'I intend to do everything . . . I shall anticipate pleasure everywhere and find it too, for it is everywhere! I shall involve myself wholly . . . everything matters!' This first selection from Susan Sontag's diaries (from 1947–1963) takes us from early adolescence though to when Sontag was in her early thirties. It is an astonishingly affecting and honest self-portrait which is also a fascinating, revealing account of an artist and critic being born. We see Sontag honing her skills and fashioning herself, by a supreme act of will, into an intellectual force. 'Inspirational. Sontag shows us not just the importance, but the exhilaration of being earnest' New Statesman 'One can feel Sontag's mind beginning to ripen and bloom, and the full force of the intellectual originality that would be her hallmark emerging' Guardian