Writer and Critic Dies at 71: “Author and social critic Susan Sontag, one of the most powerful thinkers of her generation and a leading voice of intellectual opposition to U.S. policy after the Sept. 11 attacks, died on Tuesday at a New York cancer hospital. She was 71.

Sontag, who had been suffering from cancer for some time, was known for interests that ranged from French existentialist writers to ballet, photography and politics. She once said a writer should be ‘someone who is interested in everything.'” I will remember Sontag for her fierce intellectual courage and unwavering voice of human response to wars ranging from Vietnam through the Balkans to Afghanistan and Iraq. As a psychiatrist, I have been profoundly influenced by her Illness as Metaphor, a philosophical dissection of the ‘sick role’ and its impact on identity and social interaction. I have wondered where she stood on the nature of her suffering as she struggled with cancer for the past several years.