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A review by minalouise
Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser
Large parts of this made me feel almost paralysed and nauseous, not necessarily because of the book or the subject but the feeling of private conversations being public property. Which unfortunately has not been a foreign subject to me lately, but unfortunately I am not dead.
I keep thinking I would never want a biography to ever be written about me. I’m not Susan Sontag and I don’t know what she felt or would have wanted, and if I remember correctly she also didn’t give the clear go ahead for her son to publish her diaries, she mentioned them to him on her deathbed but didn’t clarify whether she wanted them to be published but he did, and has wondered later if that was the right thing to do. Which gave me pause while reading her journals. It was also mentioned in this book that she protected certain writings about her ex-husband when it came to her archives and didn’t want anything that could ruin his reputation to come out while he was still alive at the very least, so maybe that means she also didn’t care what happened to her reputation after she was dead.
From her diaries I got the impression she was very insecure, very brilliant, incredibly hard on herself and also dedicated to her genius, for better and for worse, which she seemed very clear about. It was human and sometimes painful to read, but also admirable. Whether he started this project already disliking her, or it grew as he was doing the research for this book is unclear. Mosers contempt and disrespect for her is evident throughout the whole book, but especially later in the book where he criticises her for not having been able to come out as a lesbian, especially during the AIDS crisis. While also praising her ‘Notes on Camp’. She wrote about discovering her desire for women in her teens, and wrote about her sex life with women, and not always liking sex with men, how it was humiliating. But she did also marry a man and wrote of a very passionate sex life in the beginning, and I dont think the reason of the divorce was necessarily her lesbianism or even attraction to women. Whether she was bisexual or a lesbian is no one business (also she told her assistant that she didn't like the label lesbian, as she had also been with men). Her relationship with her sexuality is no ones business. At the beginning of the book he wrote of how she would scale back her apparent Jewishness to people she deemed wouldn’t appreciate it, and allowed herself to be more honest about her heritage with people she felt appreciated it, so I dont see how she would act differently about something like her sexuality publicly. Several parts of her identity seemed malleable. She read and wrote and did more than most of us ever will in a lifetime, ad she was deeply flawed but she never pretended to be anything but.
The idea of friends and past lovers speaking to a biographer about me makes my skin crawl, and has ever since I read the Laure Adler biography of Marguerite Duras (who clearly didn’t want anyone but herself to write about her!). One thing is presenting journals as what they are, which is someones notes from their life, partly memories they want to keep, or problems they are working through, or setting rules for one self (like Sontag did), and keeping score of the books they read and the books they want to read etc. and allowing people that glimpse into someones life, and another is reaching out to ex-friends and -lovers, maybe scorned and adding their testimony as fact without ever being able to ask the other person involved in the relationship.
It’s clear that I dislike this biography for reasons other than feeling like the whole genre isn’t exactly moral, I do however already own his biography on Clarice Lispector so I will read that and compare his disposition.
I keep thinking I would never want a biography to ever be written about me. I’m not Susan Sontag and I don’t know what she felt or would have wanted, and if I remember correctly she also didn’t give the clear go ahead for her son to publish her diaries, she mentioned them to him on her deathbed but didn’t clarify whether she wanted them to be published but he did, and has wondered later if that was the right thing to do. Which gave me pause while reading her journals. It was also mentioned in this book that she protected certain writings about her ex-husband when it came to her archives and didn’t want anything that could ruin his reputation to come out while he was still alive at the very least, so maybe that means she also didn’t care what happened to her reputation after she was dead.
From her diaries I got the impression she was very insecure, very brilliant, incredibly hard on herself and also dedicated to her genius, for better and for worse, which she seemed very clear about. It was human and sometimes painful to read, but also admirable. Whether he started this project already disliking her, or it grew as he was doing the research for this book is unclear. Mosers contempt and disrespect for her is evident throughout the whole book, but especially later in the book where he criticises her for not having been able to come out as a lesbian, especially during the AIDS crisis. While also praising her ‘Notes on Camp’. She wrote about discovering her desire for women in her teens, and wrote about her sex life with women, and not always liking sex with men, how it was humiliating. But she did also marry a man and wrote of a very passionate sex life in the beginning, and I dont think the reason of the divorce was necessarily her lesbianism or even attraction to women. Whether she was bisexual or a lesbian is no one business (also she told her assistant that she didn't like the label lesbian, as she had also been with men). Her relationship with her sexuality is no ones business. At the beginning of the book he wrote of how she would scale back her apparent Jewishness to people she deemed wouldn’t appreciate it, and allowed herself to be more honest about her heritage with people she felt appreciated it, so I dont see how she would act differently about something like her sexuality publicly. Several parts of her identity seemed malleable. She read and wrote and did more than most of us ever will in a lifetime, ad she was deeply flawed but she never pretended to be anything but.
The idea of friends and past lovers speaking to a biographer about me makes my skin crawl, and has ever since I read the Laure Adler biography of Marguerite Duras (who clearly didn’t want anyone but herself to write about her!). One thing is presenting journals as what they are, which is someones notes from their life, partly memories they want to keep, or problems they are working through, or setting rules for one self (like Sontag did), and keeping score of the books they read and the books they want to read etc. and allowing people that glimpse into someones life, and another is reaching out to ex-friends and -lovers, maybe scorned and adding their testimony as fact without ever being able to ask the other person involved in the relationship.
It’s clear that I dislike this biography for reasons other than feeling like the whole genre isn’t exactly moral, I do however already own his biography on Clarice Lispector so I will read that and compare his disposition.