Gombrowicz, son of a wealthy lawyer, studied law at Warsaw University and philosophy and economics in Paris. His first novel, Ferdydurke, with its existential themes and a daring use of surrealistic techniques, became a literary sensation in Warsaw. Yvonne: Princess of Burgundia (1935), which anticipated many themes of the Theater of the Absurd, was also enormously successful; together with another of his plays, The Marriage (1953), it has been staged throughout the world. During the war, Gombrowicz lived in Argentina. In the postwar period, Ferdydurke was at first banned by the Polish authorities (continuing a ban imposed by the Nazis). During the "thaw" it was published in Warsaw in 1957 and its author was hailed as the "greatest living Polish writer" by the critic Sandauer. The ban on Gombrowicz's work was reimposed in 1958. By this time, however, Gombrowicz had achieved a wide reputation in western Europe and the United States.
Susan Sontag, an influential cultural critic with a Harvard master's degree in philosophy, is noted for taking radical positions and venturing outrageous interpretations. Proclaiming a "new sensibility," she supported the cause of pop art and underground films in the 1960s. Her reputation as a formidable critic has been established by numerous reviews, essays, and articles in the New York Review of Books, the N.Y. Times, Harper's, and other periodicals. Against Interpretation (1966) includes her controversial essay "Notes on Camp," first published in Partisan Review. The title of the book introduces her argument against what she sees as the distortion of an original work by the countless critics who bend it to their own interpretations. "The aim of all commentary on art," she writes, "should be to make works of art---and, by analogy, our own experience---more, rather than less, real to us." Sontag has a mature modernist sensibility, but manages to depict the avant-garde in language accessible to any reader. She has lectured extensively around the United States and has taught philosophy at Harvard, Sarah Lawrence, and Columbia. She is a frequent and popular television discussion personality, particularly on contemporary issues of illness or feminism, although many feminists are unhappy that she does not declare herself to be a "feminist critic." She is also, less successfully, a fiction writer.
