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Sontag: Her Life
Susan Sontag was our last great literary star. Her brilliant, serious mind combined with her striking image, her rigorous intellectualism and her ground-breaking inquiries into what was then seen as 'low culture' - celebrity, photographs, camp - propelled her into her own unique, inimitable category and made her famous the world over, emblematic of twentieth-century New York literary glamour.
Sontag is the first biography based on exclusive access to her restricted personal archives and on hundreds of interviews conducted with many people around the world who spoke freely for the first time about Susan Sontag, including Annie Leibovitz. It is a definitive portrait of an endlessly complex, dazzling woman; one of the twentieth century's greatest thinkers, who lived one of its most fascinating lives.
Sontag is the first biography based on exclusive access to her restricted personal archives and on hundreds of interviews conducted with many people around the world who spoke freely for the first time about Susan Sontag, including Annie Leibovitz. It is a definitive portrait of an endlessly complex, dazzling woman; one of the twentieth century's greatest thinkers, who lived one of its most fascinating lives.
818 pages, Paperback
First published September 17, 2019
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9272 people want to read
About the author
Benjamin Moser
43 books258 followersBenjamin Moser is a writer, editor, critic, and translator who was born in Houston in 1976 and lives in the Netherlands. After attending high school in Texas and France, he graduated from Brown University with a degree in History. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Utrecht.
He worked at Foreign Affairs magazine and Alfred A. Knopf in New York before becoming an editor at the Harvill Press in London. He was the New Books columnist for Harper's Magazine before becoming a Contributing Editor on visual art and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. His work has appeared in many publications in the United States and abroad, including Condé Nast Traveler, Newsweek, and The American Scholar.
His first book, Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, was published by Oxford University Press (USA), Haus Publishing (UK), Cosac Naify (Brazil), and Civilização (Portugal). Editions are forthcoming in France and Germany. He is the Series Editor of the new retranslations of Clarice Lispector to be published in the United States by New Directions and in the United Kingdom by Penguin Modern Classics.
He worked at Foreign Affairs magazine and Alfred A. Knopf in New York before becoming an editor at the Harvill Press in London. He was the New Books columnist for Harper's Magazine before becoming a Contributing Editor on visual art and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books. His work has appeared in many publications in the United States and abroad, including Condé Nast Traveler, Newsweek, and The American Scholar.
His first book, Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, was published by Oxford University Press (USA), Haus Publishing (UK), Cosac Naify (Brazil), and Civilização (Portugal). Editions are forthcoming in France and Germany. He is the Series Editor of the new retranslations of Clarice Lispector to be published in the United States by New Directions and in the United Kingdom by Penguin Modern Classics.
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November 26, 2023
As a Sontag admirer, I’m saddened to learn one of my favorite writers was such an asshole. There are reasons for it, but they don’t excuse her. Well, Sarajevo, may in part excuse her — maybe…
“When, after her death, extracts from Sontag’s‘s diaries were published, many who knew her were surprised by the often-remorseless self-awareness they revealed. ‘I've always identified with the Lady Bitch Who Destroys Herself,’ she wrote, for example, in 1960. ‘I'm not a good person,’ she emphasized in 1961. ‘Say this 20 times a day. “Sorry, that's the way it is.”’ A few days later, she added: ‘Better yet. Say, “Who the hell are you?”’ She did not think she was bad, she wrote in 1965. Rather, she was ‘incomplete. It's not what I am that's wrong, it's that I'm not more (responsive, alive, generous, considerate, original, sensitive, brave, etc.).’ . . . ‘Rather, it’s that I’m dumb, insensitive.’” (p. 245)
Sontag lost her intriging father, an importer who often traveled to China, when she was very young. Sontag’s mother, spoiled by opulence and many servants in Tientsen — well before the Revolution — taught her daughter to suppress unpleasant news. The book calls her the Queen of Denial. Nothing negative was to be uttered in her presence. She ran off to another room when that happened. She drank vodka from a tumbler while offering guests water out of similar glasses.
At Berkeley however Sontag broke free. She had an affair with a woman which she celebrated in her journals yet quickly sought to expunge. Shame? She was a 17 year old beauty and wunderkind when she went to Chicago University and married her professor. This in an attempt, apparently, to heterosexualize herself. During this time she wrote his first book for him — Freud: The Mind of the Moralist — which he published under his name.
A few highlights:
1. Sontag had no visual eye.
“‘She would forbid David to look out of the window from buses or trains when they were traveling,’ said one of David's later girlfriends, Joanna Robertson. ‘She used to say that he needed to hear all about a place in terms of facts and history in order to understand it, but that looking out of the window would tell him nothing. She never looked out of the window on journeys like that- I remember her, always talking about the places we were in or were headed towards, but never curious to simply look out to see them.’" (p. 162)
2. She was apolitical.
“Her time in Paris coincided with one of the turning points of French history: in May, as a result of the ongoing disaster in Algeria, civil war loomed. The American embassy considered evacuating its citizens as France fell under martial law: Corsica was conquered by dissident elements from the French Algerian army, and only an emergency government under General de Gaulle prevented a coup d'état. Yet there is not a word about this in Susan's journals. ‘I came to Paris in 1957 and I saw nothing,’ she said ten years later. ‘I stayed closed off in a milieu that was in itself a milieu of foreigners. But I felt the city.’
“She was so weighed down by heavy choices that she could spare little attention for even the most dramatic events; later, when she became a public figure called upon to pronounce on world affairs, her difficulty in seeing political matters became clear.” (p. 165)
3. She was irrational in the face of death.
I understand this is the biography of an asshole. I also understand the biographer’s need to give the reader a balanced portrait. But isn’t this a bit cruel?
“Her alienation from her body was so extreme that she had to remind herself to bathe. She neglected her health in astonishing ways. She never exercised. She barely slept. Sometimes she forgot to eat, and sometimes she gorged. She was a heavy smoker —and lied about her habit even to her oncologist. But in Illness as Metaphor—in her zeal to transform her story of guilt, shame, and fear into something usable—she acknowledged none of this. Instead, she dismissed ‘crude statistics’ brandished for the general public, such as that 90 percent of all cancers are 'environmentally caused,’ or that imprudent diet and tobacco smoking alone account for 75 percent of all cancer deaths. She does not say what is crude about these statistics, or display any interest in the science behind them.
“The pathogenesis of cancer is extremely complex; the disease strikes for all sorts of reasons. But under the onslaught she lost her ability, so recently acquired, to distinguish between tragedy and drama. Her dismissal of personal responsibility—for some cancers, for some people—made contracting cancer from chain-smoking Marlboros sound as inexplicable as being dashed to pieces by a meteor. She chose to dissociate her choices from any
potential responsibility for her disease, and created, instead, a story about why she had been saved. She credited her survival to her own determination to be treated by the most radical methods, and to the doctor who had administered them. At the heart of this story was an impossible paradox. She was not responsible for her illness--but she was responsible for its cure.” (pp. 375-376)
The author makes a good point. But because this bit has to do with her mental state during her illness, it strikes me as beyond cruel. Alas, there’s no way around it for the author. As Sontag said, “The job of writers is to speak out.” (p. 486) So her irrationality during illness is an ugliness we must see — like photos of a cataclysm that make no exception for personal dignity.
4. She was in deep need of psychoanalysis but never got it.
“‘I loved Susan,’ said Leon Wieseltier, speaking for many others. ‘But I didn't like her.’ She grew more and more insulting toward the people who did love her, and as a result her isolation often astonished people who knew her only as a famous public figure. Many formerly close friends abandoned her. ‘It was like Marilyn Monroe, who couldn't get a date on a Saturday night,’ Wieseltier said. ‘She had absolutely no understanding of herself.’ And so she suffered genuinely from the cruelty and indifference she perceived in others. But she could not perceive her effect on those she hurt in turn, and friends and acquaintances were constantly befuddled by her behavior, which they would still be analyzing years after her death.” (p. 480)
5. She made 11 visits to Sarajevo. In a life of so emotionally fraught, this may have been her finest hour.
“At the end of that first visit, he (David Reiff) spoke to Miro Purivatra, who later founded the Sarajevo Film Festival, and asked if there was anything, or anyone, he could bring back. ‘One of the persons who could be perfect to come here to understand what's going on would definitely be Susan Sontag,’ he [Purivatra] said. Without mentioning the connection—‘for sure," Miro said, ‘I did not know that he was her son’—David said he would do what he could. He appeared at Miro's door a few weeks later. ‘We hugged each other and he told me, “Okay, you asked me something and I brought your guest here.” Just behind the door, it was her. Susan Sontag. I was frozen.’ It would be at least a month before he figured out their relationship: ‘They never told me.’” (p.556)
“‘She was the first international person who said publicly that what is happening in Bosnia in 1993 was a genocide," said Haris Pasovié, a young theater director. ‘The first. She deeply understood this. She was absolutely one hundred percent dedicated to this because she thought it was important for Bosnia but it was also important for the world.’" (p. 558)
6. Somehow, in Bosnia, Susan became nice. Her return from Sarajevo, though, when I read about it, reminded me of a closing line in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”:
”She would of been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
But back in New York, there was no such incentive.
"’Everything she said about Bosnia was admirable,’ said Stephen Koch. ‘Her behavior about it was insufferable. Because if you had not gone to Sarajevo yourself, you were obviously just a morally inferior being. And she let that be known very clearly, with almost sneering condescension.’“ (p. 589)
As her posthumous journals attest she never quite believed she was working hard enough. This was reflected in her final months. She undertook a bone marrow transplant that, according to the author, was almost suicidally toxic and unlikely to work because this was her third cancer. The treatment was another way of working hard. It’s a shame she should have achieved so much yet enjoyed it so little. Her life really as I read it was paradoxical.
This is an excellent critical biography. No admirer of Sontag will want to miss it.
“When, after her death, extracts from Sontag’s‘s diaries were published, many who knew her were surprised by the often-remorseless self-awareness they revealed. ‘I've always identified with the Lady Bitch Who Destroys Herself,’ she wrote, for example, in 1960. ‘I'm not a good person,’ she emphasized in 1961. ‘Say this 20 times a day. “Sorry, that's the way it is.”’ A few days later, she added: ‘Better yet. Say, “Who the hell are you?”’ She did not think she was bad, she wrote in 1965. Rather, she was ‘incomplete. It's not what I am that's wrong, it's that I'm not more (responsive, alive, generous, considerate, original, sensitive, brave, etc.).’ . . . ‘Rather, it’s that I’m dumb, insensitive.’” (p. 245)
Sontag lost her intriging father, an importer who often traveled to China, when she was very young. Sontag’s mother, spoiled by opulence and many servants in Tientsen — well before the Revolution — taught her daughter to suppress unpleasant news. The book calls her the Queen of Denial. Nothing negative was to be uttered in her presence. She ran off to another room when that happened. She drank vodka from a tumbler while offering guests water out of similar glasses.
At Berkeley however Sontag broke free. She had an affair with a woman which she celebrated in her journals yet quickly sought to expunge. Shame? She was a 17 year old beauty and wunderkind when she went to Chicago University and married her professor. This in an attempt, apparently, to heterosexualize herself. During this time she wrote his first book for him — Freud: The Mind of the Moralist — which he published under his name.
A few highlights:
1. Sontag had no visual eye.
“‘She would forbid David to look out of the window from buses or trains when they were traveling,’ said one of David's later girlfriends, Joanna Robertson. ‘She used to say that he needed to hear all about a place in terms of facts and history in order to understand it, but that looking out of the window would tell him nothing. She never looked out of the window on journeys like that- I remember her, always talking about the places we were in or were headed towards, but never curious to simply look out to see them.’" (p. 162)
2. She was apolitical.
“Her time in Paris coincided with one of the turning points of French history: in May, as a result of the ongoing disaster in Algeria, civil war loomed. The American embassy considered evacuating its citizens as France fell under martial law: Corsica was conquered by dissident elements from the French Algerian army, and only an emergency government under General de Gaulle prevented a coup d'état. Yet there is not a word about this in Susan's journals. ‘I came to Paris in 1957 and I saw nothing,’ she said ten years later. ‘I stayed closed off in a milieu that was in itself a milieu of foreigners. But I felt the city.’
“She was so weighed down by heavy choices that she could spare little attention for even the most dramatic events; later, when she became a public figure called upon to pronounce on world affairs, her difficulty in seeing political matters became clear.” (p. 165)
3. She was irrational in the face of death.
I understand this is the biography of an asshole. I also understand the biographer’s need to give the reader a balanced portrait. But isn’t this a bit cruel?
“Her alienation from her body was so extreme that she had to remind herself to bathe. She neglected her health in astonishing ways. She never exercised. She barely slept. Sometimes she forgot to eat, and sometimes she gorged. She was a heavy smoker —and lied about her habit even to her oncologist. But in Illness as Metaphor—in her zeal to transform her story of guilt, shame, and fear into something usable—she acknowledged none of this. Instead, she dismissed ‘crude statistics’ brandished for the general public, such as that 90 percent of all cancers are 'environmentally caused,’ or that imprudent diet and tobacco smoking alone account for 75 percent of all cancer deaths. She does not say what is crude about these statistics, or display any interest in the science behind them.
“The pathogenesis of cancer is extremely complex; the disease strikes for all sorts of reasons. But under the onslaught she lost her ability, so recently acquired, to distinguish between tragedy and drama. Her dismissal of personal responsibility—for some cancers, for some people—made contracting cancer from chain-smoking Marlboros sound as inexplicable as being dashed to pieces by a meteor. She chose to dissociate her choices from any
potential responsibility for her disease, and created, instead, a story about why she had been saved. She credited her survival to her own determination to be treated by the most radical methods, and to the doctor who had administered them. At the heart of this story was an impossible paradox. She was not responsible for her illness--but she was responsible for its cure.” (pp. 375-376)
The author makes a good point. But because this bit has to do with her mental state during her illness, it strikes me as beyond cruel. Alas, there’s no way around it for the author. As Sontag said, “The job of writers is to speak out.” (p. 486) So her irrationality during illness is an ugliness we must see — like photos of a cataclysm that make no exception for personal dignity.
4. She was in deep need of psychoanalysis but never got it.
“‘I loved Susan,’ said Leon Wieseltier, speaking for many others. ‘But I didn't like her.’ She grew more and more insulting toward the people who did love her, and as a result her isolation often astonished people who knew her only as a famous public figure. Many formerly close friends abandoned her. ‘It was like Marilyn Monroe, who couldn't get a date on a Saturday night,’ Wieseltier said. ‘She had absolutely no understanding of herself.’ And so she suffered genuinely from the cruelty and indifference she perceived in others. But she could not perceive her effect on those she hurt in turn, and friends and acquaintances were constantly befuddled by her behavior, which they would still be analyzing years after her death.” (p. 480)
5. She made 11 visits to Sarajevo. In a life of so emotionally fraught, this may have been her finest hour.
“At the end of that first visit, he (David Reiff) spoke to Miro Purivatra, who later founded the Sarajevo Film Festival, and asked if there was anything, or anyone, he could bring back. ‘One of the persons who could be perfect to come here to understand what's going on would definitely be Susan Sontag,’ he [Purivatra] said. Without mentioning the connection—‘for sure," Miro said, ‘I did not know that he was her son’—David said he would do what he could. He appeared at Miro's door a few weeks later. ‘We hugged each other and he told me, “Okay, you asked me something and I brought your guest here.” Just behind the door, it was her. Susan Sontag. I was frozen.’ It would be at least a month before he figured out their relationship: ‘They never told me.’” (p.556)
“‘She was the first international person who said publicly that what is happening in Bosnia in 1993 was a genocide," said Haris Pasovié, a young theater director. ‘The first. She deeply understood this. She was absolutely one hundred percent dedicated to this because she thought it was important for Bosnia but it was also important for the world.’" (p. 558)
6. Somehow, in Bosnia, Susan became nice. Her return from Sarajevo, though, when I read about it, reminded me of a closing line in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find”:
”She would of been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
But back in New York, there was no such incentive.
"’Everything she said about Bosnia was admirable,’ said Stephen Koch. ‘Her behavior about it was insufferable. Because if you had not gone to Sarajevo yourself, you were obviously just a morally inferior being. And she let that be known very clearly, with almost sneering condescension.’“ (p. 589)
As her posthumous journals attest she never quite believed she was working hard enough. This was reflected in her final months. She undertook a bone marrow transplant that, according to the author, was almost suicidally toxic and unlikely to work because this was her third cancer. The treatment was another way of working hard. It’s a shame she should have achieved so much yet enjoyed it so little. Her life really as I read it was paradoxical.
This is an excellent critical biography. No admirer of Sontag will want to miss it.
April 30, 2021
I just do not know where to start in describing Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser. It is very well researched. As the title indicates, it covers both her life and her works. Her relationships with her mother, her sister, her one time husband, her son, her male and female lovers are all explored. It took me a while to be drawn in. She was both an aesthete and a highbrow intellectual. This put me off at the start. I like straight talk. Initially, I found her way of speaking too highfalutin, too pretentious. Peu á peu, I began to comprehend her way of being. I got beyond her manner of expressing herself. I began to understand the questions she was asking and what she was searching for. The author gives you her words from her journals and the words of both her friends and enemies. I began to see how she was thinking. At the beginning I was put off, by the end I was thoroughly drawn in.
Both Sontag’s positive as well as negative attributes are laid bare. I came to care for her. This does not mean I like her. Does this seem strange? Well, she is complicated, and the book shows this amazingly well. The thoughts that twirled through her head are fascinating, once I got beneath the esoteric, to what she was driving at. The issues she focused upon were important and are still relevant today. She changed over time; in other ways she didn’t change at all. I can tell you I love how she searched for the truth. At the same time, she frequently lied. No matter what I say, I can say the opposite too. She is shown to be weak and strong and so very human.
Sontag was a fascinating person. You don’t have to like a person to find them fascinating. You don’t have to like a person to appreciate the things they have done.
Admitting she was lesbian was an anathema for her. Sexuality is tied to her whole way of being. “Coming out of the closet” isn’t an action; it is a process.
Think about these lines:
“All that we have is our opinion. Never give that away.”
“Man is seen. Women are looked at.”
“Happiness is a trivial subject.”
“There is a difference between being and pretending to be….between being and playing a role.”
“Everyone was great friends, and no one knew anybody.”
The following amused me: Susan remarks that she adores receiving guests but detests visiting others; she adores giving advice but detests being given advice from others. Aren’t you smiling? Are you the same? The list can be extended; it is never-ending.
Reading about her battles against cancer are excruciating. Her engagement in Vietnam and Sarajevo are worthy of the highest praise. Her cruelty to friends will make you cringe. A second later, she puts herself out on the line and helps a friend. She was a woman of contradictions! Read the book. Don’t be too hasty in judging it. Give it time.
The audiobook is narrated by Tavia Gilbert. She is just not one of my favorite narrators. Her tone of voice irritates me. She wants to pull listeners over the coals. She pushes listeners to feel emotional. I feel manipulated when I listen to her, but the further I got the less attention I paid to the narration. I had become too involved in Sontag’s life story to even bother about the narration! Gilbert is easy to follow, and her French pronunciation is passable. Three stars for the narration.
**************************
*Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser 4 stars
*The Volcano Lover: A Romance DNF
Both Sontag’s positive as well as negative attributes are laid bare. I came to care for her. This does not mean I like her. Does this seem strange? Well, she is complicated, and the book shows this amazingly well. The thoughts that twirled through her head are fascinating, once I got beneath the esoteric, to what she was driving at. The issues she focused upon were important and are still relevant today. She changed over time; in other ways she didn’t change at all. I can tell you I love how she searched for the truth. At the same time, she frequently lied. No matter what I say, I can say the opposite too. She is shown to be weak and strong and so very human.
Sontag was a fascinating person. You don’t have to like a person to find them fascinating. You don’t have to like a person to appreciate the things they have done.
Admitting she was lesbian was an anathema for her. Sexuality is tied to her whole way of being. “Coming out of the closet” isn’t an action; it is a process.
Think about these lines:
“All that we have is our opinion. Never give that away.”
“Man is seen. Women are looked at.”
“Happiness is a trivial subject.”
“There is a difference between being and pretending to be….between being and playing a role.”
“Everyone was great friends, and no one knew anybody.”
The following amused me: Susan remarks that she adores receiving guests but detests visiting others; she adores giving advice but detests being given advice from others. Aren’t you smiling? Are you the same? The list can be extended; it is never-ending.
Reading about her battles against cancer are excruciating. Her engagement in Vietnam and Sarajevo are worthy of the highest praise. Her cruelty to friends will make you cringe. A second later, she puts herself out on the line and helps a friend. She was a woman of contradictions! Read the book. Don’t be too hasty in judging it. Give it time.
The audiobook is narrated by Tavia Gilbert. She is just not one of my favorite narrators. Her tone of voice irritates me. She wants to pull listeners over the coals. She pushes listeners to feel emotional. I feel manipulated when I listen to her, but the further I got the less attention I paid to the narration. I had become too involved in Sontag’s life story to even bother about the narration! Gilbert is easy to follow, and her French pronunciation is passable. Three stars for the narration.
**************************
*Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser 4 stars
*The Volcano Lover: A Romance DNF
July 13, 2019
I found it a little bit odd that some reviewers of the ARC of this book complained that they did not want to waste 700 pages reading about such a difficult person. I tend to think of gushing hagiographies of historical figures as being almost as creepy as biographies of high-profile villains like Hitler or Napoleon. It's far better to read in detail about challenging personalities, warts and all - and Sontag certainly had her share of warts.
Some may wonder in the opening pages if Benjamin Moser was the right person to pull this off, since he tends to analyze deep motivations in almost a post-Freudian sense, and offer the results as a true picture. Certainly, one could challenge his certainty if not his conclusions at times, but the reason this ends up working is because Moser's conclusions ring true. The book exceeds 700 pages because Moser wants to give us a flavor of all the decades, from the 1940s to the early 2000s, when Sontag influenced late-20th-century politics, culture, and intellectual life. And love her or hate her, she certainly did play a leading role in defining those worlds. Moser is not afraid to say that many of her novels, plays, and film experiments were only partially successful, but he concludes by showing that Sontag mattered in ways we may not fully understand for decades to come.
Moser digs deeper than the simplest explanation to show why Sontag was often unhappy or willing to lash out at friends. The most common view is that Sontag was never comfortable with the idea of "coming out" as a lesbian, and to the end of her life resisted addressing any aspect of her gender identity. Moser shows that there was a good deal of truth in this, but it was also related to Sontag's uncomfortable relationship with her own body. She was not grounded in her body, she did not take care of her health, but in her three bouts with cancer, she seemed willing to abuse her body horribly merely to make sure her mind could go on. Moser also takes the leap to say that the underlying challenge in both queer politics and body familiarity was that Sontag was the child of an alcoholic. Certainly her mother's odd and detached manner, and Sontag's bitter relationship with her mom, was reflected later in Sontag's own strange relationship with her son, David Rieff. Though Sontag herself never showed aspects of a substance-abusive personality, the damages wrought by even a single generation of parent with alcohol or drug addiction can live on in many succeeding generations.
The "juicy newsbyte" that many publicists seem to focus on in this book is the revelation that Sontag essentially wrote the entirety of her ex-husband Philip Rieff's 1950s book, Freud, The Mind of the Moralist. I find this scarcely surprising and largely irrelevant, because it was all so long ago and because Freud matters so little these days. It certainly shows the degree of male dominance in academia in the 1950s, and later descriptions of the divorce underscore what a terribly creepy person Philip Rieff was, but this story is a very minor sidelight in the book.
Moser hints at an aspect of philosophy and public-intellectual life that I fleshed out a little in my own mind, though Moser himself was not this explicit. He showed that Sontag got a classic 1940s-intellectual education at the University of Chicago, heavily influenced by Greek and Roman authors, Marx, Freud, and many 18th-century philosophers. As a result, she believed in disembodied mental images and philosophy. She never subscribed at all to the post-modernist realm in which Theory in academia became paramount to lives actually lived. I say, good for her for that! Her legacy will live on long after the likes of Derrida and Foucault are forgotten.
It is often said that Sontag and her contemporaries were the last generation of public intellectuals, and there are no comparative figures today. Some would respond by saying that the philosophers of the 21st century are in fields such as cognitive neuroscience and comparative microbiology. I will go so far as to guess that if Sontag had encountered thinkers like Daniel Dennett and George Lakoff earlier in her career (a physical impossibility, unless she had been born later), she would have eagerly followed the neuroscience-philosophers and would have been more at peace with her body and her sexuality as a result. To cite but one example, in Lakoff's work Philosophy in the Flesh, he cites the key role of metaphor as being central to the "hidden layer" of the neural network, one that makes philosophy and abstraction possible. Moser makes metaphor central to his entire biography of Sontag. Lakoff concludes his book by tossing out a good deal of Plato, Descartes, Kant, Marx, Freud, and others, saying any philosophy that assumes the existence of a disembodied intelligence, and that does not center itself on emergent intelligence arising from the human body, is next to worthless. If Sontag and many of her contemporary philosophers had tossed out 3/4 of the classical education offered at University of Chicago, Berkeley, and most Ivy League schools in the 1940s and 1950s, she might have been a much happier genius. But of course, then we would not have seen the 1960s trajectory of the public intellectual that we saw in Sontag.
Sontag often is cited as a New Left public intellectual, but Moser said it is more complex than that. Sontag always was more interested in meaning, metaphor, and representation than in ideology. When she seemed to mouth platitudes in Havana or Hanoi, it was often because she was not paying attention to realities on the ground (another factor of being uncomfortable with her own being-in-the-world), rather than because she believed in any centralized socialist ideologies. In talking about the evolution of New York public-intellectual life in the 1950s through 1970s, Moser shows what an inbred and cloistered group these writers were. It wasn't just that people put up with sexist jackasses like Norman Mailer far longer than they should have. It was that the editors of The New York Review of Books considered themselves far more influential than they really were. Moser brings up the case of the shunning of the radical poet Adrienne Rich. Who the hell cares what these people thought? It reminded me of the number of young novelists in the 1980s who centered their stories on lives and loves among Manhattan and Brooklyn literati. Who the hell cares? The artificial cultural island of New York quite simply didn't matter, and Sontag was right to stop paying attention to her compatriots in many such matters.
The problem was, she never did so with kindness or consistency, a result of having no Buddhist or self-love principles to fall back on. Sontag would regularly shun, betray or trash-talk both close friends and lovers, because she had no effective way of stating her independence without bad-mouthing those she loved. A classic case came in the post-Yugoslavia wars largely initiated by the Serbs. When Sontag made long stays in Sarajevo during the siege of that city, she rightly berated U.S. and Western European intellectuals for their silence on Bosnia, and their apparent willingness to give Slobodan Milosevic a free pass. But there is a wrong and right way to berate. One can snidely call a close ally a "useful idiot" yet still find a way to talk to them tomorrow, but Sontag seemed to be an expert at permanently burning bridges. Sure it showed her as an independent thinker, but it did not show her as a kind person.
Her late-life relationships, particularly her odd deep love with photographer Annie Leibovitz, were particularly abusive in this regard, and once again, it all boiled down to a fear of death and a fear of the body. Unfortunately, some of these behaviors rubbed off on her son David Rieff, who seemed to grow more sullen and uncaring with others as he entered middle age. It ended up making her twin memorial services following her death a mockery, an indication of all that had been broken in her way of seeing herself and others.
Moser's epilogue, aptly titled "The Body and Its Metaphors," concludes on a positive note by pointing out that she offered volumes of useful observations on the relationship between language and reality, as well as the relation between image and reality. In her book On Photography, she explored what McLuhan had hinted at, at how immediate visual access to information (and later the impact of a always-on Internet) changed our perception of reality. But in the new era of deepfakes, we can no longer trust photographic or video evidence. We may no longer be able to trust reality itself. Where would Sontag have gone in exploring linguistic concepts of reality with the likes of Chomsky or Lakoff? Moser points out that it's useless to ask how Sontag would have confronted problems arising later in the 21st century - it's enough to know that she would have been the first to ask the right questions. Still, it would have been interesting to see if a familiarity with the body might have made her a fundamentally happier person.
Some may wonder in the opening pages if Benjamin Moser was the right person to pull this off, since he tends to analyze deep motivations in almost a post-Freudian sense, and offer the results as a true picture. Certainly, one could challenge his certainty if not his conclusions at times, but the reason this ends up working is because Moser's conclusions ring true. The book exceeds 700 pages because Moser wants to give us a flavor of all the decades, from the 1940s to the early 2000s, when Sontag influenced late-20th-century politics, culture, and intellectual life. And love her or hate her, she certainly did play a leading role in defining those worlds. Moser is not afraid to say that many of her novels, plays, and film experiments were only partially successful, but he concludes by showing that Sontag mattered in ways we may not fully understand for decades to come.
Moser digs deeper than the simplest explanation to show why Sontag was often unhappy or willing to lash out at friends. The most common view is that Sontag was never comfortable with the idea of "coming out" as a lesbian, and to the end of her life resisted addressing any aspect of her gender identity. Moser shows that there was a good deal of truth in this, but it was also related to Sontag's uncomfortable relationship with her own body. She was not grounded in her body, she did not take care of her health, but in her three bouts with cancer, she seemed willing to abuse her body horribly merely to make sure her mind could go on. Moser also takes the leap to say that the underlying challenge in both queer politics and body familiarity was that Sontag was the child of an alcoholic. Certainly her mother's odd and detached manner, and Sontag's bitter relationship with her mom, was reflected later in Sontag's own strange relationship with her son, David Rieff. Though Sontag herself never showed aspects of a substance-abusive personality, the damages wrought by even a single generation of parent with alcohol or drug addiction can live on in many succeeding generations.
The "juicy newsbyte" that many publicists seem to focus on in this book is the revelation that Sontag essentially wrote the entirety of her ex-husband Philip Rieff's 1950s book, Freud, The Mind of the Moralist. I find this scarcely surprising and largely irrelevant, because it was all so long ago and because Freud matters so little these days. It certainly shows the degree of male dominance in academia in the 1950s, and later descriptions of the divorce underscore what a terribly creepy person Philip Rieff was, but this story is a very minor sidelight in the book.
Moser hints at an aspect of philosophy and public-intellectual life that I fleshed out a little in my own mind, though Moser himself was not this explicit. He showed that Sontag got a classic 1940s-intellectual education at the University of Chicago, heavily influenced by Greek and Roman authors, Marx, Freud, and many 18th-century philosophers. As a result, she believed in disembodied mental images and philosophy. She never subscribed at all to the post-modernist realm in which Theory in academia became paramount to lives actually lived. I say, good for her for that! Her legacy will live on long after the likes of Derrida and Foucault are forgotten.
It is often said that Sontag and her contemporaries were the last generation of public intellectuals, and there are no comparative figures today. Some would respond by saying that the philosophers of the 21st century are in fields such as cognitive neuroscience and comparative microbiology. I will go so far as to guess that if Sontag had encountered thinkers like Daniel Dennett and George Lakoff earlier in her career (a physical impossibility, unless she had been born later), she would have eagerly followed the neuroscience-philosophers and would have been more at peace with her body and her sexuality as a result. To cite but one example, in Lakoff's work Philosophy in the Flesh, he cites the key role of metaphor as being central to the "hidden layer" of the neural network, one that makes philosophy and abstraction possible. Moser makes metaphor central to his entire biography of Sontag. Lakoff concludes his book by tossing out a good deal of Plato, Descartes, Kant, Marx, Freud, and others, saying any philosophy that assumes the existence of a disembodied intelligence, and that does not center itself on emergent intelligence arising from the human body, is next to worthless. If Sontag and many of her contemporary philosophers had tossed out 3/4 of the classical education offered at University of Chicago, Berkeley, and most Ivy League schools in the 1940s and 1950s, she might have been a much happier genius. But of course, then we would not have seen the 1960s trajectory of the public intellectual that we saw in Sontag.
Sontag often is cited as a New Left public intellectual, but Moser said it is more complex than that. Sontag always was more interested in meaning, metaphor, and representation than in ideology. When she seemed to mouth platitudes in Havana or Hanoi, it was often because she was not paying attention to realities on the ground (another factor of being uncomfortable with her own being-in-the-world), rather than because she believed in any centralized socialist ideologies. In talking about the evolution of New York public-intellectual life in the 1950s through 1970s, Moser shows what an inbred and cloistered group these writers were. It wasn't just that people put up with sexist jackasses like Norman Mailer far longer than they should have. It was that the editors of The New York Review of Books considered themselves far more influential than they really were. Moser brings up the case of the shunning of the radical poet Adrienne Rich. Who the hell cares what these people thought? It reminded me of the number of young novelists in the 1980s who centered their stories on lives and loves among Manhattan and Brooklyn literati. Who the hell cares? The artificial cultural island of New York quite simply didn't matter, and Sontag was right to stop paying attention to her compatriots in many such matters.
The problem was, she never did so with kindness or consistency, a result of having no Buddhist or self-love principles to fall back on. Sontag would regularly shun, betray or trash-talk both close friends and lovers, because she had no effective way of stating her independence without bad-mouthing those she loved. A classic case came in the post-Yugoslavia wars largely initiated by the Serbs. When Sontag made long stays in Sarajevo during the siege of that city, she rightly berated U.S. and Western European intellectuals for their silence on Bosnia, and their apparent willingness to give Slobodan Milosevic a free pass. But there is a wrong and right way to berate. One can snidely call a close ally a "useful idiot" yet still find a way to talk to them tomorrow, but Sontag seemed to be an expert at permanently burning bridges. Sure it showed her as an independent thinker, but it did not show her as a kind person.
Her late-life relationships, particularly her odd deep love with photographer Annie Leibovitz, were particularly abusive in this regard, and once again, it all boiled down to a fear of death and a fear of the body. Unfortunately, some of these behaviors rubbed off on her son David Rieff, who seemed to grow more sullen and uncaring with others as he entered middle age. It ended up making her twin memorial services following her death a mockery, an indication of all that had been broken in her way of seeing herself and others.
Moser's epilogue, aptly titled "The Body and Its Metaphors," concludes on a positive note by pointing out that she offered volumes of useful observations on the relationship between language and reality, as well as the relation between image and reality. In her book On Photography, she explored what McLuhan had hinted at, at how immediate visual access to information (and later the impact of a always-on Internet) changed our perception of reality. But in the new era of deepfakes, we can no longer trust photographic or video evidence. We may no longer be able to trust reality itself. Where would Sontag have gone in exploring linguistic concepts of reality with the likes of Chomsky or Lakoff? Moser points out that it's useless to ask how Sontag would have confronted problems arising later in the 21st century - it's enough to know that she would have been the first to ask the right questions. Still, it would have been interesting to see if a familiarity with the body might have made her a fundamentally happier person.
September 24, 2019
Sontag: Her Life and Work (2019) written by Benjamin Moser, totally captures the complexities of this dark literary lady and cultural icon. Born Susan Rosenblatt (1933-2004) to Lithuanian Jewish parents, Susan and her only son David Rieff would unapologetically change their given family name to Sontag. It was impossible to contain Sontag’s genius, intellect and persona by the conventions of ordinary life.
The mother daughter dynamic shaped Sontag’s character in numerous obvious and subtle ways. Sontag adored her beautiful moody, temperamental mother Mildred. For reasons unknown, Mildred declined to share the details of Sontag’s father’s death with her daughters for several months and seemed to want his memory erased from the family history. Moser suggested reasons for this were linked to Mildred’s probable alcoholism and substance use, though this was never a topic for polite discussion during the time. Mildred confessed that although she found her grandson David quite “charming” as a toddler, she still didn’t like children.
While still in high school, before her admission to Berkley and the University of Chicago, Susan interviewed the notable novelist/poet Thomas Mann several times. Sontag was highly respected in college for her intellect and was popular with professors and students alike. Sontag studied and wrote about Freud extensively. Moser described various parts of Sontag’s (compartmentalized) selfhood: the private self, the social self, and the self of metaphor and mask that was carefully watched and observed closely but at a distance. Through the 1970’s many mental health professionals and academics believed homosexuality could be changed at will. Sontag had affairs with both men and women, and usually declined to share intimate details of her personal life with significant others, Judith was shocked to learn her sister had female lovers many years after the fact.
When Sontag was 17, she married 28 year old sociology instructor Philip Rieff (m.1950-59). Mildred typically had little to say about her new son-in-law. The newlywed’s celebrated by going out for burgers. Susan is now recognized as the editor/true author of “Freud: The Mind of a Moralist” (1959). Rieff, reluctantly added Sontag’s name as the co-author in later editions of the book, and never produced another book of similar quality. Susan eventually insisted on the freedom that only a divorce could provide, and promptly elected to travel abroad-- leaving David in the care of domestic staff. Rieff didn’t take Sontag’s departure as easily as she had hoped. For a period of time he stalked her, and accused her of being an unfit mother. Sontag feared she would lose custody of David. After decades, and marriage to his second wife--,Rieff claimed Susan was indeed the love of his life.
Sontag identified simply as a writer. If she had come out of the closet, or identified as a feminist she would have gained legions of support from the gay community and additional popular women’s organizations and forums. Moser observed that Sontag wouldn’t have been as renowned and her work would have had less of an impact on all social and cultural levels had she publically identified as a lesbian or feminist author and noted the example of the author/poet Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) to support his point of view.
By 1964, when Sontag taught at Colombia, the numbers of Jewish students admitted to prestigious colleges and universities soared to 65% when discriminatory practices against them ended. While Sontag was from sunny California, most of her friends, colleagues, and other associates were from New York-- these (Jewish) intellectuals invented the genre of Literary Criticism. Sontag’s loyal friend Roger Strauss founder of FSG Publishing printed all of her books. Strauss and Sontag helped launch the careers of many new writers through generous support and mentorship.
In the declining years of her life, Sontag was surprisingly cognizant and energetic, sitting up in her hospital bed reading the paper and having the final word about her care. Sontag’s long term partner, the iconic celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz flew her to Seattle for treatment at the Fred Hutchinson’s Cancer Care Center. Moser didn’t seem to uncover many new details other than what is already on record of their relationship, nor is it surprising that Leibovitz would chose to document her relationship with Sontag and consequently Sontag’s drastic decline from cancer in her pictorial volume: “A Photographers Life: 1990-2005” (2006). The photographs are stunning, though many critics have deemed some the photographs of Sontag in poor taste.
Whether Sontag was writing about Vietnam during her stay in Hanoi in the 1960’s, or war torn Sarajevo in the 1990’s, or 9/11, she was always one step ahead of her time, and Sontag’s life and times are covered exceptionally well in the 832 pages of this book. With thanks and appreciation to HarperCollins for the DDC for the purpose of review.
The mother daughter dynamic shaped Sontag’s character in numerous obvious and subtle ways. Sontag adored her beautiful moody, temperamental mother Mildred. For reasons unknown, Mildred declined to share the details of Sontag’s father’s death with her daughters for several months and seemed to want his memory erased from the family history. Moser suggested reasons for this were linked to Mildred’s probable alcoholism and substance use, though this was never a topic for polite discussion during the time. Mildred confessed that although she found her grandson David quite “charming” as a toddler, she still didn’t like children.
While still in high school, before her admission to Berkley and the University of Chicago, Susan interviewed the notable novelist/poet Thomas Mann several times. Sontag was highly respected in college for her intellect and was popular with professors and students alike. Sontag studied and wrote about Freud extensively. Moser described various parts of Sontag’s (compartmentalized) selfhood: the private self, the social self, and the self of metaphor and mask that was carefully watched and observed closely but at a distance. Through the 1970’s many mental health professionals and academics believed homosexuality could be changed at will. Sontag had affairs with both men and women, and usually declined to share intimate details of her personal life with significant others, Judith was shocked to learn her sister had female lovers many years after the fact.
When Sontag was 17, she married 28 year old sociology instructor Philip Rieff (m.1950-59). Mildred typically had little to say about her new son-in-law. The newlywed’s celebrated by going out for burgers. Susan is now recognized as the editor/true author of “Freud: The Mind of a Moralist” (1959). Rieff, reluctantly added Sontag’s name as the co-author in later editions of the book, and never produced another book of similar quality. Susan eventually insisted on the freedom that only a divorce could provide, and promptly elected to travel abroad-- leaving David in the care of domestic staff. Rieff didn’t take Sontag’s departure as easily as she had hoped. For a period of time he stalked her, and accused her of being an unfit mother. Sontag feared she would lose custody of David. After decades, and marriage to his second wife--,Rieff claimed Susan was indeed the love of his life.
Sontag identified simply as a writer. If she had come out of the closet, or identified as a feminist she would have gained legions of support from the gay community and additional popular women’s organizations and forums. Moser observed that Sontag wouldn’t have been as renowned and her work would have had less of an impact on all social and cultural levels had she publically identified as a lesbian or feminist author and noted the example of the author/poet Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) to support his point of view.
By 1964, when Sontag taught at Colombia, the numbers of Jewish students admitted to prestigious colleges and universities soared to 65% when discriminatory practices against them ended. While Sontag was from sunny California, most of her friends, colleagues, and other associates were from New York-- these (Jewish) intellectuals invented the genre of Literary Criticism. Sontag’s loyal friend Roger Strauss founder of FSG Publishing printed all of her books. Strauss and Sontag helped launch the careers of many new writers through generous support and mentorship.
In the declining years of her life, Sontag was surprisingly cognizant and energetic, sitting up in her hospital bed reading the paper and having the final word about her care. Sontag’s long term partner, the iconic celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz flew her to Seattle for treatment at the Fred Hutchinson’s Cancer Care Center. Moser didn’t seem to uncover many new details other than what is already on record of their relationship, nor is it surprising that Leibovitz would chose to document her relationship with Sontag and consequently Sontag’s drastic decline from cancer in her pictorial volume: “A Photographers Life: 1990-2005” (2006). The photographs are stunning, though many critics have deemed some the photographs of Sontag in poor taste.
Whether Sontag was writing about Vietnam during her stay in Hanoi in the 1960’s, or war torn Sarajevo in the 1990’s, or 9/11, she was always one step ahead of her time, and Sontag’s life and times are covered exceptionally well in the 832 pages of this book. With thanks and appreciation to HarperCollins for the DDC for the purpose of review.
June 5, 2020
4.5. A fascinating subject well-served by a highly-readable overview. One slight problem: you can't help but sense Moser picked Sontag not merely for her obvious status as intriguing cultural icon/influencer and essayist, but at least partly so he could write a sumptuous takedown. Too often this reader felt credit was conferred just prior to another withering knock. Sontag, as Moser has it, was generous only to people with whom she was 'casually intimate'; those close to her (Annie Leibovitz; her son David who she casually ditched throughout his childhood) bore the brunt of what was either a failure to empathise or straight-out nastiness. There is a little too much indulgence of this strain: to render Sontag talented and even indispensable yet ultimately a failed person. An obsession with the idea that Sontag 'projected' who she was onto counterparts and subjects of criticism. Indignation that she stayed in the closet during the early days of AIDS when coming out may have helped destigmatise the illness far more than an essay derided for not going far enough. There is ultimately a little too shrill a repetition of the biographer's distaste, as opposed to clear-eyed assessment. (And Moser, it has to be mentioned, is subject to many of the criticisms he here levels at Sontag, which may well inadvertently reveal some of his motivation.)
Yet Moser writes well and you'll come away--if dampened by appreciation of her shortcomings--in no doubt as to Sontag's achievement and legacy as a fearless and mould-breaking intellect. She was unconventional, tricky, her behaviour often impossible to understand. She treated people badly. But she was a massively important trailblazer who championed and supported countless writers, brought hundreds of authors to the attention of a grateful readership, wrote epochal works that still resound, furthered the cause of casually-stifled (Saul Bellow stopped her getting a Macarthur fellowship--she wasn't the only woman he blackballed--for reasons that needn't be speculated) women intellectuals to an enormous degree. There is ultimately just a little too much emphasis on her failings, and often too begrudging a testimony as to her achievements. You may end up spending wasteful time wondering about Moser's agenda as opposed to delighting in his fascinating, unique, contradictory subject and that's a shame.
Yet Moser writes well and you'll come away--if dampened by appreciation of her shortcomings--in no doubt as to Sontag's achievement and legacy as a fearless and mould-breaking intellect. She was unconventional, tricky, her behaviour often impossible to understand. She treated people badly. But she was a massively important trailblazer who championed and supported countless writers, brought hundreds of authors to the attention of a grateful readership, wrote epochal works that still resound, furthered the cause of casually-stifled (Saul Bellow stopped her getting a Macarthur fellowship--she wasn't the only woman he blackballed--for reasons that needn't be speculated) women intellectuals to an enormous degree. There is ultimately just a little too much emphasis on her failings, and often too begrudging a testimony as to her achievements. You may end up spending wasteful time wondering about Moser's agenda as opposed to delighting in his fascinating, unique, contradictory subject and that's a shame.
December 27, 2020
A wonderful book. Moser shows patience, love, intelligence and goodwill toward his subject, Susan Sontag. Most books I read on Sontag are by people who knew her personally, and their books read more like a revenge on her. While reading Moser's book, I never thought about the biographer. He kept himself resolutely out of the book. His focus remains on Sontag's life and her work. I enjoyed reading Moser's take on Sontag's essays and her fiction, and how her work intersect with the works of other authors. Usually, I prefer books no longer than 250-300 pages, so reading this one is an exception. A nice one.
October 18, 2022
I have to admit my knowledge about Susan Sontag before listening to this biography was very very scant. But I loved getting to know her better, her life in different shapes and forms, the beautiful ones and the ugly ones. What I admired the most in this account of her life is its realness and its raw honesty. I really got the impression after finishing this book that I got to know her, precisely as she was: extremely intelligent, hard-working, always striving for perfection, difficult, direct, sometimes unfriendly, but also magnetic. Benjamin Moser did an amazing job researching her life, untangling the knots of hidden secrets and unspoken aversions. And I enjoyed the queer perspective on the life of Susan provided in this biography, it added another level of complexity to this overly complex persona.
September 21, 2019
Sontag: Her Life and Work (2019) written by Benjamin Moser, totally captures the complexities of this dark literary lady and cultural icon. Born Susan Rosenblatt (1933-2004) to Lithuanian Jewish parents, Susan and her only son David Rieff would unapologetically change their given family name to Sontag. It was impossible to contain Sontag’s genius, intellect and persona by the conventions of ordinary life.
The mother daughter dynamic shaped Sontag’s character in numerous obvious and subtle ways. Sontag adored her beautiful moody, temperamental mother Mildred. For reasons unknown, Mildred declined to share the details of Sontag’s father’s death with her daughters for several months and seemed to want his memory erased from the family history. Moser suggested reasons for this were linked to Mildred’s probable alcoholism and substance use, though this was never a topic for polite discussion during the time. Mildred confessed that although she found her grandson David quite “charming” as a toddler, she still didn’t like children.
While still in high school, before her admission to Berkley and the University of Chicago, Susan interviewed the notable novelist/poet Thomas Mann several times. Sontag was highly respected in college for her intellect and was popular with professors and students alike. Sontag studied and wrote about Freud extensively. Moser described various parts of Sontag’s (compartmentalized) selfhood: the private self, the social self, and the self of metaphor and mask that was carefully watched and observed closely but at a distance. Through the 1970’s many mental health professionals and academics believed homosexuality could be changed at will. Sontag had affairs with both men and women, and usually declined to share intimate details of her personal life with significant others, Judith was shocked to learn her sister had female lovers many years after the fact.
When Sontag was 17, she married 28 year old sociology instructor Philip Rieff (m.1950-59). Mildred typically had little to say about her new son-in-law. The newlywed’s celebrated by going out for burgers. Susan is now recognized as the editor/true author of “Freud: The Mind of a Moralist” (1959). Rieff, reluctantly added Sontag’s name as the co-author in later editions of the book, and never produced another book of similar quality. Susan eventually insisted on the freedom that only a divorce could provide, and promptly elected to travel abroad-- leaving David in the care of domestic staff. Rieff didn’t take Sontag’s departure as easily as she had hoped. For a period of time he stalked her, and accused her of being an unfit mother. Sontag feared she would lose custody of David. After decades, and marriage to his second wife--,Rieff claimed Susan was indeed the love of his life.
Sontag identified simply as a writer. If she had come out of the closet, or identified as a feminist she would have gained legions of support from the gay community and additional popular women’s organizations and forums. Moser observed that Sontag wouldn’t have been as renowned and her work would have had less of an impact on all social and cultural levels had she publically identified as a lesbian or feminist author and noted the example of the author/poet Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) to support his point of view.
By 1964, when Sontag taught at Colombia, the numbers of Jewish students admitted to prestigious colleges and universities soared to 65% when discriminatory practices against them ended. While Sontag was from sunny California, most of her friends, colleagues, and other associates were from New York-- these (Jewish) intellectuals invented the genre of Literary Criticism. Sontag’s loyal friend Roger Strauss founder of FSG Publishing printed all of her books. Strauss and Sontag helped launch the careers of many new writers through generous support and mentorship.
In the declining years of her life, Sontag was surprisingly cognizant and energetic, sitting up in her hospital bed reading the paper and having the final word about her care. Sontag’s long term partner, the iconic celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz flew her to Seattle for treatment at the Fred Hutchinson’s Cancer Care Center. Moser didn’t seem to uncover many new details other than what is already on record of their relationship, nor is it surprising that Leibovitz would chose to document her relationship with Sontag and consequently Sontag’s drastic decline from cancer in her pictorial volume: “A Photographers Life: 1990-2005” (2006). The photographs are stunning, though many critics have deemed some the photographs of Sontag in poor taste.
Whether Sontag was writing about Vietnam during her stay in Hanoi in the 1960’s, or war torn Sarajevo in the 1990’s, or 9/11, she was always one step ahead of her time, and Sontag’s life and times are covered exceptionally well in the 832 pages of this book. With thanks and appreciation to HarperCollins for the DDC for the purpose of review.
The mother daughter dynamic shaped Sontag’s character in numerous obvious and subtle ways. Sontag adored her beautiful moody, temperamental mother Mildred. For reasons unknown, Mildred declined to share the details of Sontag’s father’s death with her daughters for several months and seemed to want his memory erased from the family history. Moser suggested reasons for this were linked to Mildred’s probable alcoholism and substance use, though this was never a topic for polite discussion during the time. Mildred confessed that although she found her grandson David quite “charming” as a toddler, she still didn’t like children.
While still in high school, before her admission to Berkley and the University of Chicago, Susan interviewed the notable novelist/poet Thomas Mann several times. Sontag was highly respected in college for her intellect and was popular with professors and students alike. Sontag studied and wrote about Freud extensively. Moser described various parts of Sontag’s (compartmentalized) selfhood: the private self, the social self, and the self of metaphor and mask that was carefully watched and observed closely but at a distance. Through the 1970’s many mental health professionals and academics believed homosexuality could be changed at will. Sontag had affairs with both men and women, and usually declined to share intimate details of her personal life with significant others, Judith was shocked to learn her sister had female lovers many years after the fact.
When Sontag was 17, she married 28 year old sociology instructor Philip Rieff (m.1950-59). Mildred typically had little to say about her new son-in-law. The newlywed’s celebrated by going out for burgers. Susan is now recognized as the editor/true author of “Freud: The Mind of a Moralist” (1959). Rieff, reluctantly added Sontag’s name as the co-author in later editions of the book, and never produced another book of similar quality. Susan eventually insisted on the freedom that only a divorce could provide, and promptly elected to travel abroad-- leaving David in the care of domestic staff. Rieff didn’t take Sontag’s departure as easily as she had hoped. For a period of time he stalked her, and accused her of being an unfit mother. Sontag feared she would lose custody of David. After decades, and marriage to his second wife--,Rieff claimed Susan was indeed the love of his life.
Sontag identified simply as a writer. If she had come out of the closet, or identified as a feminist she would have gained legions of support from the gay community and additional popular women’s organizations and forums. Moser observed that Sontag wouldn’t have been as renowned and her work would have had less of an impact on all social and cultural levels had she publically identified as a lesbian or feminist author and noted the example of the author/poet Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) to support his point of view.
By 1964, when Sontag taught at Colombia, the numbers of Jewish students admitted to prestigious colleges and universities soared to 65% when discriminatory practices against them ended. While Sontag was from sunny California, most of her friends, colleagues, and other associates were from New York-- these (Jewish) intellectuals invented the genre of Literary Criticism. Sontag’s loyal friend Roger Strauss founder of FSG Publishing printed all of her books. Strauss and Sontag helped launch the careers of many new writers through generous support and mentorship.
In the declining years of her life, Sontag was surprisingly cognizant and energetic, sitting up in her hospital bed reading the paper and having the final word about her care. Sontag’s long term partner, the iconic celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz flew her to Seattle for treatment at the Fred Hutchinson’s Cancer Care Center. Moser didn’t seem to uncover many new details other than what is already on record of their relationship, nor is it surprising that Leibovitz would chose to document her relationship with Sontag and consequently Sontag’s drastic decline from cancer in her pictorial volume: “A Photographers Life: 1990-2005” (2006). The photographs are stunning, though many critics have deemed some the photographs of Sontag in poor taste.
Whether Sontag was writing about Vietnam during her stay in Hanoi in the 1960’s, or war torn Sarajevo in the 1990’s, or 9/11, she was always one step ahead of her time, and Sontag’s life and times are covered exceptionally well in the 832 pages of this book. With thanks and appreciation to HarperCollins for the DDC for the purpose of review.
June 11, 2020
Well this was fantastic but also too long. I guess you are supposed to say: she was a complex person blah blah. Who isn’t? My main thought while reading it: what a nasty woman. I pity her and also I would have never wanted to be in one room with her. She is so obnoxious. Her fear to be alone, to be authentic, to be happy. She was such a manipulative mother; judgmental, hostile and elitist with a superiority complex with others and this whole time so insecure in her private diaries. Such a sad and confused woman. She supported Salman Rushdie and soviet poets fleeing their countries which I respect. (The same Salman later called her a bullying monster).
“Sontag’s determination to create an unreliable narrator is so reliable that it becomes tedious: there is, after all, nothing here we relied on to begin with.”
“Sontag’s determination to create an unreliable narrator is so reliable that it becomes tedious: there is, after all, nothing here we relied on to begin with.”
April 4, 2023
Мене сміливо можна назвати фанаткою Сьюзен Зонтаґ. Інтелектуалка, кінокритикиня, письменниця... Дружина, матір, лесбійка... Щедра, груба, нечутлива... Все її життя - це боротьба проти будь-яких лейблів, а тому вона, в першу чергу, неоднозначна.
Мозер написав біографію про Сьюзен-ікону та Сью-людину, делікатно розповів про всю брудну білизну, створив психологічний портрет величі, змалював цілу епоху через одну особистість. Це було цікаво читати. Це було важко читати. По-перше, тут страшенно багато імен та людей, які треба гуглити, по-друге, автор часто "відходить від теми" та починає розповідати біографії цих людей, культурний осередок, події, які відбуваються у світі... Тобто контексту тут більше ніж треба, книжка вийшла трохи перевантажена. По-третє, авторку "Проти інтерпретації" весь час інтерпретують (або інтерпретують її "інтерпретації"). У деяких випадках ці "пошуки мотивів у вчинках Зонтаґ" виглядають надуманими. Людям властиво робити щось із бухти-барахти (це я по собі знаю), але Бенджамін Мозер одразу малює надважкі причини події. Ніт, інколи, люди просто спонтанні та туплять. Тому я не беруся стверджувати, що складний портрет, який нам намалював автор, реальний та правдивий, але він дуже близький до цього. Власне, тому ця біографія і отримала Пулітцера у 2020 році.
Чому Зонтаґ така крута? Вона написала книжку про етичність фотографії - про неї я напишу окремо. Вона застерігала про метафори, які ми використовуємо, описуючи хвороби, війни та інші події. Вона "топила за комунізм" та відвідувала В'єтнам під час війни, Кубу, Китай, але після знайомства із Бродським відреклася від цих ідей. Останній, до речі, недовго був її коханцем, як і Роберт Кеннеді (взагалі, у неї у цьому пункті - Дуже. Вражаючий. Список.) Вона поставити спектакль за п'єсою Беккета в Сараєво під час бомбардувань. Вона - перша, хто вступився за Салмана Рушді, коли іранці видали фетву, у якій закликали його вбити. Поет Еберто Паділья півроку безкоштовно жив у неї вдома після втечі з Куби. Але вона була поганою матір'ю та жахливо ставилася до своєї партнерки Енні Лейбовіц. Моментами, читаючи книжку, я її просто обожнювала, а на іншій сторінці - мені вже хотілося її вдарити. Ось ця гойдалка "люблю-ненавиджу" - ось це все про неї.
Сьюзен Зонтаґ завжди закликала пізнавати більше, тренувати свій інтелект, тож не дивно, що її біографія - це такий-собі тренажер. Потренуємося?
Мозер написав біографію про Сьюзен-ікону та Сью-людину, делікатно розповів про всю брудну білизну, створив психологічний портрет величі, змалював цілу епоху через одну особистість. Це було цікаво читати. Це було важко читати. По-перше, тут страшенно багато імен та людей, які треба гуглити, по-друге, автор часто "відходить від теми" та починає розповідати біографії цих людей, культурний осередок, події, які відбуваються у світі... Тобто контексту тут більше ніж треба, книжка вийшла трохи перевантажена. По-третє, авторку "Проти інтерпретації" весь час інтерпретують (або інтерпретують її "інтерпретації"). У деяких випадках ці "пошуки мотивів у вчинках Зонтаґ" виглядають надуманими. Людям властиво робити щось із бухти-барахти (це я по собі знаю), але Бенджамін Мозер одразу малює надважкі причини події. Ніт, інколи, люди просто спонтанні та туплять. Тому я не беруся стверджувати, що складний портрет, який нам намалював автор, реальний та правдивий, але він дуже близький до цього. Власне, тому ця біографія і отримала Пулітцера у 2020 році.
Чому Зонтаґ така крута? Вона написала книжку про етичність фотографії - про неї я напишу окремо. Вона застерігала про метафори, які ми використовуємо, описуючи хвороби, війни та інші події. Вона "топила за комунізм" та відвідувала В'єтнам під час війни, Кубу, Китай, але після знайомства із Бродським відреклася від цих ідей. Останній, до речі, недовго був її коханцем, як і Роберт Кеннеді (взагалі, у неї у цьому пункті - Дуже. Вражаючий. Список.) Вона поставити спектакль за п'єсою Беккета в Сараєво під час бомбардувань. Вона - перша, хто вступився за Салмана Рушді, коли іранці видали фетву, у якій закликали його вбити. Поет Еберто Паділья півроку безкоштовно жив у неї вдома після втечі з Куби. Але вона була поганою матір'ю та жахливо ставилася до своєї партнерки Енні Лейбовіц. Моментами, читаючи книжку, я її просто обожнювала, а на іншій сторінці - мені вже хотілося її вдарити. Ось ця гойдалка "люблю-ненавиджу" - ось це все про неї.
Сьюзен Зонтаґ завжди закликала пізнавати більше, тренувати свій інтелект, тож не дивно, що її біографія - це такий-собі тренажер. Потренуємося?
September 26, 2019
Susan was, beyond all else, an example. She was an avatar of erudition and high purpose that we didn’t have in American letters in the twentieth century. The closest comparable know-it-all is Harold Bloom, but he’s a traditionalist; Susan was interested in the bleeding edge of culture, the difficult stuff that demanded the most of us. (Why did she never write on Straub-Huillet? She must have known that work.)
Moser, who seems to be part of this fellowship, diagnoses Susan as an Adult Child of Alcoholics. He also makes a lot of hay out of Susan’s not wanting to come out—which in 2019 makes a little sense in that she didn’t wanted to be affixed with an ID card from Team Lesbian: I suspect our current identity politics would have nauseated her.
There are some specious claims within—such as her having balled Bobby Kennedy and Warren Beatty, both of which I find REALLY hard to believe. (A tale of Warren’s calling Susan day and night is just pure silliness.) And there is a lot of evidence of Sudan the bad parent, though she clearly loved her kid. (One particularly shocking moment features her taking off on a vacation abroad with a girlfriend at the moment her son goes into the hospital for cancer surgery.) What do we learn about this protean genius, this woman of infinite appetites? She didn’t like to bathe, she ate gross food, and she was so mean to people that by the 90s...maybe even the 80s...she had driven everyone away. I must say I came away from Moser’s wonderfully written, sober, practical and engaging biography with...if not more, as much love for Susan as ever. She was the person I wanted to be as a child—the urban sophisticate who is the ultimate Cocteau-like hyphenate and is right at the epicenter of the culture in every imaginable arena. We live, to be sure, in a post-Sontagian culture. But does she not give us, in this haplessly fallen world, something to aspire toward?
Moser, who seems to be part of this fellowship, diagnoses Susan as an Adult Child of Alcoholics. He also makes a lot of hay out of Susan’s not wanting to come out—which in 2019 makes a little sense in that she didn’t wanted to be affixed with an ID card from Team Lesbian: I suspect our current identity politics would have nauseated her.
There are some specious claims within—such as her having balled Bobby Kennedy and Warren Beatty, both of which I find REALLY hard to believe. (A tale of Warren’s calling Susan day and night is just pure silliness.) And there is a lot of evidence of Sudan the bad parent, though she clearly loved her kid. (One particularly shocking moment features her taking off on a vacation abroad with a girlfriend at the moment her son goes into the hospital for cancer surgery.) What do we learn about this protean genius, this woman of infinite appetites? She didn’t like to bathe, she ate gross food, and she was so mean to people that by the 90s...maybe even the 80s...she had driven everyone away. I must say I came away from Moser’s wonderfully written, sober, practical and engaging biography with...if not more, as much love for Susan as ever. She was the person I wanted to be as a child—the urban sophisticate who is the ultimate Cocteau-like hyphenate and is right at the epicenter of the culture in every imaginable arena. We live, to be sure, in a post-Sontagian culture. But does she not give us, in this haplessly fallen world, something to aspire toward?
Read
September 18, 2020Susan Sontag: genius, nightmare, inveterate liar, probable case of Borderline Personality Disorder, self-aggrandizing, self-loathing, flailingly co-dependent, bitterly dismissive of those closest to her, searcher for metanarratives, caster-aside of metanarratives, theorist of metaphor, caster-aside of metaphor, prodigy, teen mom, mama's girl, virtual Al-Anon poster-child, plagiarist, plagiarized, empath for peoples but awful with people, feminist, sexual liberator, closet case, and all around messy pile of contradictions. Like the rest of us.
I kind of despise biographies for what they do to a person's innermost bidness, especially when I have a terrific admiration for that person's work, and Benjamin Moser's Sontag was no exception – he made a real effort to turn over that hamper and show as much dirty laundry as possible (to the point where I thought some lurid description of her favorite sex poses, followed by a 3000-word treatise of hers on the ethics of reciprocating oral, was in the offing). I don't seek a parasocial releationship with Susan Sontag, and so large parts left me cold. However, as a case study of what a brilliant mind looks like... well that, that I like.
I kind of despise biographies for what they do to a person's innermost bidness, especially when I have a terrific admiration for that person's work, and Benjamin Moser's Sontag was no exception – he made a real effort to turn over that hamper and show as much dirty laundry as possible (to the point where I thought some lurid description of her favorite sex poses, followed by a 3000-word treatise of hers on the ethics of reciprocating oral, was in the offing). I don't seek a parasocial releationship with Susan Sontag, and so large parts left me cold. However, as a case study of what a brilliant mind looks like... well that, that I like.
October 8, 2019
A huge disappointment...exhaustively researched and informative but the contempt that the writer shows for Sontag,and many of the peripheral figures in her story,made for quite unpleasant reading...I neither expected nor wanted a hagiography but the relentless pseudo-Freudian 'explanations' turned me off...if one is interested in finding out who Sontag was,read the journals,especially REBORN...
Read
October 31, 201910/30 - this biography has inspired me to revisit some of the essays in Where the Stress Falls... dismaying. There comes a time to put away childish things. This is kitsch. ‘Culture’ as kitschy Europhilia, that’s what Sontag really stood for in the end. Long past time to read Pierre Bourdieu.
From ‘Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo,’ the ultimate ‘I’m-not-racist-but statement’ in highbrow drag:
She defends the dignity of Muslim lives in Bosnia by... suggesting they’re not actually Muslims because, uh, they like opera. If you can read the above without cringing, you need to spend more time in sports bars (or maybe a mosque).
[just a few days ago I felt somewhat differently
I believe I've read every Sontag book published in her life, plus the two volumes of journals that came out posthumously. But of course the real point of reading Susan Sontag wasn't reading her own books so much as reading all the books she recommends written by other people; not to mention seeing all those movies she lists. I owe a huge part of my reading life and general cultural education to Susan Sontag. I'm sure a lot of people on this site would say the same thing. She's still the patron saint of self-serious - I refuse to say pretentious - autodidacts.
Years before this biography, Sontag had already been demystified by the revelations of her journals as well as a string of extremely unflattering, sometimes hilarious memoirs by people who knew her. Personally I like to think I grew out of my Sontag phase long ago, and yet there is something permanently beguiling about her, or at least the idea of her.
I was hoping Benjamin Moser's biography would let me decide once and for all what I think of her. Well, it's an excellent book, but it didn't do that. It seems undeniable Sontag could be a deeply loathsome person, but still there was something in that pose that wasn't just a pose. A seriousness worth taking seriously.
From ‘Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo,’ the ultimate ‘I’m-not-racist-but statement’ in highbrow drag:
Even quite well informed people in the United States and in Europe seem genuinely surprised when I mention that, until the siege began, a middle class Sarajevan was far more likely to go to Vienna to the opera than to go down the street to a mosque. I make this point not to suggest that the lives of non-religious urban Europeans are intrinsically more valuable than the lives of the devout of Tehran or Baghdad or Damascus...
She defends the dignity of Muslim lives in Bosnia by... suggesting they’re not actually Muslims because, uh, they like opera. If you can read the above without cringing, you need to spend more time in sports bars (or maybe a mosque).
[just a few days ago I felt somewhat differently
I believe I've read every Sontag book published in her life, plus the two volumes of journals that came out posthumously. But of course the real point of reading Susan Sontag wasn't reading her own books so much as reading all the books she recommends written by other people; not to mention seeing all those movies she lists. I owe a huge part of my reading life and general cultural education to Susan Sontag. I'm sure a lot of people on this site would say the same thing. She's still the patron saint of self-serious - I refuse to say pretentious - autodidacts.
Years before this biography, Sontag had already been demystified by the revelations of her journals as well as a string of extremely unflattering, sometimes hilarious memoirs by people who knew her. Personally I like to think I grew out of my Sontag phase long ago, and yet there is something permanently beguiling about her, or at least the idea of her.
I was hoping Benjamin Moser's biography would let me decide once and for all what I think of her. Well, it's an excellent book, but it didn't do that. It seems undeniable Sontag could be a deeply loathsome person, but still there was something in that pose that wasn't just a pose. A seriousness worth taking seriously.
July 1, 2024
Susan Sontag entra nella mia vita al secondo anni di università, quando il giovane assistente di anglo americana entra in aula con Notes on Camp e ci propone un corso di letteratura che mai più ho trovato così interessante, così moderno, così divertente (vedere, elaborare, discutere del Rocky Horror Picture Show lo auguro a qualsiasi ragazzetta di provincia). Mi fa conoscere e studiare questa scrittrice e me ne fa conoscere altri di nuovi e pazzeschi - sempre in tema camp - e se non averte mai letto Hollinghurst, beh ma cosa aspettate?
Insomma Susan Sontag entra a far parte della mia vita e mi avvia a un pensiero inimmaginabile per una ventenne di provincia. L'anno dopo parto per l'Inghilterra e, ancora, mi imbatto in una pazza che mi introduce agli Women's Studies, e ancora una volta salta fuori lei. Comincio a credere che ci sia un filo che ci lega.
Poi Moser scrive questa biografia BELLISSIMA e io capisco tante cose che a quell'età, forse, non avrei capito. Ne esce il ritratto di una scrittrice illuminata e di una donna spietata - come quasi sempre. Non avrei voluto mai essere nei panni di suoi figlio, o di Annie Leibovitz con cui ha avuto una lunghissima relazione, ma avrei voluto esserle amica (non che io abbia un bel carattere, ma lei mi batte di gran lunga!) e sbirciare in alcune delle sue idee, che, di certo rimangono ancora e segnano il passo.
Un lavoro eccellente, se volete scoprire la donna e il personaggio, o un approfondimento fatto molto bene per chi è appassionato.
Insomma Susan Sontag entra a far parte della mia vita e mi avvia a un pensiero inimmaginabile per una ventenne di provincia. L'anno dopo parto per l'Inghilterra e, ancora, mi imbatto in una pazza che mi introduce agli Women's Studies, e ancora una volta salta fuori lei. Comincio a credere che ci sia un filo che ci lega.
Poi Moser scrive questa biografia BELLISSIMA e io capisco tante cose che a quell'età, forse, non avrei capito. Ne esce il ritratto di una scrittrice illuminata e di una donna spietata - come quasi sempre. Non avrei voluto mai essere nei panni di suoi figlio, o di Annie Leibovitz con cui ha avuto una lunghissima relazione, ma avrei voluto esserle amica (non che io abbia un bel carattere, ma lei mi batte di gran lunga!) e sbirciare in alcune delle sue idee, che, di certo rimangono ancora e segnano il passo.
Un lavoro eccellente, se volete scoprire la donna e il personaggio, o un approfondimento fatto molto bene per chi è appassionato.
July 1, 2024
Questa biografia è un viaggio lunghissimo. Cominciai a leggerla un annetto fa in inglese, quando ancora non sapevo che sarebbe uscita in traduzione in italiano. Venuta a conoscenza della notizia, decisi allora di mollare la mia versione inglese al 50%, e ricominciare qualche tempo dopo da capo in traduzione. Al netto quindi di una lettura e mezzo, sono convinta che questa sia una delle bio non solo più belle che abbia letto, ma anche il lavoro più meticoloso compiuto sulla vita di un altro che abbia affrontato. Moser ha ricostruito la storia di Susan Sontag in maniera incredibile, arricchendola di dettagli che veramente sembrerebbero di assurda reperibilità. La vita di Sontag è interessante quanto le sue opere; una donna estremamente contraddittoria, affascinante e intelligente dall’esistenza niente affatto facile. Il consiglio che do spesso è quello di avvicinarsi alle sue opere senza prescindere dai suoi diari e dal suo vissuto personale, che arricchiscono notevolmente la comprensione del suo operato e forniscono il giusto sottotesto per poterne analizzare meglio il pensiero.
December 30, 2019
This is a long book, but in some ways short on detail and repetitive- Moser constantly plays armchair psychologist, “diagnosing” Sontag with a personality disorder, and blaming issues he describes as stemming from her alcoholic mother. I wasn’t convinced.
August 6, 2020
Ik was geïntimideerd door de omvang, maar het boek bleek bijzonder vlot en leesbaar. Ik zou ‘m met plezier herlezen.
February 11, 2021
An icon of 20th century literature and what it means to be a writer, critic and upholder of asthetic concerns for culture/artistic reality.
November 17, 2025
3,5 ster. Een uitgebreide (734 bladzijdes ofzo) intense (want wat een mens!) interessante (ook door het tijdsbeeld) biografie van de metafoor Susan Sontag. En waarschijnlijk kan er nog wel een boek dubbel zo dik geschreven worden over haar.
Wat ik aan deze biografie waardeer is het uitblijven van het bedenken van redenen waarom Sontag zich gedroeg zoals ze zich gedroeg. Netjes worden alleen mensen, incluis Sontag zelf geciteerd. Ook over het volwassen kind zijn van een alcoholist. De auteur gooit er niet steeds zijn eigen mening in. Iets waaraan veel biografen zich de laatste jaren, tot mijn frustratie aan bezondigen. Ik weet dus nog steeds verrassend weinig over Benjamin Moser. Hoezee!
Wat ik aan deze biografie waardeer is het uitblijven van het bedenken van redenen waarom Sontag zich gedroeg zoals ze zich gedroeg. Netjes worden alleen mensen, incluis Sontag zelf geciteerd. Ook over het volwassen kind zijn van een alcoholist. De auteur gooit er niet steeds zijn eigen mening in. Iets waaraan veel biografen zich de laatste jaren, tot mijn frustratie aan bezondigen. Ik weet dus nog steeds verrassend weinig over Benjamin Moser. Hoezee!
January 28, 2021
I won this book through a giveaway in exchange for an honest review.
Sadly, this was a DNF for me at page 207. I really wanted to like this. I saw it at Barnes and Noble recently as well, so my hopes for it were raised. It’s chalk full of information...but in my opinion, that’s the issue. Information is good, except here it’s so much information about things we don’t need to know and pages among pages of minor things being explained and repeated to death! Maybe part of the problem for me is that I had never heard of Susan before... I don’t think that would’ve made much of a difference, but as the ratings go, you can see it is well-liked! It was just way to drawn out for my taste and I felt like i just kept re-reading the same things written in slightly different ways the whole time.
Sadly, this was a DNF for me at page 207. I really wanted to like this. I saw it at Barnes and Noble recently as well, so my hopes for it were raised. It’s chalk full of information...but in my opinion, that’s the issue. Information is good, except here it’s so much information about things we don’t need to know and pages among pages of minor things being explained and repeated to death! Maybe part of the problem for me is that I had never heard of Susan before... I don’t think that would’ve made much of a difference, but as the ratings go, you can see it is well-liked! It was just way to drawn out for my taste and I felt like i just kept re-reading the same things written in slightly different ways the whole time.
June 1, 2020
Creo que nunca había terminado un libro con ganas de leérmelo otra vez, inmediatamente. Y quisiera que existiera un museo que traduzca el paseo por la vida de la autora que está tan bellamente descrito y tan juiciosamente documentado, enriqueciéndolo con todas las fotos e imágenes de lugares y momentos históricos que en mi lectura casi sin pausas no busqué inmediatamente.
December 28, 2020
“Susan—human—drove people away. But the symbolic Sontag was tremendously attractive.”
That’s it, that’s the book!
I recommend reading Susan’s journals before this.
That’s it, that’s the book!
I recommend reading Susan’s journals before this.
September 25, 2021
Om de een of andere duistere reden was dit de eerste biografie die ik ooit heb gelezen, en nu weet ik niet of ik vanaf nu alleen nog maar biografieën moet gaan lezen (omdat dit zo mooi en interessant was) of dat ik het hier juist voorgoed bij moet laten (omdat alle andere biografieën nu wel moeten tegenvallen). Wat een pageturner, wat een intelligent en tegelijkertijd ontzettend leesbaar boek. Ik moet toegeven: ik heb er lang over gedaan (het is een dikkerd) dus over de opbouw kan ik moeilijk iets zeggen, daarvoor mis ik het overzicht. Misschien is het wel uit balans, al denk ik eigenlijk van niet. Heel veel nadruk wel op het liefdesleven en de seksualiteit van Susan Sontag, maar overbodig voelt dat niet — Moser maakt aannemelijk dat dat ook echt een belangrijk deel van haar leven én haar denken was. En het is echt een verhaal over haar leven en haar werk — de verwevenheid daarvan wordt heel mooi en natuurlijk weergegeven, vind ik. De teksten die besproken werden die ik al gelezen had, kregen zo voor mij ook meer diepte en ik kon ze beter plaatsen. Nu moet ik nog wel Against Interpretation uitlezen — daar ben ik eerder in begonnen dan hierin, maar tot mijn schande moet ik toegeven dat ik dat denkwerk meer heb uitgesteld dan dit. Ik weet nu wel weer zeker dat het echt de moeite waard gaat zijn. Dus hup!
February 23, 2022
Since Moser seems absolutely unfazed pathologizing Sontag at extreme length and in cruel detail, I think it is not unfair to casually return the favor in the goodreads review section: this guy hates Sontag and it’s really odd!! I’m astonished that someone who would take the time to craft such a sizable and meticulously researched project could hold such contempt for their subject. He’s a great writer, I’ll give him that, and at the beginning of the book his prose drew me in. It seemed to strike the right balance between factual analysis and stylistic embellishment such that the page count was justified.
But there’s a really sinister shift in his tone when he starts discussing Sontag’s early essays on Vietnam 1/3 of the way through. Her polemical attacks on America, while incendiary by design, are non-controversial and reasonable. She discusses how the founding principles of America are those of white supremacy and genocide, along with several other absolutes of American domination highlighted by the Vietnam War. “The white race is the cancer of human history,” she writes, and Moser reacts like a Fox News host. She visits Hanoi and writes about her experience but Moser calls the trip a “failure” and berates her for staying a few blocks away from where American soldiers are being held prisoner and allegedly tortured, as though this consequence of American imperialism is somehow her fault, and she took no personal risk in probably landing on every FBI/CIA watch list imaginable.
Despite all this, my issue with Moser isn’t even that he and I hold different political beliefs. It’s that anytime Sontag takes a stance left of center, he comes barely short of calling her a complete idiot and naive. This becomes an ongoing theme in the book - any break from conventional thought within the confines of aristocratically acceptable neoliberal thought and Great Society progressivism gets chalked up to shortsightedness and ignorance. There’s certainly an argument to be made about her being a reactionary, but he doesn’t engage in any meaningful critiques, instead recounting her endeavors with the paternalistic tone of a school teacher scolding a student for misbehaving. It’s an insulting and condescending disservice to Sontag, especially odd given the amount of time she spent writing about fascism (e.g. Riefenstahl), since Moser seems most concerned with discrediting her proximity to communism, a sin for which he only absolves her after she calls communism “fascism with a human face” (?) in 1982, and later travels to Sarajevo to stage a play in the midst of Yugoslavia’s breakup in hopes of NATO intervention in Sarajevo.
In addition, a lot of her life is explored in a strangely salacious and tabloid-y manner, with outsize emphasis placed on her mother’s alcoholism and Sontag’s own personal insecurities. While it does seem like she could sometimes be quite cruel to ones she loved, the way Moser dragged her name through the mud like this left an extra sour taste in my mouth given how unwilling he was to thoughtfully engage with the subject matter of her writing in lieu of more sensationalist topics and weird Freudian analysis. He also diagnoses her with cluster b personality disorder in a particularly regrettable passage. If you write a long biography of someone are you just allowed to decide what mental illnesses they have?
I’m glad I read this book, but the authorial voice really kills the vibe. Extremely frustrated with Moser. I learned quite a bit about her life but the delivery was hard to swallow. If you think Cuba is the most evil place in the world and you want to see Sontag get dunked on by a random biographer, you’ll probably like it.
But there’s a really sinister shift in his tone when he starts discussing Sontag’s early essays on Vietnam 1/3 of the way through. Her polemical attacks on America, while incendiary by design, are non-controversial and reasonable. She discusses how the founding principles of America are those of white supremacy and genocide, along with several other absolutes of American domination highlighted by the Vietnam War. “The white race is the cancer of human history,” she writes, and Moser reacts like a Fox News host. She visits Hanoi and writes about her experience but Moser calls the trip a “failure” and berates her for staying a few blocks away from where American soldiers are being held prisoner and allegedly tortured, as though this consequence of American imperialism is somehow her fault, and she took no personal risk in probably landing on every FBI/CIA watch list imaginable.
Despite all this, my issue with Moser isn’t even that he and I hold different political beliefs. It’s that anytime Sontag takes a stance left of center, he comes barely short of calling her a complete idiot and naive. This becomes an ongoing theme in the book - any break from conventional thought within the confines of aristocratically acceptable neoliberal thought and Great Society progressivism gets chalked up to shortsightedness and ignorance. There’s certainly an argument to be made about her being a reactionary, but he doesn’t engage in any meaningful critiques, instead recounting her endeavors with the paternalistic tone of a school teacher scolding a student for misbehaving. It’s an insulting and condescending disservice to Sontag, especially odd given the amount of time she spent writing about fascism (e.g. Riefenstahl), since Moser seems most concerned with discrediting her proximity to communism, a sin for which he only absolves her after she calls communism “fascism with a human face” (?) in 1982, and later travels to Sarajevo to stage a play in the midst of Yugoslavia’s breakup in hopes of NATO intervention in Sarajevo.
In addition, a lot of her life is explored in a strangely salacious and tabloid-y manner, with outsize emphasis placed on her mother’s alcoholism and Sontag’s own personal insecurities. While it does seem like she could sometimes be quite cruel to ones she loved, the way Moser dragged her name through the mud like this left an extra sour taste in my mouth given how unwilling he was to thoughtfully engage with the subject matter of her writing in lieu of more sensationalist topics and weird Freudian analysis. He also diagnoses her with cluster b personality disorder in a particularly regrettable passage. If you write a long biography of someone are you just allowed to decide what mental illnesses they have?
I’m glad I read this book, but the authorial voice really kills the vibe. Extremely frustrated with Moser. I learned quite a bit about her life but the delivery was hard to swallow. If you think Cuba is the most evil place in the world and you want to see Sontag get dunked on by a random biographer, you’ll probably like it.
September 15, 2020
"Benjamin Moser nos presenta en esta biografía -ganadora del premio Pulitzer- una radiografía última de Susan Sontag, algo así como el testamento definitivo de su vida y obra. Un retrato minucioso y con voluntad de acaparar la totalidad de lo que fue -y es- Sue/Susan: una de las personalidades intelectuales más influyentes de la segunda mitad del siglo XX, que cultivó la excelencia en el ámbito literario y que siempre fue muy crítica en cuanto a la responsabilidad política que conlleva ser escritora: “Toda escritura es política. Todos los actos son políticos”.
Pero ¿quién fue Susan Sontag? Más allá del mito y la apariencia, Susan Sontag nació siendo Sue Rosenblatt, cuya infancia estuvo fuertemente marcada por la presencia de su madre, Mildred -a quien amaba y detestaba a partes iguales-, y por un sentimiento de profundo desarraigo, no solamente por la vida nómada a la que se vio arrastrada los primeros años de su vida, sino también por una latente conciencia de soledad ya desde muy temprana edad.
Plagada de todo tipo de detalles -algunos, incluso, un tanto escabrosos-, la biografía de Moser aspira a dar respuesta a todas las posibles preguntas que puedan surgir en torno a la figura de Sontag, sin descuidar el contexto y por lo tanto la convulsa realidad cultural, social y política del siglo XX." Debora Díaz
Pero ¿quién fue Susan Sontag? Más allá del mito y la apariencia, Susan Sontag nació siendo Sue Rosenblatt, cuya infancia estuvo fuertemente marcada por la presencia de su madre, Mildred -a quien amaba y detestaba a partes iguales-, y por un sentimiento de profundo desarraigo, no solamente por la vida nómada a la que se vio arrastrada los primeros años de su vida, sino también por una latente conciencia de soledad ya desde muy temprana edad.
Plagada de todo tipo de detalles -algunos, incluso, un tanto escabrosos-, la biografía de Moser aspira a dar respuesta a todas las posibles preguntas que puedan surgir en torno a la figura de Sontag, sin descuidar el contexto y por lo tanto la convulsa realidad cultural, social y política del siglo XX." Debora Díaz
August 8, 2022
I can't say I'd call myself a Susan Sontag fan, but I appreciated some of her essays when I was assigned them or recommended them. Notes on Camp is fun to turn over in your head, as is the selection On Photography, which is outstanding - but I've heard even stronger admiration for Sontag's intellectual work, and heard it cited as an inspiration - so I went to read a biography as a kind of crib sheet - to see her life placed in its own context, and her own inspirations catalogued.
There is less of the Work here and more of the Life. Of the Life, there is only so much. There is less of an analysis and more of an accumulation - of diary extracts, or interviews, transcribed uncritically. Sontag made this person feel X, and the author transcribes X without finding omissions W, causes Y or effects Z. Her mother also had something to do with it somehow. Moser also describes Sontag's own reservations and silence about sexuality with what I felt to be excessive scrutiny. Why would a public figure - especially a woman in public - feel a need to keep quiet about this? That cannot be so hard a question. The world wonders.
But I am being uncharitable here. It takes substantial expert and skill to interview so many dozens of subjects and to access the archival documents including the personal diaries. Future writers will continue to return to this one.
There is less of the Work here and more of the Life. Of the Life, there is only so much. There is less of an analysis and more of an accumulation - of diary extracts, or interviews, transcribed uncritically. Sontag made this person feel X, and the author transcribes X without finding omissions W, causes Y or effects Z. Her mother also had something to do with it somehow. Moser also describes Sontag's own reservations and silence about sexuality with what I felt to be excessive scrutiny. Why would a public figure - especially a woman in public - feel a need to keep quiet about this? That cannot be so hard a question. The world wonders.
But I am being uncharitable here. It takes substantial expert and skill to interview so many dozens of subjects and to access the archival documents including the personal diaries. Future writers will continue to return to this one.
July 24, 2021
Very uncharitable to Susan Sontag he seems to relish in her drama and gloss over her many triumphs. It was written in a page 6 style moral judgement. Read at times like gossip.
Her concepts/theories are explained poorly in a superficial way that lacks depth. He tells the surface of them but lacks complexity.
He “diagnosed” her with a cluster b personality disorder… he seemed to think that was ok? In poor taste in every regard. Also he further stigmatizes this group who suffer from mental illness. He states people call “b stands for bastard” - rather than try to understand her - which he doesn’t because he lacks a charitable reading of her— he pathologizes her. I guess in his study he didn’t read the misogyny built into cluster b disorders or their history...
He highlights that she slept with 36 people in two years of university - he adds an exclamation point - just very off putting that he felt that was surprising.
The moralizing judgement is palpable and that he came to dislike her is very clear.
Too much trivial details as if author didn’t know what was important. Many were irreverent.
I can’t believe this won a Pulitzer Prize…. Truly shocking!
Her concepts/theories are explained poorly in a superficial way that lacks depth. He tells the surface of them but lacks complexity.
He “diagnosed” her with a cluster b personality disorder… he seemed to think that was ok? In poor taste in every regard. Also he further stigmatizes this group who suffer from mental illness. He states people call “b stands for bastard” - rather than try to understand her - which he doesn’t because he lacks a charitable reading of her— he pathologizes her. I guess in his study he didn’t read the misogyny built into cluster b disorders or their history...
He highlights that she slept with 36 people in two years of university - he adds an exclamation point - just very off putting that he felt that was surprising.
The moralizing judgement is palpable and that he came to dislike her is very clear.
Too much trivial details as if author didn’t know what was important. Many were irreverent.
I can’t believe this won a Pulitzer Prize…. Truly shocking!
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