Society and culture According to Susan Sontag, leukemia was often romanticized in 20th-century fiction, portrayed as a joy-ending, clean disease whose fair, innocent and gentle victims die young or at the wrong time. As such, it was the cultural successor to tuberculosis, which held this cultural position until it was discovered to be an infectious disease. The 1970 romance novel Love Story is an example of this romanticization of leukemia.
Society and culture According to Susan Sontag, leukemia was often romanticized in 20th-century fiction, portrayed as a joy-ending, clean dis!ease whose fair, innocent and gentle victims die young or at the wrong time. As such, it was the cultural succ:essor to tuberculosis, which held this cultural position until it was discovered to be an infectious disease. The 1970 romance novel Love Story is an example of this romanticization of leukemia.