The Assistant Economy

In 1975 Susan Sontag, the American intellectual famous for On Photography and Against Interpretation, was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer and survived after a radical mastectomy, extensive radiation treatments, and thirty months of debilitating chemotherapy. In the aftermath she needed someone to help her catch up on her correspondence. Her editors at the New York Review of Books recommended a former Review assistant named Sigrid Nunez, who lived near Sontag on the Upper West Side...

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