A pair of sesquipedalian sparks
In honor of the passing of William F. Buckley Jr, I’d like to take a moment to mention another divisive American intellectual of recent times, Susan Sontag. I think it’s a fair assessment to call Buckley and Sontag opposite – conservative and liberal, respectively – sides of the same coin – erudite, elitist and unnervingly, unswervingly honest. Until this semester I’d never even heard of Sontag but thanks to the providential luck of the draw, I’m taking an English class based solely around her works.
The common thread of admiration for me in terms of Buckley and Sontag is their clear insatiability for the riches of knowledge. I admit I’ve read little of the sum of their writings, but what I’ve seen is packed with references – historical, cultural, literary. They were passionate, life-long students of everything they encountered. I applaud their refusal to dumb down their writing or speaking, instead demanding their audience take an active role in listening and learning. Their brand of scholarship is rare, or difficult to find, at any rate.
Buckley’s New York Times obituary referred to him as “sesquipedalian,” a word which I’m not sure I’d ever even heard, and certainly couldn’t have defined. I’ll never forget it now, and I hope you don’t either. Meanwhile, Sontag was called “The Dark Lady of American Letters,” and I hope if you’ve never encountered her, you’ll take a moment to do so now.
My closing words are from Sontag – All my work says, be serious, be passionate, wake up.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 2 March 2008 at 10:45 am:
Great post dearest Brenda. I feel precisely the same, only without as clear articulation as you have given those thoughts.
Here’s a Sontag diary I’ve been reading:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/magazine/10sontag.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin