell George anything he wanted to hear (“Please, just call me George, Doctor…”). Celebrity deaths are breathtakingly expensive: Harrison’s and Sontag’s last few months of medical treatment could’ve saved 10,000 babies in sub-Sahara Africa from dysentery. But then all of us westerners spend a lot to stave off the inevitable.

With apologies to Dylan Thomas, raging against the dying of the light might not be the best way to go. But this being said, am I given the opportunity to contemplate my own lingering cancer or cancerlike death, I am pretty sure I will go down sniveling, shrieking, pleading and otherwise making an undignified spectacle of myself. And spend, spend, spend. Anything, Doc, do anything… My remarks here are in no way meant to imply that I am not a craven coward. I am.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Difficult to decide number of stars on this one...a very personal book and one that is hard to rate, as a result; it feels as if I should not rate it at all. One feels it serves a purpose most of all for the author, Sontag's son, though of course the reader is served as well. I started this book when my Dad was in the last stages of his illness, and he died soon after I finished it...I can be relieved that he did not suffer the painful end that Sontag had, though there were some similarities: the absolute will to live, the sheer love of life and existence. Rieff knew there was no cure to be found, no hope, but offered hope since that was what his mother wanted to hear. He struggles with the fact that he offered her this untruth at the end but makes peace ultimately with himself and her. He explores the guilt, the regret one feels with the death of a loved one and Sontag's death is more than once contrasted with Simone de Beauvoir's mother's, whom she wrote about (and I read as well, many years ago) in 'A Very Easy Death.' There is anger at the medical establishment as well. Much in this book is valuable to one who must cope, as I must, with the death of a loved one.

[Sarvenaz Taridashti · Rating 1 out of 5]

"شعر ترکیبی از اسم هاست و نثر آمیزه ای از فعل ها"
ترجمه ی کتاب روان بود، به نظر من نام کتاب باید این طور می بود: سوزان سانتاگ و ستایش زندگی

[مجید اسطیری]

نیمه کاره رهایش کردم چون
اولاً الآن در مقطعی از زندگیم هستم که نمیخواهم به مرگ فکر کنم.
ثانیاً ترجمه ش پدر آدم را در می‌آورد.
ثالثا فکر میکنم باید آثار خود سانتاگ را بیشتر بخوانم و بعد سراغ این کتاب بیایم.

[belisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

okuduğum yas kitapları arasında bir erkek tarafından yazılan ikinci kitap...

sanırım annesinin eğitimi ve/veya işi nedeniyle duygusallıktan oldukça uzak ve nesnel ancak bakış açısı ve tespitler açısından zengindi...

[Michael Gorodezky · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was indeed difficult to read, but for those of us who share the author's experience, it is a tremendously validating book. It is an important book for we who stayed behind with words unsaid.

For me,reading many other reviews is much more disturbing than reading the book. I amazed how little many of the reviewers got from the book. I suppose people read such books for many reasons. For myself, I am grateful that David Rieff that the courage to write about his experience. I've often wanted to write to him to thank him.

[Sandra en Alaska · Rating 3 out of 5]

Difícil decidir las estrellas para este libro. Por la ayuda que me ha prestado y las veces que me he reconocido en David Rieff, le daría cuatro. Pero hay veces en las que me parece que se pierde en divagaciones complicadas y repetitivas, por eso le doy tres.

No sé si este libro puede interesar a quien no ha perdido a su madre; a quien como yo busca consuelo, puede servirle.

[Alicia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will begin with these words .........I love Susan Sontag.
So much... when one of my best pals was dying of AIDS ~ she came to the rescue of my heart.
My heart .....of course still broke & it remains broken still .......but her words calmed me.
They did not erase the pain & the sadness I still feel to this day but reading "AIDS and Its Metaphors" ...
somehow prepared me.
Though the death & loss is still haunting.
But my goodness.....Susan Sontag........she was there.
She understood.
We knew her comfort.
And we miss our best friend.
We hear his laugh. He lives so clearly in my photographs on my bookcase.
And so .......
Once I knew that David Rieff would be editing her diaries ...of course I was all in.
And this book...my gosh........it is a hard read.
"The two great, besetting regrets of her life were not having accomplished more in previous years & not having known how to be happier in the present, where, by her own admission, her private life was a source of sorrow & frustration"
Page 142
" She reveled in being; it was as straight forward as that. No one I have ever known loved life so unambivalently & I was almost certain that had she lived to a hundred, as in the last part of her life she so often said she hoped she would do, instead of seventy one, nothing except the LOSS of intellect would have made her any more reconciled to extinction."
Page 143
We know Susan Sontag.
We think that we know her.
We know how she was DETERMINED to survive.
To conquer. To live.
And then we lost her.
And all the while we knew..............she would discuss this last fight.
She would ensure that somehow we were of course ALL IN....... one more time.
I read this book this past week & I just felt so much sorrow.
My lunch reads really should be lighter ~~ right?
Oh Alicia......
Death is never easy. Yet Death is always there.
Another memoir of loss.
But I had to read it.
Her son was so close to this & he shared what he felt.
I know these moments.
When my husband decided that he had to have a tracheotomy in order to survive, I knew in my soul ~ that I would lose him a lot sooner than I was ready to. And I would soon be alone.
But he made his choice.
And I could ONLY say " I understand" & be the voice to each MD & battle each nurse, to ensure he was comfortable.
We do this. ......knowing we will soon lose everything that meant the world to us.
We do this.
And so David Rieff shares his emotions about this last illness.
He knows that soon his mother would be gone.
Susan is DETERMINED to best this disease.
She is deep into what can keep her MDS at bay.
She was ready to fight & she wanted to win.
Her body was the battlefield.
David is there. Watching........knowing that this is going to end.
Knowing that he will lose his mother.
Knowing that he is being supportive & optimistic for her.
And feeling that guilt for the pretense.
For the love.
In his soul, he understands that everyone around the woman who created him, is clear that she will lose this battle.
But they will tell her to keep fighting. They will share what they need to say to her to keep her near.
Ignoring the ravages her body has endured.
He is pained.
He watches how her body is attacked. And then photographed.
That made my heart just sink.
He watches & he knows that he cannot make this easy for her.
He cannot ease the discomfort ........the pain.........he has to be her son.
The son who will love her. No matter what.
The son who will watch her fight a battle he understands she will lose.
Oh..........my gosh....... this book.........was a hard read.
He shares so much.
He knows that this iconic woman is going to fight.
For what? Why?
And he knows that she is really the mother, he has always known & he understands he will lose her.
I completed the read yesterday whilst drinking my hot tea at lunch & of course.... I wept.
Quiet weeping is the worst.
I knew how hard this would be for him to live through.
When we love someone who is ill & they are determined to FIGHT their illness, against ALL odds, & they feel they MUST. What can we do?
He shares this so clearly in this memoir.
I was just breathless & WOW.
We have to bide our time & be there for them, knowing that soon we shall stand alone & we will be in pain and nothing can ease that pain.
This book is simply a wonderful read.
He was a goode son.
He loved this woman, who meant so much to so many, but he understood, she was his mother.
And he would lose her. She was his mother.
Not the writer. The heroine for so many.
She was his mother.
And he shares her loss.
A son who has lost his mother.
Read this book.
He is a goode son.
Read this book.
It will make your heart sad but it will bring you the insight that sometimes, those we love MUST fight death.
We do NOT know why.
And we know this fight will cause us the worst pain we could ever know & we must allow our soul, those painful moments of unselfishness.
We give unselfish love.
Later we will relive each moment & doubt what we did.
But in that moment ......unselfish love is all we can give... for that is truest love.
He writes on the last page of this book... the words he found in one of her diaries:
" be cheerful
be stoic be tranquil ~
In the Valley Of Sorrow ~
Spread Your Wings.."

[Kristen · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is nothing easy about reading Rieff’s agonizing account of his mother Susan Sontag's last nine months. "Swimming in a Sea of Death" seems to portray the dark side of "Illness as Metaphor." I agree with Sontag that, as a society, we need to be aware of the emotional and psychological consequences to individuals of using diseases as metaphors, but her contention that we must see a disease as just a disease, a failure of the body and nothing more, seems to deny some of the transformative power of individual narratives about disease and dying. Rieff repeatedly invokes Joan Didion’s line “we tell ourselves stories in order to live” in relation to his mother’s stubborn, even delusional, insistence—despite all evidence to the contrary—that medical science would save her life, and thus, he tells us, she finds the will to endure painful and ostensibly futile medical interventions in her struggle to stay alive. He seems to have taken Didion too literally. I don’t think we tell ourselves stories so that we can delude ourselves, turning away from reality; I think we tell ourselves stories so that we can embrace reality, finding ways to synthesize even the most seemingly meaningless events in our lives, even death, in meaningful ways. Ultimately, what makes Rieff’s memoir so disturbing is its portrayal of suffering devoid of any transformative value for Sontag, or for Rieff. As a reader, you end his book as you began it—struggling to stay afloat in his pain and wondering when or how he will strike for shore in search of a way to ground this account in a narrative that allows him to begin to heal.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book, or at least to appreciate it (Rieff is a smart writer with a hell of a subject), but I find it hastily written, inadequately edited, and marred by the author's bitterness. Losing a parent can be a shocking and terrible thing, and Rieff seems stuck in his hurt and anger, as well as limited by his intellectual approach. He seems to want to understand something inherently inacessible to the mind. There's a lot of meandering what-if?-ing but no real commitment to personal excavation. I would have liked to see him risk a wider range of emotion in his exploration, as well as perhaps a little poetry. Those things might have better fit the book's loose structure. I wonder how the author will feel about Swimming a few years from now. For my money, Joan Didion's Magical Thinking is far superior.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book a day after reading Sontag's "Illness as Metaphor," something I recommend doing if you have the time. (Illness as Metaphor is only about 90 pages). I found it somewhat sad that Sontag could never accept the idea of death, could never firmly believe that she too would die, just as all humans do. Yes, she had a love of life and intense fervor, but it was surprising that someone at her age (71) and who had experienced disease before, was never able to reconcile herself to the concept of mortality. And yet, she was a true writer and artist, never accepting that her "work" was done, that she had no plans for the future.

[Lisa]

I found this book fascinating in a number of ways and impossible and inappropriate to rate. I've read a number of memoirs about death by people who are dying, but fewer by their caregivers and survivors. The author confronts a number of questions and issues that may be even more difficult than impending death, which is at least known to everyone - what could he have done differently, and it would it have been better? These questions are posed thoughtfully and not melodramatically. Layering on top of that the element of Sontag herself and her writings on illness, as well as all of the information specifically about MDS, I would recommend the book, although it will be a difficult read for a lot of reasons for many people.

Scientifically, I find it fascinating to see how far a lot of cancer treatment has come - while the MDS prognosis is still bad, this 2008 book comments re: Sontag's first cancer: "and the immunological component is no longer as accepted as it would become in the years immediately after my mother received it - another magic bullet in the quest to cure cancer that did not live up to its early promise."

[Reuben Woolley · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I rate this 5 stars then do I get to never have to think about it again?

I agree entirely with another review on here that says “it feels odd to give this book a rating — how am I meant to rate a man grieving his mother?” But it’s a book I’m glad I’ve read and I sincerely hope I never want to return to. Genuinely one of the most dejectedly, despairingly sad things I’ve ever read, at least in part because I love Sontag and her writing so much, and the entire thing is devoted to documenting what happens when a life-force like that realises that it is being brought to an unwilling end. I honestly can’t say that I recommend this book at all, but I can still see it as necessary to be written, and be glad I experienced it.

[Shelley Diamond · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book because I appreciated the way the son was trying to process his mother's death and cope with his reactions to the whole time she was ill. His mother, Susan Sontag, was very opinionated and had a lot of willpower and was really in denial about the fact that she was going to die. She kept thinking that she would somehow find a cure and find a doctor who would keep her alive.

I empathized with the son having a mother like that. I know it would have been a major struggle to be supportive in that situation. I understand that no one could help her confront the reality of the situation because she just refused to consider it.

Death is always hard to face but it's even harder when you have the delusion that it's just not going to happen and you are somehow an exception to the rule that everyone dies.

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

A small but gorgeous book by Sontag’s son about both Sontag, cancer, and death in general. If you’ve read Sontag’s journals, her book on cancer, or Sigrid Nunez’s book on Sontag’s frailties (and I believe she dated the author), you might appreciate this painfully insightful book even more. One of the best books on death I’ve ever read. And a fascinating look at Sontag’s uniqueness and humanity.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like this. When I started, I very much connected with the analytical tone, the self-questioning, the hopeless attempt of understanding, to make people understand when oneself is still swimming in a sea of death. David Rieff talks a lot about his mothers' sickness, and in between the lines, we learn a lot more about his difficult relationship with this woman larger than life, who wanted to be and was a lot of things - but not necessarily the best mother, I guess.

But where the language helped me into the book, it also prevented me from diving deeper. Rieff is quite obviously still overwhelmed by his mother, her life and her death, and loses himself in tangents, repeats the same phrases which apparently describe something profound in his feelings towards Susan Sontag. He tries too hard to understand something that can not be understood. As a document of different ways of grieving, Swimming in a Sea of Death is great - as a book to be read, it's good.

[annika · Rating 4 out of 5]

susan sontag stays young, in my head she will never be a frail elderly woman - it’s partly because of her sharp mind, i will never comprehend how such a woman was born at the same time as my grandmother and was so widely different from her.

therefore, her death - although so long a ago - still never ceases to shock. how can such a woman die?

it was a great book, not a chronology which is good because otherwise it would’ve been way too fake - it reminds me of didion “the year of magical thinking. and yet it is so accomplished. in this chaos the book really shines.

-
update (18.02.2023):
after reading the biography from moser on sontag i recognize that this was a hard book to write not only because rieff was the son but also because their relationship seemed to be rather rocky.

now i understand that he didn’t come to her when she asked for him, that he shifted the narrative in his favour as he seems to be a devoted son (though nobody couldn’t do it any differently because he didn’t keep notes of the time).
i don’t know what i can think about this book now, it is still good, but … and this is the issue i now face when trying to rate and understand this book.

-
update (12.02.2025)
and again.
I do love this book as it illustrates, the surviving relatives. the guilt, the never disappearing loss.

es konturiert linien vor, dabei ist es unabhängig, dass es um sontag geht. man darf nicht zu viel von ihrem werk in ihre letzten tage lesen.
das hier ist ein stand alone. und auch ich bin erst darauf reingefallen - hier werden fragen gestellt in ihrem kontext, aber es geht primär darum, wie man als angehöriger einen guten abschied hinbekommt und was das bedeuten kann.

[Paul Pessolano · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a son's memoir of his mother's death. David Rieff is the son of Susan Sontag, a noted writer. Susan was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was forty years old and was given two options by her doctors. She could have a radical mastectomy or a treatment that was more dependent on chemotherapy. Susan opted for the radical because she believed that this would give her a better chance at a longer life. She lived for another twenty years before cancer reappeared as uterine sarcoma. She fought this cancer for two years before being diagnosed with incurable MDs, which would turn into AML and end her life.

It is important to understand that Susan was an atheist who had a deep desire to live. Even when things were looking bad and she felt terribly depressed her desire to live was foremost on her mind. Susan, in her seventies, did everything she could to ward off death, even submitting to a bone marrow transplant that had little chance of success.

In telling her story, her son explores what family members, friends, and doctors must face when confronting a patient dying of cancer. Should you be honest with them and give them the facts? Should you give them false hope by telling them they are getting better? Or do you find some middle ground that both parties can accept.

In telling his mother's story, the reader gets an exceptional look at death and how it affects all parties and, some of the difficult decisions that have to be made.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

a cold and impersonal memoir

After reading this short memoir by Susan Sontag's son about her battle with cancer, I got the distinct impression that there wasn't much love lost between mother and son.

I thought I was going to need a few handkerchiefs, but far from it: to me the book seemed cold, distant, and mainly focused on the medical aspects of her three bouts with cancer.
What bothered me enormously is that the author repeatedly describes his mother as a 'winner' in the war against cancer and that one of the reasons she survived the first two episodes, was because of her determination to beat the cancer. It made me feel as if the hundreds of thousands of people who didn't survive their struggle with cancer were 'losers' and had to blame themselves for being weak-willed. Moreover the author makes the comparison between his mum and Lance Armstrong, who also 'beat cancer' and then went on to win the Tour de France several times, but afterwards turned out to have used illegal drugs.

The picture that he painted of his mother was from gentle. I got the impression that she was a self-centered and haughty person, who had to be surrounded by admirers all the time, because she couldn't stand the thought of being on her own.

If you are an admirer of Susan Sontag's literary work, I suggest you stay away from this memoir.

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

David Rieff, a non-fiction writer and policy analyst, is the only son of Susan Sontag. Swimming in a Sea of Death is Rieff's memoir about the last year of his mother's life and her 30+ year battle with cancer. Rieff's book, while divided into chapters, is more like a monologue of his various thoughts on life and death, and what it means to be a caretaker for the sick and ultimately, the one who is left behind. Desipte the fact that this book is quite short, I found it incredibly repetitive - like a person suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder who feels compelled to repeat and relive certain feelings or events from the past. The subject matter and language reminded me of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and Rieff quotes Didion on multiple occasions while strugging to put words to his emotions. Rieff focuses much of the book on his mother's attitude toward illness and death - her refusal to believe that she would one day die, and the miraculous recoveries she made from prior illnesses. This book is incredibly depressing, but it is a valuable viewpoint worth reading for anyone dealing with illness and lost.

[Yu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm surprised this book got such a low rating. I personally love this book very much, I don't know maybe it is because I study Susan Sontag for a long time, and she will be my constant interest. Her son's memoir is valuable for his mother's studies for sure, and there are many helpful information. Kierkegaard, immortality, Sontag's avidity, and so on so forth.

It shouldn't be rated as two or three stars when one only read her Illness as Metaphor or Against Interpretation. Her entire writing career and life is contained in David Rieff's slim memoir. He knows her, and understands her. Sontag is an icon for very intelligent people who didn't live very long, long enough as three centuries.

[Mercedé Khodadadi · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتابی در مورد دست‌وپنجه کردن سوزان سانتاگ با سرطان و مرگ، در آخرین روزهای زندگی، از زبان پسرش دیوید ریف‌. در این کتاب کوتاه با جنبه‌های جدیدی از شخصیت سانتاگ آشنا می‌شنویم که در دوران سلامت و بیماری‌های قبلی ندیده بودیم. سانتاگ پیش از این دو بار سرطان را شکست داده بود، اما این بار آهسته و آرام به سوی منزلگاه ابدی در حال حرکت بود.

از متن کتاب:

«در مورد مرگ مادرم هیچ چیز به آسانی نگذشت جز آخرین ساعت‌های زندگی‌اش. دشوار بود و کند -گاهی به نظر می‌آمد که لاک‌پشت‌وار به سوی مرگ می‌رفت- و در این روند فقط مادرم نبود که قدر و مرتبه‌ی خود را از دست می‌داد.»

[Stephanie ((Strazzybooks))]

This is another one of those super personal books where I don't feel right giving a rating. How am I to rate this man's experience of losing his mother?
However, it is important to note that this is his personal experience and it was very specific to the author and his mother (late author Susan Sontag) - I was unable to relate as much as I was hoping to.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good--devastating, sad, smart--a meditation on a mother's death, informed by philosophy & literature. Hard to read and yet I couldn't stop. I am compelled to find David Rieff and hug him and thank him for writing this book.

[مِستر کثافت درونگرا · Rating 3 out of 5]

سوزان عزیزم ، خوش بحال کسایی که اطرافتون زندگی میکردن، شمارو میدیدن.
کاش میشد، باهم یه قهوه می‌خوردیم و درباره هنر واسم صحبت میکردی،
ولی الان نیستی و با اینکه ندیدمت، خیلی دل تنگم
به امید دیدار، سوزان سانتاک عزیزم

[Marzieh rasouli · Rating 4 out of 5]

سوزان سانتاگ تو این کتاب یه آدم خاص نبود یا یه نویسنده ی مشهور، مادر معمولی من بود که خیلی زیاد از مرگ می ترسه، با تقلای زیاد و با عجز اونو پس می زنه و دوست داره هر بلایی سرش بیاد جز مرگ.

[Lizeth Rodriguez · Rating 4 out of 5]

La figura de Susan Sontag siempre me ha parecido muy enigmática. Y, leer este libro donde su hijo relata los últimos meses de su vida, desde el momento de que se entera de la reinserción del cáncer, hasta sus últimas palabras, es muy valioso para comprender las formas en que configuró su pensamiento.

Me impactó muchísimo que, siendo una de las intelectuales más influyentes y más cultas de su generación, quien escribió tanto sobre la enfermedad y que, además, se debatía contra la depresión, se mostrara tan temerosa y negada a la muerte, ella se reconoce en sus diarios ante la incapacidad: “No ser capaz de imaginar siquiera que un día ya no estaré viva”.

Es un libro muy interesante que vale la pena leer, incluso si no se conoce, o no se ha leído a Sontag, porque en él se reflexiona sobre temas muy valiosos como: el proceso de duelo ante la pérdida, la enfermedad y el dolor, la muerte, el remordimiento, el papel de la medicina y el trato médico-paciente, entre otras cosas.

David Rieff complementa el texto con citas de los diarios de la autora y, también, frases, pensamientos y poemas de otros escritores, los cuales permiten profundizar mucho más en los temas abordados.

Me conmovió mucho el sentimiento que él expresa ante la pérdida de su madre, se detiene a pensar constantemente en si hizo lo suficiente para que la muerte fuera más llevadera para ella y encuentra consuelo pensando en que el remordimiento es una emoción que siempre acompaña a las personas que se encuentran en un proceso de duelo: "Desde una perspectiva racional, me doy cuenta cabalmente de que el remordimiento causado por lo que no se ha hecho por alguien que ha fallecido es un sentimiento inevitable. Tampoco creo que sea inapropiado. Pero también es un sentimiento imposible, porque el remordimiento sobreviene a pesar de la obra o de la omisión. Para vivir sin remordimientos después del fallecimiento de un ser querido, habría que tener literalmente acceso a todo lo que deseaba. Lo cual realmente implica que se vive la propia vida pendiente de la muerte del otro”

También, las aportaciones que da al respecto de cómo se vive la enfermedad son sumamente valiosas, habla sobre la propia culpabilidad de haber sido diagnóstica con cáncer, de todos los cuestionamientos que vienen con ello, el cuestionar si el paciente de cáncer es de alguna manera, también, causante de su propia enfermedad (un pensamiento muy doloroso y difícil de asimilar, sin duda).

Asimismo, el autor habla sobre el silencio al no saber decir nada apropiado cuando un ser amado está en un proceso de enfermedad así, de un silencio que viene derivado de la impotencia, de la incapacidad de cambiar algo, de la vanidad de nuestros propios deseos humanos.

Y, por supuesto, se pregunta mucho sobre cómo asimilar nuestra propia finitud y nuestra insignificancia en este mundo.

Un libro triste, sí, totalmente, que no da respuestas, pero que promueve un acercamiento y la empatía con la pérdida y el dolor.

Me quedo principalmente con una de las frases de Susan Sontag que podemos encontrar en este libro:

“En el valle de la tristeza, despliega tus alas”