The Marginalian
The Marginalian

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

“Don’t criticize publicly anyone at Harvard.”

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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