Pour into a pineapple-shaped glass, garnish, and serve with a striped paper straw. Garnish: hibiscus flowers, sliced strawberries, and pineapple leaves.Īdd all ingredients to a blender and blend until smooth. The cocktail dedicated to Sontag takes its notes from camp, about which she said: “The hallmark of camp is the spirit of extravagance.” Later in her career, she refocused her attention on novels, including The Volcano Lover and In America, the latter of which was accused of plagiarism but won the National Book Award. Sontag’s essays and criticism were what brought her fame, but she found them exhausting work, sometimes taking a full year to pen a single essay. Two later collections, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, deconstruct the language we use to discuss disease. Another essay collection, On Photography, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and examines how the proliferation of photography has changed society. She followed that with a collection, Against Interpretation, the title essay of which argues that the meaning of art is less important than its visceral impact. It examines an aesthetic sensibility rooted in the embrace of artifice and exaggeration, which, until Sontag’s essay came out, was largely only understood by the gay community.

In New York, Sontag taught at universities while writing and, in 1964, published an essay, “Notes on ‘Camp,’” which immediately and irrevocably launched her into fame. Conversations with Friends sold in a seven-way auction and was published to great fanfare in 2017 when she was only 26. It was only after the publication of an essay she wrote about her debating experience, “Even If You Beat Me,” that she came to the attention of a literary agent.

While working on her master’s degree, Rooney spent three months completing a draft of the novel Conversations with Friends. (“Absolute trash,” she says today.) Later, she was accepted to study English literature at Trinity College in Dublin, where she also became a member of the debate team. Her anti-authoritarian streak meant she didn’t enjoy school, but she applied herself in other ways: By age 15, she’d written her first book. She grew up in the town of Castlebar, the daughter of a telecom worker and an arts center administrator. Rooney is known for writing characters whose lives are similar to her own.

A keen observer of human relationships, Irish novelist Sally Rooney is a virtuoso at bringing modern intimacy to the page.

On photography by susan sontag