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The Benefactor
'A highly original, brilliant tale of a self-centred, solitary dilettante whose dreams take over his life' New York Post Hippolyte is a wealthy bohemian with a surprising, violently imaginative dream life. Taking the form of a memoir, The Benefactor is the story of his psychic grand tour through increasingly strange mental
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1963
49 people are currently reading
1535 people want to read
About the author
Susan Sontag
229 books5,442 followersSusan Sontag was born in New York City on January 16, 1933, grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and attended high school in Los Angeles. She received her B.A. from the College of the University of Chicago and did graduate work in philosophy, literature, and theology at Harvard University and Saint Anne’s College, Oxford.
Her books include four novels, The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In America; a collection of short stories, I, etcetera; several plays, including Alice in Bed and Lady from the Sea; and nine works of nonfiction, starting with Against Interpretation and including On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, Where the Stress Falls, Regarding the Pain of Others, and At the Same Time. In 1982, Farrar, Straus & Giroux published A Susan Sontag Reader.
Ms. Sontag wrote and directed four feature-length films: Duet for Cannibals (1969) and Brother Carl (1971), both in Sweden; Promised Lands (1974), made in Israel during the war of October 1973; and Unguided Tour (1983), from her short story of the same name, made in Italy. Her play Alice in Bed has had productions in the United States, Mexico, Germany, and Holland. Another play, Lady from the Sea, has been produced in Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, and Korea.
Ms. Sontag also directed plays in the United States and Europe, including a staging of Beckett's Waiting for Godot in the summer of 1993 in besieged Sarajevo, where she spent much of the time between early 1993 and 1996 and was made an honorary citizen of the city.
A human rights activist for more than two decades, Ms. Sontag served from 1987 to 1989 as president of the American Center of PEN, the international writers’ organization dedicated to freedom of expression and the advancement of literature, from which platform she led a number of campaigns on behalf of persecuted and imprisoned writers.
Her stories and essays appeared in newspapers, magazines, and literary publications all over the world, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Art in America, Antaeus, Parnassus, The Threepenny Review, The Nation, and Granta. Her books have been translated into thirty-two languages.
Among Ms. Sontag's many honors are the 2003 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the 2003 Prince of Asturias Prize, the 2001 Jerusalem Prize, the National Book Award for In America (2000), and the National Book Critics Circle Award for On Photography (1978). In 1992 she received the Malaparte Prize in Italy, and in 1999 she was named a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government (she had been named an Officier in the same order in 1984). Between 1990 and 1995 she was a MacArthur Fellow.
Ms. Sontag died in New York City on December 28, 2004.
Her books include four novels, The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In America; a collection of short stories, I, etcetera; several plays, including Alice in Bed and Lady from the Sea; and nine works of nonfiction, starting with Against Interpretation and including On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, Where the Stress Falls, Regarding the Pain of Others, and At the Same Time. In 1982, Farrar, Straus & Giroux published A Susan Sontag Reader.
Ms. Sontag wrote and directed four feature-length films: Duet for Cannibals (1969) and Brother Carl (1971), both in Sweden; Promised Lands (1974), made in Israel during the war of October 1973; and Unguided Tour (1983), from her short story of the same name, made in Italy. Her play Alice in Bed has had productions in the United States, Mexico, Germany, and Holland. Another play, Lady from the Sea, has been produced in Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, and Korea.
Ms. Sontag also directed plays in the United States and Europe, including a staging of Beckett's Waiting for Godot in the summer of 1993 in besieged Sarajevo, where she spent much of the time between early 1993 and 1996 and was made an honorary citizen of the city.
A human rights activist for more than two decades, Ms. Sontag served from 1987 to 1989 as president of the American Center of PEN, the international writers’ organization dedicated to freedom of expression and the advancement of literature, from which platform she led a number of campaigns on behalf of persecuted and imprisoned writers.
Her stories and essays appeared in newspapers, magazines, and literary publications all over the world, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Art in America, Antaeus, Parnassus, The Threepenny Review, The Nation, and Granta. Her books have been translated into thirty-two languages.
Among Ms. Sontag's many honors are the 2003 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the 2003 Prince of Asturias Prize, the 2001 Jerusalem Prize, the National Book Award for In America (2000), and the National Book Critics Circle Award for On Photography (1978). In 1992 she received the Malaparte Prize in Italy, and in 1999 she was named a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government (she had been named an Officier in the same order in 1984). Between 1990 and 1995 she was a MacArthur Fellow.
Ms. Sontag died in New York City on December 28, 2004.
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April 24, 2020
a boy can dream, and so he does. he dreams and dreams again. he dreams he is a young man of means, in France between the world wars, living a life of leisure, a frequent guest in the salon of a certain Frau Anders. ah, my mistake, that is no dream, that is his reality. this moneyed young gent does dream though: dreams of an older woman who wants to control him and who he wants to control, dreams of an older man in a sinister one-piece bathing suit who also wants to control, and debase, and to turn him into a puppet. he dreams these dreams again, and other dreams as well. he makes the interpretation of these dreams his life's trajectory. Question: what happens to a boy who builds his life around obeying his dreams' ambiguous dictates? Answer: the boy becomes nothing much, a hollow shell obsessed with his own navel mind. he thinks a lot. he talks a lot and he walks a lot. he makes friends and loses them. he takes his mistress Frau Anders abroad, and when her neediness bores him, he casually sells her into sexual slavery to some random merchant, where she will be raped, abused, and disfigured. the boy doesn't think on that too much: at least she's out of his life, and now he can go back to pursuing his dreams. spoiler: Frau Anders shall return, repeatedly.
this is a beautifully written, often haunting, always rigorously intellectual book. it left me utterly cold.
ironically, while I enjoy books with a dreamy flavor and I appreciate the occasional dreamscape, I often become very bored very quickly when hearing someone recount their dreams at length (unless that dream features me, of course). and so I became very bored very quickly throughout roughly half of this book - the important half. Sontag was obsessed with the psychology of dreams when she wrote this, and it shows. I am... less obsessed with such things.
ironically, while I am sometimes seen as a sort of intellectual by the people in my life, especially my family, I often become very bored very quickly when surrounded by genuine intellectuals. I remember a recent dinner party with some old friends. the party included me and the wife of another guest, both of us professionals at the top of our careers and reasonably intelligent, in our ways. the other guests were a high-powered trade lobbyist, an international union organizer, and the CEO of a company focusing on cutting edge science. three of the most intelligent people I know. the three of them yammered on tirelessly - about the responsibility of the individual to their society & government and the responsibility of government to the individual & society - in a way that was fascinating but also distancing. intense but also boring. the wife and I exchanged many pointed glances; our attempts to steer the conversation towards other topics consistently failed. The Benefactor reminded me of that endless conversation. it was excitingly intellectual and much of it flew over my head and much of it delved into topics in which I haven't the faintest interest.
I guess, in the end, I'm just not too interested in a boy's dreams. or at least this boy's dreams.
this is a beautifully written, often haunting, always rigorously intellectual book. it left me utterly cold.
ironically, while I enjoy books with a dreamy flavor and I appreciate the occasional dreamscape, I often become very bored very quickly when hearing someone recount their dreams at length (unless that dream features me, of course). and so I became very bored very quickly throughout roughly half of this book - the important half. Sontag was obsessed with the psychology of dreams when she wrote this, and it shows. I am... less obsessed with such things.
ironically, while I am sometimes seen as a sort of intellectual by the people in my life, especially my family, I often become very bored very quickly when surrounded by genuine intellectuals. I remember a recent dinner party with some old friends. the party included me and the wife of another guest, both of us professionals at the top of our careers and reasonably intelligent, in our ways. the other guests were a high-powered trade lobbyist, an international union organizer, and the CEO of a company focusing on cutting edge science. three of the most intelligent people I know. the three of them yammered on tirelessly - about the responsibility of the individual to their society & government and the responsibility of government to the individual & society - in a way that was fascinating but also distancing. intense but also boring. the wife and I exchanged many pointed glances; our attempts to steer the conversation towards other topics consistently failed. The Benefactor reminded me of that endless conversation. it was excitingly intellectual and much of it flew over my head and much of it delved into topics in which I haven't the faintest interest.
I guess, in the end, I'm just not too interested in a boy's dreams. or at least this boy's dreams.
January 14, 2016
Sontag wrote this, the first of her four novels, in the early sixties, when the Freudian theory of dream interpretation still held water. We know today from the work of neuroscientists that there is no consensus on what dreams mean, if anything. Indeed, some researchers have called dreams meaningless, nothing more than an overactive brain repeating recent stimuli during the nightly period of sensory deprivation. The narrator here, Hippolyte, evinces a powerful inwardness and love of solitude. His only interest is his dreams. He lives in Paris. His friend Jean-Jacques is a homosexual prostitute and thief who lives a dangerous night life. Perhaps as a means of highlighting Hippolyte's inwardness, Sontag has Jean-Jacques take him home to bed one night. After, he shows not a jot of curiosity about his recent homosexual experience. Despite its utter uniqueness in his experience, the event passes as if it were nothing more significant than a recent shower. It is as if Sontag wants to signify, through Hippolyte's incuriousness, his total immersion in his dream life. For both his bisexuality and his real life/dream life can be viewed as forms of dualism, a willingness to dwell simultaneously in opposing worlds. Hippolyte is for the most part drawn to women. Frau Anders is a matronly socialite, given to nightly soirees, where she collects the talented and famous. (Here Hippolyte meets Jean-Jacques.) She and Hippolyte run off to an unnamed Islamic country. There Hippolyte sells her to a native merchant, and returns home without her. He mulls her newfound happiness: "I must confess that, knowing nothing more of her fortunes, I envied her. She had achieved her freedom, which coincided with the fulfillment of her fantasy." In such an oneiric novel nothing is made of this. Frau Anders seems missed by no one. Hippolyte continues to dream, his true passion. For him dream life and logic have overtaken reality. In his Dream of Mirrors, he comes to see his dreams as a reflection of daily life: "The dreams, all of them, were a mirror before which my daytime life presented itself, and which gave back to me an unfamiliar but intelligible image. With perseverance and attentive inactivity--the two would come together." Thus he comes close to 20th century dream theory. He is entirely self-involved, with little or no compassion for others. After he unceremoniously dumps Frau Anders, he takes up with her more libertine daughter, Lucrezia. His fling with her ends just in time for Frau Anders return. She shows him her damaged body. Hippolyte's response is to plan and carry out her murder. But, alas, she survives! Hippolyte is inept as anything but a dreamer. He falls in with a professor of obscure religions. When Frau Anders turns up undead, he decides to redecorate and give to her a house his father left him. She wants him. He doesn't want her. He returns to the provinces to marry a young woman, who rapidly sickens. As she fades, Hippolyte invites Jean-Jacques back into their lives. When he shows up (in a Gestapo uniform, incidentally) Hippolyte breaks a chair over his back, knocking him unconscious. The fringe professor of religion expounds laughably at the wife's funeral. Frau Anders, who's Jewish, shows up running from the Nazis. Hippolyte hides her for a while and is relieved when she leaves. The war ends. Frau Anders returns. Hippolyte decides to go live in the house he once gave her. She in turn becomes his housekeeper. And then there's this blur into alternative storylines. Suddenly, Frau Anders shows up at Hippolyte's door, so it can't be her who is sitting in the kitchen in a housekeeper's uniform . . . and so on.
December 17, 2021
The first of the author's forays into experimental fiction, The Benefactor is a novel of ideas written at a time when Freud's theory of Dream Interpretation was considered the greatest of all. Readers will thus bear witness to Sontag's ponderous deployment of a dreamer to wax mostly ineloquent about reality, memory, identity, solitude, and the absurd. There is a philosophical deliberateness to how she does it, of course, but that art is something I did not feel equipped to appreciate fully well.
Turning the pages while down with Covid, I felt Hippolyte (for that's what the dreamer is called) and his confessionals pass me by like a fever dream—he wants not for "[his] dreams to interpret [his] life," but rather for "life to interpret [his] dreams.” With that for content, and not being much of a dreamer myself, I found most of the book quite boring, though it was never "dull". Moreover, none of the characters (save, perhaps, for Hippolyte's friend Jean-Jacques) held my fancy for more than a hot second—I would not have finished were I not curious to know where Sontag, whose non-fiction I greatly admire, was going with the whole thing. In terms of providing this sense of coherence, and for a few other, artistic reasons, the last fifty-odd pages were a delight to read, and served somewhat to redeem this otherwise febrile experience.
Knowing how it ends, however, maybe I could enjoy this another time.
Turning the pages while down with Covid, I felt Hippolyte (for that's what the dreamer is called) and his confessionals pass me by like a fever dream—he wants not for "[his] dreams to interpret [his] life," but rather for "life to interpret [his] dreams.” With that for content, and not being much of a dreamer myself, I found most of the book quite boring, though it was never "dull". Moreover, none of the characters (save, perhaps, for Hippolyte's friend Jean-Jacques) held my fancy for more than a hot second—I would not have finished were I not curious to know where Sontag, whose non-fiction I greatly admire, was going with the whole thing. In terms of providing this sense of coherence, and for a few other, artistic reasons, the last fifty-odd pages were a delight to read, and served somewhat to redeem this otherwise febrile experience.
Knowing how it ends, however, maybe I could enjoy this another time.
November 26, 2017
This is Susan Sontag's first novel and the first thing I have read by her. I read it because it is on the 1963 list of My Big Fat Reading Project and because I am reading everything I can by women known to be intellectuals, outside of the usual box of female fiction writers, and possessed of a prickly nature. It was a difficult read.
Hippolyte is a man looking back on coming of age in Paris in the mid 20th century. First of all, why is he called Hippolyte? Hippolyta was Queen of the Amazons in Greek mythology. (I only know this because I looked it up.) Hippolyte has nothing godlike (or goddesslike) about him. In the blurbs and reviews of this book, he is compared to Candide, the main character in Voltaire's novel of that title. I have not read that. So clearly I was out of my depth.
In his youth, Hippolyte was given permission by his indulgent father to live in Paris with a stipend and do whatever he desired. He began to have disturbing dreams and spent most of his time alone interpreting those dreams while trying to relate them to his waking life. He also caroused with his friend Jean-Jacques, an author by day and a secret male hustler by night. Hippolyte then takes a mistress who he mistreats. She haunts him for the rest of his life.
The premise of this faux memoir is that Hippolyte does finally come to a certain understanding about who he is and the life he has lived. I could relate to that because I am trying to do the same thing in writing my own autobiography. The other trouble I had while reading The Benefactor was that I could not bring myself to care about the man.
I have made my maiden voyage into the work of Susan Sontag and it was on a rough sea. The other day I found an essay my link text on Sontag's novels and it gave me enough hope that if I keep reading her I will eventually be rewarded.
June 30, 2020
I hated it...
Hippolyte, the central character is a drifter and a dreamer (he does literally dream, unfortunately – yawn, yawn, yawn) and can afford to do so. As the book progresses it becomes harder to tell dream from ‘reality’, sanity from madness.
Set in France and mostly in Paris during the German occupation, there is something so unwholesome about the atmosphere of this novel I found myself wanting Fritz to clean up this nasty little show for me.
Hippolyte, the central character is a drifter and a dreamer (he does literally dream, unfortunately – yawn, yawn, yawn) and can afford to do so. As the book progresses it becomes harder to tell dream from ‘reality’, sanity from madness.
Set in France and mostly in Paris during the German occupation, there is something so unwholesome about the atmosphere of this novel I found myself wanting Fritz to clean up this nasty little show for me.
April 4, 2010
When I was little, one of my brothers and I came across a movie on HBO and the scene we saw scared the bejeebus out of me. I saw the movie again in high school during a lecture on dreams in a psychology class and was re-traumatized all over again. The movie, in case you care, was Dreamscape. Scared the shit out of me. As a kid I went through a phase of being too scared to open the big closet in the family room. It's where all the toys were, so this made life tough. Eventually I got over it, but the scene is pretty stuck in my mind.
I thought about that a lot while reading this book, even though the story lines are pretty freaking different. The Benefactor is a story about an aging man, Hippolyte, who has pretty spectacular and crazy dreams. His dream-world becomes often combined with his real life, and through the narrative I found it hard at times to discern if I was reading a dream or reality. I'm not dumb, thanks - that was actually the point.
I enjoyed the "mating" of the dreams and reality, but felt it was overwritten at times. Sontag did a pretty decent job of writing a book from the perspective of a 60-year-old disillusioned man, so that if someone picked up the book and started reading with no idea who the author was I guarantee they would think the book was written by a man.
My copy of this book is from the Seventies. The cover reads "A novel of strange dreams and self-discovery" and the cover image is M.C. Escher's Hand With Reflecting Sphere which is pretty fitting since it's a self-portrait and all. You know, "self-discovery".
But what I think is happening here is I like Sontag as an essayist. I'm not sure if I dig her all that much as an author, which sort of makes me feel like a tool. But this was her first book and clearly shows her genius, and I should reserve judgment until I read at least the second book, Death Kit: A Novel. The Benefactor is pretty trippy, and that's nice for a change, and it's not so trippy as to make the reader feel stupid, which is also nice for a change. You can be sober to read this, and it may or may not be improved if read while tripping.
I thought about that a lot while reading this book, even though the story lines are pretty freaking different. The Benefactor is a story about an aging man, Hippolyte, who has pretty spectacular and crazy dreams. His dream-world becomes often combined with his real life, and through the narrative I found it hard at times to discern if I was reading a dream or reality. I'm not dumb, thanks - that was actually the point.
I enjoyed the "mating" of the dreams and reality, but felt it was overwritten at times. Sontag did a pretty decent job of writing a book from the perspective of a 60-year-old disillusioned man, so that if someone picked up the book and started reading with no idea who the author was I guarantee they would think the book was written by a man.
My copy of this book is from the Seventies. The cover reads "A novel of strange dreams and self-discovery" and the cover image is M.C. Escher's Hand With Reflecting Sphere which is pretty fitting since it's a self-portrait and all. You know, "self-discovery".
But what I think is happening here is I like Sontag as an essayist. I'm not sure if I dig her all that much as an author, which sort of makes me feel like a tool. But this was her first book and clearly shows her genius, and I should reserve judgment until I read at least the second book, Death Kit: A Novel. The Benefactor is pretty trippy, and that's nice for a change, and it's not so trippy as to make the reader feel stupid, which is also nice for a change. You can be sober to read this, and it may or may not be improved if read while tripping.
January 9, 2014
Es un libro que te pone a pensar MUCHO. Las cosas que crees son simples de repente cobran otro sentido, te das cuenta de que a veces las decisiones más insignificantes, las imprudencias, las "cosas de la juventud" pueden acarrear graves consecuencias.
La forma de escribir es diferente, ciertamente, con partes muy densas, incluso en las últimas páginas empiezas a dudar de la calidad del libro porque un hayas un final que pueda cumplir las expectativas, pero de repente BOOM! allí está y quedas con los ojos quemados por la sorpresa.
No fue fácil de leer, y lo terminé por fuerza de voluntad, pero el final valió mucho la pena. Me gustaría leer otra cosa de esta autora próximamente.
La forma de escribir es diferente, ciertamente, con partes muy densas, incluso en las últimas páginas empiezas a dudar de la calidad del libro porque un hayas un final que pueda cumplir las expectativas, pero de repente BOOM! allí está y quedas con los ojos quemados por la sorpresa.
No fue fácil de leer, y lo terminé por fuerza de voluntad, pero el final valió mucho la pena. Me gustaría leer otra cosa de esta autora próximamente.
October 22, 2024
açık ara sıkıcı bir kitaptı, yazarının tespitlerini dinlemenin önemli olduğunu düşünmesem bırakırdım, bakalım ikinci kitabına başlamaya ne zaman cesaret edeceğim..
November 17, 2025
Some of the most interesting sentences I’ve ever read are in this book, but alas not only of sentences is a book made
As an idiot who spends too much time reflecting on her dreams, I somewhat related to and rather disliked this idiot and his dreams
I know I’ve seen the man in the black bathing suit although I’m not sure where, will update when I remember
As an idiot who spends too much time reflecting on her dreams, I somewhat related to and rather disliked this idiot and his dreams
I know I’ve seen the man in the black bathing suit although I’m not sure where, will update when I remember
Read
August 25, 2023i tried so hard to enjoy this book, didn’t tho
March 13, 2024
heady with pretty sentences on dreams but kinda boring. cover stated “a provocative novel that plunges the reader into the dark world of desire and erotic fantasy” but everything felt so distant and cold so little misleading for me. was expecting sexier.
January 17, 2019
Susan Sontag, on her birthday January 16
“The point is not to teach us something in particular. The point is to make us bold, agile, subtle, intelligent, detached. And to give pleasure.” Susan Sontag
An inescapable force of protean genius, her subversion of critical theory and practice cast a looming shadow over our culture for decades. Her collections of essays, Against Interpretation, Styles of Radical Will, Under the Sign of Saturn, Where The Stress Falls, and the monumental On Photography, and her novels The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In America, are together a superb introduction to American arts & letters, as I think they shall remain for some time.
The Benefactor is a masterpiece which explores homosexuality as both identity and desire and describes coming out as an escape from a Dream of Mirrors. A deconstruction of Freud by way of Gaston Bachelard and others, it provides a tour of critical theory and applies the methods of Derrida and Foucault, the philosophy of Sartre and de Beauvoir, and the aesthetics and mystical dream quest of Surrealism to issues of gender, sex, and power.
Death Kit is a metafictional novel of polyphonous layered images, cleaving tightly to the model of Camus..
The Volcano Lover presents literary history as an unfolding of intention through the lives of its characters.
In America explores possible reinventions of ourselves and our nation.
An icon of the magisterial arbiter of culture as well as the literary rebel and a type of the New York Intellectual, arguably the last of her kind in the latter case as she seems to have overthrown herself and the authority of her class, Susan Sontag is a universal reference known to all as the woman who monkeywrenched hierarchies of aesthetic value and leveled high art with pop culture, legitimizing Warhol's Factory among other revolutionary acts. Lesser known is what she believed in and fought for.
She believed in a song of passion which connects us all, in a sea of being through which ideational forces move like tides, animating and motivating both literary characters and actual individuals on a transpersonal and irrational level, the vast and myriad dreamland of art, music, and literature acting as a treasure house of Jungian archetypal potentiality and illumination.
And she argues that the historical memory from which identity grows is undergoing a massive transformational change from a literary to a photographic basis, from words to images, and represents a shift in human consciousness comparable to the invention of language. She wrote at the dawn of a new humanity as its Pythian seer, and like the original mythic figure was not always understood or believed.
Most of all, Susan Sontag believed in other people, in our ability to grow beyond our limits and become human together.
I will tell you how I know.
One unforgettable afternoon, touring museums and whatnot as I did for a hobby of my college years, I found myself standing before an incomprehensible painting lost in thought when I became aware of someone very close behind me, out of sight, also silent. Several minutes must have passed before the presence spoke, asking "What do you think?" I forget how I answered, but as I moved to turn away and find something easier to behold (it may have been I need something easier) hands delicately lighted on my shoulders, almost not there, but fixing me in place, pinioned before my subject.
And she said, "Look again".
This was Susan Sontag, who remained the afternoon to discuss art and other subjects, shifting topics without warning to unrelated fields, epigrammatic statements, bizarre quotations, and somehow bringing it all together in devastating insights, a dazzling and bewildering conversation, with eyes that could see right through a thing to its heart, intimate and not a little terrifying. I'm not surprised people had difficulty following her, but it was always worth the effort to understand.
For she will always be with us, a presence just out of sight, saying "Look again".
I’m still parsing the meaning of her Zenlike command and the power of vision which was passed to me during this encounter with an Awakened Being; our lives balance on such Defining Moments. Could I but wield the power of wishes I would grant us all her transparency of insight and the ability to transform ourselves and our world through imaginative vision. Each of us must find this for ourselves.
As to the painting, an abstraction of a classical koi pond, my answer at second look was "Movement- these forms are in a series of states of transition, with the symbols alongside, not ideograms but where one might expect a poem, acting as time marks like in a musical score. This is an allegory of change."
To which she said, "Yes it is! Who are you? Oh, I'm Susan."
I reached out to shake hands during introductions; she took my hand, and did not let it go.
“The point is not to teach us something in particular. The point is to make us bold, agile, subtle, intelligent, detached. And to give pleasure.” Susan Sontag
An inescapable force of protean genius, her subversion of critical theory and practice cast a looming shadow over our culture for decades. Her collections of essays, Against Interpretation, Styles of Radical Will, Under the Sign of Saturn, Where The Stress Falls, and the monumental On Photography, and her novels The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In America, are together a superb introduction to American arts & letters, as I think they shall remain for some time.
The Benefactor is a masterpiece which explores homosexuality as both identity and desire and describes coming out as an escape from a Dream of Mirrors. A deconstruction of Freud by way of Gaston Bachelard and others, it provides a tour of critical theory and applies the methods of Derrida and Foucault, the philosophy of Sartre and de Beauvoir, and the aesthetics and mystical dream quest of Surrealism to issues of gender, sex, and power.
Death Kit is a metafictional novel of polyphonous layered images, cleaving tightly to the model of Camus..
The Volcano Lover presents literary history as an unfolding of intention through the lives of its characters.
In America explores possible reinventions of ourselves and our nation.
An icon of the magisterial arbiter of culture as well as the literary rebel and a type of the New York Intellectual, arguably the last of her kind in the latter case as she seems to have overthrown herself and the authority of her class, Susan Sontag is a universal reference known to all as the woman who monkeywrenched hierarchies of aesthetic value and leveled high art with pop culture, legitimizing Warhol's Factory among other revolutionary acts. Lesser known is what she believed in and fought for.
She believed in a song of passion which connects us all, in a sea of being through which ideational forces move like tides, animating and motivating both literary characters and actual individuals on a transpersonal and irrational level, the vast and myriad dreamland of art, music, and literature acting as a treasure house of Jungian archetypal potentiality and illumination.
And she argues that the historical memory from which identity grows is undergoing a massive transformational change from a literary to a photographic basis, from words to images, and represents a shift in human consciousness comparable to the invention of language. She wrote at the dawn of a new humanity as its Pythian seer, and like the original mythic figure was not always understood or believed.
Most of all, Susan Sontag believed in other people, in our ability to grow beyond our limits and become human together.
I will tell you how I know.
One unforgettable afternoon, touring museums and whatnot as I did for a hobby of my college years, I found myself standing before an incomprehensible painting lost in thought when I became aware of someone very close behind me, out of sight, also silent. Several minutes must have passed before the presence spoke, asking "What do you think?" I forget how I answered, but as I moved to turn away and find something easier to behold (it may have been I need something easier) hands delicately lighted on my shoulders, almost not there, but fixing me in place, pinioned before my subject.
And she said, "Look again".
This was Susan Sontag, who remained the afternoon to discuss art and other subjects, shifting topics without warning to unrelated fields, epigrammatic statements, bizarre quotations, and somehow bringing it all together in devastating insights, a dazzling and bewildering conversation, with eyes that could see right through a thing to its heart, intimate and not a little terrifying. I'm not surprised people had difficulty following her, but it was always worth the effort to understand.
For she will always be with us, a presence just out of sight, saying "Look again".
I’m still parsing the meaning of her Zenlike command and the power of vision which was passed to me during this encounter with an Awakened Being; our lives balance on such Defining Moments. Could I but wield the power of wishes I would grant us all her transparency of insight and the ability to transform ourselves and our world through imaginative vision. Each of us must find this for ourselves.
As to the painting, an abstraction of a classical koi pond, my answer at second look was "Movement- these forms are in a series of states of transition, with the symbols alongside, not ideograms but where one might expect a poem, acting as time marks like in a musical score. This is an allegory of change."
To which she said, "Yes it is! Who are you? Oh, I'm Susan."
I reached out to shake hands during introductions; she took my hand, and did not let it go.
August 24, 2023
"it is easier to endure than to change. but once one has changed, what one has endured is hard to recall"
"i am surprised dreams are not outlawed! ... dreams are the [redacted] of the spirit."
there were a lot of wtf lines, so much so that i would say so out loud even when reading alone, especially in the beginning of that last chapter if you know what i mean.
dang i wish i had a class for this kind of book. bro, the twists!!!!
fits with "Worst Person in the World" (movie).
"i am surprised dreams are not outlawed! ... dreams are the [redacted] of the spirit."
there were a lot of wtf lines, so much so that i would say so out loud even when reading alone, especially in the beginning of that last chapter if you know what i mean.
dang i wish i had a class for this kind of book. bro, the twists!!!!
fits with "Worst Person in the World" (movie).
June 1, 2025
Un despropósito
June 19, 2022
Libro existencialista, onírico, que sienta las bases para la futura obra de Susan Sontag. Una novela extraña con una premisa planteada de una manera lúdica: la vida puede ser confundida con los sueños, o mejor aún: los sueños son quizá preferibles a la vida. Sontag nos cuenta la historia de Hippolyte, un estudiante que abandona los estudios por involucrarse cada vez en un grupo de esnobs en donde conoce a Frau Anders, una mujer mayor que él que se convierte en su amante y con quien luego vive una serie de sucesos que linda en lo estrambótico, lo gore y lo surreal.
No es una ficción fácil y posiblemente te cueste despegar con él, como me pasó a mí, puesto que el inicio va perdiendo velocidad y adquiriendo densidad hasta convertirse realmente en un constructo en el que te será difícil diferenciar la realidad de los sueños.
La historia de Hippolyte, si bien rara, no es lo más extraño ni retorcido que encontrarás en estas líneas. Por el contrario, lo acompañan personajes, sobre todo femeninos, que van definiendo todo a su paso, no solo sostienen la existencia de este personaje masculino central, sino que plantean los temas que serán recurrentes en la obra posterior de Sontag, como la exploración de la sexualidad y la soledad, además del empoderamiento femenino.
Lectura recomendable.
No es una ficción fácil y posiblemente te cueste despegar con él, como me pasó a mí, puesto que el inicio va perdiendo velocidad y adquiriendo densidad hasta convertirse realmente en un constructo en el que te será difícil diferenciar la realidad de los sueños.
La historia de Hippolyte, si bien rara, no es lo más extraño ni retorcido que encontrarás en estas líneas. Por el contrario, lo acompañan personajes, sobre todo femeninos, que van definiendo todo a su paso, no solo sostienen la existencia de este personaje masculino central, sino que plantean los temas que serán recurrentes en la obra posterior de Sontag, como la exploración de la sexualidad y la soledad, además del empoderamiento femenino.
Lectura recomendable.
August 24, 2017
Me declaro admirador de Susan Sontag. He leído gran parte de sus libros de ensayos, críticas y artículos. El Benefactor es el primer libro y la primera novela de la escritora estadounidense y vio la luz el año 1963. Doy esos datos como antecedentes, porque me cuesta decir que la novela no me gustó. Muy pretenciosa, poco narrativa, cansadora, latera. En los años 60 llamó la atención de algunos artistas e intelectuales que rayaban con el existencialismo y las novelas intelectualoides, pero hubo críticas adversas. Para mi gusto, El Benefactor es una obra fallida. Así de simple. Un tipo viejo que recuerda cuando era joven, ocioso y snob para mi gusto. Un tipo que soñaba y escribía y pensaba en sus sueños. Relaciones poco estables que no se desarrollan, personajes poco convincentes, muchas ideas sobre los sueños y sobre la existencia, un salpicón de acciones, nunca bien hilvanadas del todo y una profunda sensación de aburrimiento. Seguramente es un dato superficial, pero creo que es sintomático: el narrador protagonista se llama Hippolyte. Todo mal.
January 18, 2019
I think this novel set itself an impossible task. So it's not surprising that it failed; but still it failed for me. It primarily talks about respectability, the interaction between the individual and society. This interaction is a recursive problem, a hall of mirrors. So Sontag speaks of it with metaphors that become signifiers for the next level of metaphors, until she disappears from the novel and I only saw my own ideas distorted back at me.
October 4, 2024
“It is true she suffered from it - knowing herself loved not as a person but as a persona.”
This book is a pretty spectacular examination of the self and is written in a style that kind of reminds me of Giovanni’s Room if that’s something you’re into. Sontag manages to capture exactly how it feels to dream; especially those dreams that aren’t exactly nightmares but leave you with a bad taste in your mouth, where you rise somehow feeling off.
Definitely can tell this is her first fictional novel, but still quite developed. Would highly recommend. Relatively short read and led me to further question: am i real/do I exist?????
This book is a pretty spectacular examination of the self and is written in a style that kind of reminds me of Giovanni’s Room if that’s something you’re into. Sontag manages to capture exactly how it feels to dream; especially those dreams that aren’t exactly nightmares but leave you with a bad taste in your mouth, where you rise somehow feeling off.
Definitely can tell this is her first fictional novel, but still quite developed. Would highly recommend. Relatively short read and led me to further question: am i real/do I exist?????
December 17, 2024
it's become such a cliche to not like Sontag's fiction but i really liked this. i found it delightful, in that it delighted me consistently with its weirdness, inventiveness, strangeness. i found it engaging throughout, but i am the type of person who like to hear about other people's dreams and supposedly most people don't? but the difference as well is these are so clearly thought-out and well-written. i thought she struck a good balance in having these dreams actually sound more meaningful or weighty than anyone else's dreams but she also could describe them in the same bewildering or inexplicable sense or feeling i would have when having a dream. i think that's impressive.
March 24, 2025
„is this woman very important to you?“…
“she is my shadow. or else, i am hers. it doesn‘t matter. in either case, one of us doesn‘t really exist“
a fever dream of a novel where reality and imaginatipn dissolve into one another so seamlessly that the protagonist himself cannot tell them apart.
really captures the the feeling of a mind unraveling - hits especially when i‘m having my weird dreams again :P
the way in which he gets haunted by frau andersen after he sells her into slavery and who just keeps returning even after he so kindly murdered her was my personal highlight:
„do with me what you will. Only remember that i am yours, yours to dispose of. i warn you, i shall be rather hard to dispose of. women are quite durable you know.“
“she is my shadow. or else, i am hers. it doesn‘t matter. in either case, one of us doesn‘t really exist“
a fever dream of a novel where reality and imaginatipn dissolve into one another so seamlessly that the protagonist himself cannot tell them apart.
really captures the the feeling of a mind unraveling - hits especially when i‘m having my weird dreams again :P
the way in which he gets haunted by frau andersen after he sells her into slavery and who just keeps returning even after he so kindly murdered her was my personal highlight:
„do with me what you will. Only remember that i am yours, yours to dispose of. i warn you, i shall be rather hard to dispose of. women are quite durable you know.“
April 9, 2025
A challenging and oblique novel, Sontag takes you on a pseudo-Freudian journey through her protagonist's active dream-life and, simultaneously, early 20th century Paris. I really don't know what to say about this one, I definitely enjoyed it, but also probably wouldn't recommend it to most people because at times it borders on active hostility to the reader.
January 31, 2022
Interesting premise but it just didnt quite work for me.
2.5* rounded up because it was a debut.
2.5* rounded up because it was a debut.
December 13, 2025
Great book. favorite book now maybe
September 15, 2025
It may sound a little silly, but this book is what I thought Kafka would be before I ever read Kafka. Now that I’ve read The Trial (and didn’t much like it) I’m happy to report that the absurdity I was seeking all along was in Susan Sontag’s fiction. What a happy surprise.
The Benefactor follows the path of a 20-something man named Hippolyte, who begins to dream vividly for the first time in his life. These dreams become a source of inspiration and constant examination by the protagonist, and soon enough he begins to develop a life that becomes near indistinguishable from the dreams he covets. The writing is full of immaculate prose and biting humour — with Hippolyte’s all-consuming reverie a source of never-ending joy and looming tensity. I found myself in awe of Sontag’s dream-building, shaken at different moments, pleasantly suspended in this curious little world.
This book is not without its flaws, and I can’t claim to know exactly what Sontag was getting at with her capital O Orientalist portrayals of Arab people or culture within the story. Whether or not these elements of the book were definitive satire evades me, but the depictions of the “Arab-world” as a seductive, perfumed Gomorrah does reveal a 1960s racism that is sometimes difficult to grapple with, but ultimately necessary in revealing Hippolyte for his narrow conceptions of the real, breathing world around him. In my understanding of Sontag and her politics, I lean more towards the voice of this book being a satirizing of this racist thought. This book is, after all, the fictionalized memoir of a man with dubious moral character, and Sontag throughout her life was critical of “White America,” going as far as to deem the “white race” (a race which she belonged to) the “cancer of human history.” Make of that what you will.
Overall, my experience with The Benefactor was a positive one, and I’m excited to explore more of Sontag’s fiction in future.
The Benefactor follows the path of a 20-something man named Hippolyte, who begins to dream vividly for the first time in his life. These dreams become a source of inspiration and constant examination by the protagonist, and soon enough he begins to develop a life that becomes near indistinguishable from the dreams he covets. The writing is full of immaculate prose and biting humour — with Hippolyte’s all-consuming reverie a source of never-ending joy and looming tensity. I found myself in awe of Sontag’s dream-building, shaken at different moments, pleasantly suspended in this curious little world.
This book is not without its flaws, and I can’t claim to know exactly what Sontag was getting at with her capital O Orientalist portrayals of Arab people or culture within the story. Whether or not these elements of the book were definitive satire evades me, but the depictions of the “Arab-world” as a seductive, perfumed Gomorrah does reveal a 1960s racism that is sometimes difficult to grapple with, but ultimately necessary in revealing Hippolyte for his narrow conceptions of the real, breathing world around him. In my understanding of Sontag and her politics, I lean more towards the voice of this book being a satirizing of this racist thought. This book is, after all, the fictionalized memoir of a man with dubious moral character, and Sontag throughout her life was critical of “White America,” going as far as to deem the “white race” (a race which she belonged to) the “cancer of human history.” Make of that what you will.
Overall, my experience with The Benefactor was a positive one, and I’m excited to explore more of Sontag’s fiction in future.
January 17, 2022
My reading of The Benefactor was unavoidably influenced by simultaneously reading Sontag's essay, "Against Interpretation". Published a few years apart, the germ of "Against Interpretation" is present in The Benefactor. It is possible that the two works evolve from the same idea; that idea being, as the title of the essay suggests, that the interpretation of a work of art robs the potential audience of the full range of sensory pleasure to be found therein. This statement may give the reader a basic summary of Sontag's essay, but it doesn't begin to explain the complexity of her novel. For that matter, I won't even try to explain her novel; I would prefer to leave that pleasure to the reader. But I will share some notes from my reading of the essay and the novel...
In relation to novel, the statement "that the interpretation of a work of art robs the potential audience of the full range of sensory pleasure to be found therein" is best applied to the narrator. The narrator is a man preoccupied with his dreams. Not necessarily with the interpretation of his dreams in the Freudian sense, but with the practical application of his dreams to his life.
The dreams come to replace motives in the narrator's life. He begins an affair not because he is lonely, but because he has extracted a detail from one of his dreams that suggests he should start an affair.
The narrator addresses this tendency most directly (with hindsight) at the end of the novel:
Like psychoanalysis, the analysis of a text assumes a subtext or "preoccupation". Beneath the surface of what is seen or otherwise presented, for analysis to be undertaken, there is first the assumption of a subtext. The act of psychoanalysis, like the analysis of a text, also assumes that there is an authoritative and definitive method. In the case of psychoanalysis, the past or inner life is interpreted for the individual. In the case of literary analysis, the content is interpreted for others.
The disconnect between psychoanalysis and literary analysis may be interpreted (cautiously!) as a criticism of literary analysis, but it may also be a criticism of both fields. How well can the psychoanalyst truly interpret the individual (patient) for the benefit of the individual (patient)? How well can the academic interpret the individual (author) for the benefit of others (readers)?
Perhaps the author is the only one who would benefit from this form of analysis, recognizing that a spectrum of individual interpretations exist, and each interpretation has the potential to shed new light on a text (provided the interpretation in question has not been corrupted by someone else's interpretation).
In her essay, Sontag stresses the injustice of interpreting the work of art for the audience. She writes: "Transparence is the highest, most liberating value in art - and in criticism - today. Transparence means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are." I understand this to mean that the work of art should always be experienced first by the individual without the intervention of critical analysis (that seeks to interpret the work of art for the audience rather than allowing them to reach their own conclusion).
The danger of interpretation, Sontag affirms, is that it "takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds from there."
The essay concludes that "Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life - its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness - conjoin to dull our sensory faculties." The answer reached by Sontag is that "What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more."
The novel concludes with the narrator finally consumed by his dreams, and unable to discern between his dreams and his reality. The question that remains (for a second reading) is: Where in the narrative did the narrator first depart from reality? And how much of his story can be interpreted as his "real" experience vs. his dream experience? The narrator has allowed his dreams to directly influence his "real" life, but has he done more than that? Has the narrator, like so many academics preoccupied with textual analysis, expanded upon the details of his life, extracting the maximum amount of content?
In relation to novel, the statement "that the interpretation of a work of art robs the potential audience of the full range of sensory pleasure to be found therein" is best applied to the narrator. The narrator is a man preoccupied with his dreams. Not necessarily with the interpretation of his dreams in the Freudian sense, but with the practical application of his dreams to his life.
The dreams come to replace motives in the narrator's life. He begins an affair not because he is lonely, but because he has extracted a detail from one of his dreams that suggests he should start an affair.
The narrator addresses this tendency most directly (with hindsight) at the end of the novel:
"In a psychological study one takes dreams as evidence, as supplying information about the dreamer's preoccupations. I beg the reader not to avail himself of this simple way out, without at least considering my own example.
"I am not interested in my dreams in order to understand myself better, in order to know my true feelings. I am not interested in my dreams, in other words, from the point of view of psychology. I am interested in my dreams as - acts.
"I am interested in my dreams as acts, and as models for action and motives for action. I am interested in my dreams from the point of view of freedom. It may seem odd that, just at this point, in discussing a dream which presented me with so clear an image of my own enslavement, I should speak of freedom. I am aware of the alternatives. Were I to inspect my dreams with the purpose of 'understanding myself,' I would be considering my dreams from the point of view of bondage. I would then see how my dreams reflect my enslavement to my own character, its limited themes, its stale anxieties.
"But one has only to declare oneself free in order to be, truly, free. I have only to consider my dreams as free, as autonomous, in order to be free of them - at least as free as any human being has any right to be."
Like psychoanalysis, the analysis of a text assumes a subtext or "preoccupation". Beneath the surface of what is seen or otherwise presented, for analysis to be undertaken, there is first the assumption of a subtext. The act of psychoanalysis, like the analysis of a text, also assumes that there is an authoritative and definitive method. In the case of psychoanalysis, the past or inner life is interpreted for the individual. In the case of literary analysis, the content is interpreted for others.
The disconnect between psychoanalysis and literary analysis may be interpreted (cautiously!) as a criticism of literary analysis, but it may also be a criticism of both fields. How well can the psychoanalyst truly interpret the individual (patient) for the benefit of the individual (patient)? How well can the academic interpret the individual (author) for the benefit of others (readers)?
Perhaps the author is the only one who would benefit from this form of analysis, recognizing that a spectrum of individual interpretations exist, and each interpretation has the potential to shed new light on a text (provided the interpretation in question has not been corrupted by someone else's interpretation).
In her essay, Sontag stresses the injustice of interpreting the work of art for the audience. She writes: "Transparence is the highest, most liberating value in art - and in criticism - today. Transparence means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are." I understand this to mean that the work of art should always be experienced first by the individual without the intervention of critical analysis (that seeks to interpret the work of art for the audience rather than allowing them to reach their own conclusion).
The danger of interpretation, Sontag affirms, is that it "takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds from there."
The essay concludes that "Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life - its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness - conjoin to dull our sensory faculties." The answer reached by Sontag is that "What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more."
The novel concludes with the narrator finally consumed by his dreams, and unable to discern between his dreams and his reality. The question that remains (for a second reading) is: Where in the narrative did the narrator first depart from reality? And how much of his story can be interpreted as his "real" experience vs. his dream experience? The narrator has allowed his dreams to directly influence his "real" life, but has he done more than that? Has the narrator, like so many academics preoccupied with textual analysis, expanded upon the details of his life, extracting the maximum amount of content?
"Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all.
"The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means."
October 13, 2015
Hippolyte, the arch-existentialist, finds meaning in life through looking inwards – to his dreams. Told in a rather formal, old-fashioned, literary style The Benefactor is presented as his memoir – from his early years as a financially independent though utterly unambitious student and the first of his enigmatic, repetitive dreams to his curious, subsequent acts: ”I was not looking for my dreams to interpret my life” he says, ”but rather for my life to interpret my dreams.” Not surprisingly, for Hippolyte dreams and reality become somewhat intertwined.
Susan Sontag’s first novel is nothing if not intellectual and I am reasonably confident that I don’t have and never shall have either the background reading or the capability to appreciate it fully. Nontheless I enjoyed it, if only for its many aphorisms and odd ideas. It looks post-modernist and the author never lets you forget that you are reading a book, but I suspect The Benefactor (first published in 1963) has more to do with exploring the byways of nihilism, existentialism, and gnosticism than playing literary games. Though it does that too...
Susan Sontag’s first novel is nothing if not intellectual and I am reasonably confident that I don’t have and never shall have either the background reading or the capability to appreciate it fully. Nontheless I enjoyed it, if only for its many aphorisms and odd ideas. It looks post-modernist and the author never lets you forget that you are reading a book, but I suspect The Benefactor (first published in 1963) has more to do with exploring the byways of nihilism, existentialism, and gnosticism than playing literary games. Though it does that too...
May 27, 2020
A confessional narrative that reminded me in parts of Hesse's "der Steppenwolf", Kafka's "Metamorphosis," and even a little of Huxley's "After Many a Summer Dies the Swan." I think it's the psychological self-examination combined with a fantasy-like portrayal that the reader is never sure is reality or delusion. The experience of reading the novel is a bit like unwinding a ball of twine; more confusing than clarifying. Still, I appreciate this writing for being original and even a little surreal. I'm not sure any two people would describe this work of art in the same way. There's definitely nothing cut-and-paste about it.
May 13, 2016
Sontag's book is a strange dream-like tale about Hypolite and his decisions in life, but above all that is a novel about ideas. In all the book you can perceive the deepness of Sontag's thoughts about a lot of topics, but specially about dreams. The final part is just fantastic.
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June 20, 2008boring. if i want to hear about peoples boring dreams, i'll read the script to Nightmare on Elm Street 3 :the dream warriors.
July 27, 2011
You would never know the result until you read the last paragraph!! Also DREAMS! and I felt like I am a wonderer in the world.
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