Susan Sontag’s Private Journals

Susan Sontag kept private journals and notebooks from her teens onward, later published in part as Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947–1963. The surviving record mixes reading lists, literary ambition, political reflection, travel, and the formation of a critic's voice. It is not a daily diary with one entry per date; it is an intellectual notebook written with future self-understanding in mind.

The notebook tracked a mind under construction

Sontag's early journals record books she read, films she saw, languages she studied, and standards she set for herself. She copied passages, argued with authors, and wrote manifesto-like sentences about the kind of writer she hoped to become. The tone is often urgent, sometimes severe, always oriented toward cultivation.

That makes the archive a cousin to Virginia Woolf's reading notebooks, though Sontag's pages carry more explicit self-mythology. Was Marcus Aurelius' Meditations a Journal? offers another comparison: private reminders addressed to the self rather than a chronological log.

Reading and identity shared the same page

For Sontag, what she read was rarely separate from who she wished to be. Lists of books, notes on syntax, and reflections on courage or seriousness appear beside accounts of friendships and travel. A modern reader can borrow the integration without copying the intensity.

Try a reading note with five parts—the method described in How to Start a Reading Journal—then add one line about why this book matters to your present questions, not only your past taste.

Publication revealed what privacy had protected

Edited volumes made much of Sontag's private writing public after her death. Readers now encounter sentences she may never have chosen to release. Fame does not erase the original boundary between notebook and audience.

If your journal contains ambition, critique, or portraits of living people, decide early what must stay private. Franz Kafka's diaries raise a different posthumous history, but the shared question is who controls the notebook once the writer is gone. Read Should You Share Your Journal? while the choice is still yours.

Try an intellectual journal entry without performing genius

1. Encounter: a book, film, conversation, or place from today.
2. Claim: one sentence you agree or disagree with.
3. Evidence: what in your life supports your reaction.
4. Revision: how your view differs from a year ago, if it does.
5. Next: what to read or watch to test your thinking.

Use plain language. A useful intellectual journal sounds like you on a good day, not like a quotation generator. For slower philosophical work, pair this with How to Start a Philosophy Journal.

Begin a private reading journal on Inpages.me with one passage, one disagreement, and one question you cannot settle tonight.

Sources and notes

• Farrar, Straus and Giroux: Reborn—Journals and Notebooks
• UCLA Library: Susan Sontag papers

Sources reviewed August 17, 2026. The article follows published editorial selections and avoids extended quotation from the journals.