The more I disagree with Susan Sontag, the more interesting her mind becomes; her arguments help you realize the terms of your own, until ambivalence becomes inseparable from admiration. A great critic is always better at questions than answers, and here her position outside the university was a help. Sontag was undisciplined, in a positive sense. She took “everything” as her province, spilling from one mode of cultural production to another, asking large questions in a jargon-free style, and at the exact moment when the leading edge of the academic humanities seemed to lose its sense of a common tongue.