Oh Susie Q

Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag by Sigrid Nunez.  Riverhead Books.  128 pp. $16.00.  *****

I always thought of Susan Sontag as the most fearsome intellectual in America, if not on the face of the earth.  With that wild shock of dark hair with its gray streak, she wrote books on a wide variety of subjects, “camp,” literary criticism, photography, her experience with cancer, AIDS, various social causes.  She seemed to attend every cultural event in New York (my brother regularly saw her at the ballet) and the rumor was that, if you expressed an opinion about something and she didn’t agree, by God she came down with a hammer.

I too wanted to be an intellectual, but I have to admit that, when I came across one of her ground-breaking works (often excerpted in the New York Review), I found them overwhelming, jammed with detail culled from her endless reading.  I don’t want to say they were boring; maybe they were too much for my puny mind.  The one thing of hers that I unequivocally loved was her tribute to Paul Goodman after he died, another withering, argumentative, never-to-be-satisfied intellectual (and where is his reputation today?).  Even that piece seemed off the cuff, not really worked over.  It was as if she had so much to do that she couldn’t deal with the niceties.

My brother once told me that, when Sontag moved in New York, she had to find an apartment that would house her 10,000 books.  Sigrid Nunez puts her eventual collection closer to 18,000, saying that Sontag hated to take books out of the library.  Apparently.

I have to say that this marvelous short memoir by Nunez somewhat humanized Sontag, explained some (though not all) of her idiosyncrasies, and made me, if not quite like, at least admire her, and almost feel sorry for her.

Nunez’ work gives the same impression that Sontag’s does, of being off the top of her head.  But she has an ordered mind, and things fall right into place.  She is a much more modest writer than Sontag: she doesn’t give that feeling of This Is the Absolute Truth and You Better Believe It, Moron.  More like: this is how things look to me.  I love the way this woman writes.  It invites you in rather than whacking you over the head.

Nunez was working at the New York Review when she first encountered Sontag; she was 25 and Sontag 43, just recovering from breast cancer.  Sontag hired Nunez to help with some work, but soon inquired about her dating status, then shamelessly matched her with her son, David Rieff, who lived with her.  She invited Nunez over to do some work, introduced her to David, and said, You know, I don’t feel like working, let’s go out for a pizza.  Soon the two had started dating, then began living together.  Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Except that they lived in the same apartment with Susan.  That doesn’t sound so great.

Sontag was famously attached to her son, had married when she was 17 and gave birth at 19; she treated him like a slightly younger friend, and he called her Susan (not Mommy).  He lived with her into his adulthood.  In fact (I know this sounds unbelievable but it’s in the book) a number of people assumed they were sexually involved and that when Sigrid moved in they had a menage a trois.  Not so!  Sigrid never had a three-way with Susan and her son.

But sometimes at night, when Sontag came home from the movies (which she attended multiple times per week, always trying to get the center seat in the third row), she would come into the room where they were in bed (sleeping, I hope), and ask if they’d like to talk for a while.  She needed some company.  They’d all light up cigarettes and sit there talking.

Sontag didn’t sleep much—she saw it as a waste of time[1]—and hated to be alone.  How can a writer hate to be alone?  And if she was alone, and had some free time, she always had her face in a book.  She couldn’t stand to be doing nothing.  She had to occupy her rapidly-moving mind.

Hence the 18,000 books.

She didn’t like to teach and wanted to make a living as a writer, but didn’t achieve financial security until her forties.  She was often asked to lecture and took the dates—apparently for the money—but then wouldn’t prepare and would get into arguments with the audience in the Q&A.  Sometimes, instead of lecturing, she whipped out a story to read; what she really wanted (as did Paul Goodman) was to be a fiction writer, but her fiction never sold until the end of her life, and her essays were what people wanted.

It wasn’t just audience members that she treated badly.  She snapped at waiters, hotel clerks, anyone who was waiting on her, even her friends.  She expected to be treated like royalty, but she was a writer, for God’s sake.  And one who, until the end of her life, had a rather small audience.

She was a great worshiper, of beauty, great literature (mostly European, in her opinion), works of art.  When she liked something she was over the top about it, even if it was a Katherine Hepburn doubleheader at the retro movie house.  She was bisexual and had many lovers, including, I was somewhat startled to discover, Joseph Brodsky; she and Brodsky would sometimes double date with Sigrid and David.  Now that sounds like a fun group.

I personally think it’s unforgivable to treat a waiter or hotel clerk badly; in that she crossed a line.   But my ultimate feeling about Sontag was that, though she had a great mind, she was like a little girl afraid of the dark, always wanting to be around people, to do something, read a book if nothing else; she’d go to movies though she’d seen them many times before.  She couldn’t let things get still.  The first time she got cancer her reaction was to write a book about it, and at the end of her life, according to Nunez, she was frightened of death to the point of insanity, because it seemed to be a state in which everything had stopped.  No books to read, no movies to see.  The thought terrified her.

It terrifies me too, but one possible response to that is to try to get used to it, to face quiet and stillness now, when you’re alive.  She never did that.  She had to be doing something.

There’s a new biography of Sontag out and it, like her own work, seems long and imposing.  This book is slender and easy to read, even fun.  I feel as if I know the woman, and don’t need to read more.

Though a worthy addendum to Nunez’ book is this article, sent along by my brother.  Talk about fun. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n06/terry-castle/desperately-seeking-susan

[1] She also saw her childhood as a waste of time.  Talk about a strange opinion.  Apparently she wanted to be an important intellectual from the get go.