Abstract: Prof. Leland Poague, the editor of Conversations with Susan Sontag (1995) and co-author of Susan Sontag: An Annotated Bibliography 1948-1992 (2000), is one of the top scholars in the field of Sontag Studies. Dr. Gu Mingsheng, when working as a visiting scholar in the English Department at Iowa State University during the academic year 2016-2017, interviewed Prof. Poague on a wide range of issues concerning Sontag Scholarship. In this interview, Prof. Poague contrasts Sontag's aphoristic, note-style constructions with her training in academic philosophy. Apart from elaborating Sontag's ambivalent and complex relationships to Judaism and to Freud, he examines Sontag's picture of the artist and the audience in Styles of Radical Will, and contends that her view of modern consciousness and its relation to language does not entail extreme cultural relativism. Prof. Poague compares Sontag's films with her short fiction in their depiction of deadpan surrealism, and he discusses the unity of the short stories and the major thematic role of “will” in I, etcetera.In addition, Prof. Poague offers suggestions on relating Sontag's self assessment of her fiction to her success as a writer.

Key words: Susan Sontag, Jewish culture, Freudianism, Promised Lands, I, etcetera