Transcripts For CSPAN2 Benjamin Moser Sontag 20240713

And over the past 12 years the center has awarded 44 major fellowships to working biographers. Each of these fellowships is now worth 72,000. So, not chump change. Today some 20 biographies have been published including ruth franklins biography of Shirley Jackson which won the Prestigious National book critics circle award for biography. I also want to spread the news about our brandnew unique Masters Program in biography and memoir that has just started this autumn with at least 17 students enrolled which is phenomenal and brenda is actually a former director of the leon leavy center and teaches one of the courses. Wednesday september 25 o 25th at 6 30 p. M. With david nassau getting the annual lecture on biography. Tonight im delighted to have with us and those are in conversation with brenda. As i said brenda is a former director of the center and the author most recently of the impeachment, the trial of Andrew Johnson and the dream of a just nation a very widely reviewed and timely book for our times. The last book is why this world a biography for the National Book critics circle award. The book was just published two days ago and is already an amazon best seller that garnered quite interesting reviews in the New York Times and new yorker and elsewhere. In todays New York Times, its described as a book as handsome, provocative and troubled as its subject. This is a biography not to be ignored. Brenda will interrogate now for about 40 minutes. Its an interrogation of the author. Then they will take some questions at the end and afterwards, both then and brenda will be signing their books sold by books on call in new york city. So, please tell us about susans life. [applause] thank you. First of all, thank you. Its wonderful to be here with you and your wonderful new book. Its a book for our times and its going to be i think already the definitive word of susans. You did an enormous amount of work for this book and one of the things that is stunning about it the material you have to go through in the archives and i dont even know how many interviews there were. I think its been said and you told me this its not really an interrogation of a great admirer and of course in this book and i consider myself an honored friend so its nice to be here interrogating you as a result of that. I understand that you are the socalled authorized biographer. I guess there have been unauthorized books and i wonder if you can talk a little bit about what that means for an audience who may not know what that is. What are the advantages or maybe the disadvantages of the authorization and then we get to susan. That is an interesting question. Its very hard to explain even though it doesnt seem like a hard concept to me. I was the authorized biographer but this book is in the authorized biography. When you say authorized biography it sounds like you got a seal of approval. I have to be independent to draw my conclusions. In the thoughts and opinions about her often were correct and even more often incorrect. I wouldnt have stepped into that. I thought finally off the hook i can go to the beach or something. Its a nice day for the bookstores, which is what i usually do. I got an email saying we have appointed you. Some people including her son and her publisher had read a bunch of books and thought it was something i could take on. So then i had an agreement that i thought the state could look at the book and comment on the buck and ibook and if there werl issues we could talk about that thebut they could make suggestis and those were hopeful. Did the that give you accesso the numbers of people or maybe it inhibited some of those. It gave access to some. There was a rift between her son, david, and her partner. The people in their world split into these camps for all kinds of reasons i go into in going e book. That didnt go well postmortem. They didnt like it because they thought i was davids little errand boy or something. Annie did eventually speak to me but the exciting thing i got access to or the archives that were restricted. You made a tremendous use of their journals in the book and you have a strong voice i want to talk about and i mean that in a completely positive sense but of course she has a strong voice and in the book is a difference between the inner voice or personal voice whatever you want to call it, and the voice that she cultivated for the public even though theyve changed over time. I was wondering i incoming to pt the book together, when did you begin to think about the motives you used and let me just quote here because there is one that is very interesting and i think you might give this away you say the process gives narrative to the writers life. One of the things we want to talk about the mindless progress so you are looking for the way she thinks in that sense but you have to have a way to develop that further reader to make that explicit. When did you begin to fear that you have an understanding of the terms that you present to us . It goes back to the question of how many opinions were affixed to her. In her 20s was the first time she was featured as a character so she was quite fictional seeming and they say things about her that are not true. One of the things that happened with her is peoples opinions are often very negative about her works are to give an example, she wrote four novels and a lot of stories. Its easy for people and common for people to say she wrote these great essays and all of these horrible novels. Theres two ways first of all, i dont agree. I like some of the novels and think some of the essays fell short. In the biographical setting, i am not the person judging that in the way that a book critic looking at this as one book saying three stars or four stars, whats interesting is that she is in constant evolution. Not all books are equally fabulous but they lead to something. Its hard for people to understand but understanding it in the book very often we just kind of exemplify that over time but she really is evolving. There are certain motifs that are interesting maybe we should go back for people who dont know much about her life. Im going to talk about her life and just for people who dont know, she is from the west which many people dont know and she lived in so many places, california, arizona. If you want to talk about that . Its important not only that shes from the west but her father died in china of all places are just 33. Her mother was an alcoholic from new jersey from montclair mayor to a place los angeles was a little city still before the world for. Her mother grew up as hollywood grew up in the former jewish neighborhood east of downtown that was ruined by all sorts of typical disasters. Her mother and grandmother from eastern poland came to los angeles because they loved the movies, they loved this thing was just coming up. It became one of the most recognizable and Important Industries in the country all around the world and hollywood became something that was certainly famous symbols though. The first books about hollywood in brazil come out and about 1913, 1914. The mother loses her mother and then the father dies and the mother is an unhappy woman whose beautiful and dedicated to appearances and is always kind of looking for a place to be happier. They moved to florida for a while, new york, new jersey, arizona, los angeles and then finally to hawaii. This is an isolating experience for people if you know someone in the army not only did she not have a father but she doesnt really have a mother or any friends because shes being moved around every couple of years. She has her books and the world that is in her mind and that becomes extremely important. Even though she wrote eloquently about the elements and someone that suffered terribly especially when she had Breast Cancer the kind of chemotherapy that was available and the kind of surgery. Even when she had an abortion when she was very young, the only anesthesia they turned up the radio loud so people wouldnt hear you scream. There is a lo a lot of stuff tht people didnt see behind this figure. Then it becomes an interesting phenomenon that there is an iconic figure that there is a human being living and suffering behind not very often and point of fact she is evolving and changing and one of the interesting things. To be very clear about the fact when she got married very young and barely knew the man she was marrying. This would be astonishing to read. If he was assigned reviews or things to do, she read the books in most of the reviews. And she was excited about that. Beyond that, beyond the reviews its clear shes the writer of the book he became known for and that in private she was very clear about what she had done but it wasnt very publicly known. One of the fascinating things about this book and life is she seems like a very contemporary figure. Actually a lot of the categories have changed so much that its hard to think back to the times. I saw her sister a couple of days ago and of course you wrote it, we all know that wasnt something you could really say and there was a piece in the guardian they were not going to break this news that she had written freud and a lot of the older women that i interviewed during this process all emailed me like what is everybody so surprised about, it happened to everybody. Everybody has forgotten what it was like. We all rode our husbands books back in 1948. One thing in the 21st century she was born in 1933, hitler came to power, not lately. She did it and it was so funny to see the outrage among the younger women compared to the eye rolling big deal from the older women because the academic women were very rare and her generation. There were very few role models and i think in the biographical setting again i will show how it is writing a womans life and i guess that she is younger than the base of it. Not to bite off too much. She said that growing up if you were an intellectual that wanted to ride is only one figure that you could really look too and that was not on kerry was biography by her daughter who was the only member of the family not to win a nobel prize and her mother got two of them. Her husband, brother, dad, everybody but she did write an excellent biography and that was the only thing girls had to look to. So, now we are used to a woman professor, writer, journalist. The first journalist ever in brazil. It is called short and kind of change. One of the things, was the title her title or dof her title or dt was his . I dont know, but it is very her. Thats why i wanted to ask that. The reason i thought it was so interesting is that there is a kind of tension that i feel and i think that you speak of it as moralist and she talks about it early on to the interpretation and that we understand art as something that is purely aesthetic and yet when we think of the later work especially when she revisits photography she becomes herself so clearly a moralist and i think that was always there in a way. Its interesting that would be the title whether it was hers or his. The worst you could see they collaborated. She was always interested in these are sort of the moral response of the artist, and you make much of this representation which becomes interesting. Its very problematic and fun to talk about if anybody will indulge me. But i think that there is some its funny because she says i made here at him twice over. So you think so are we. We know what thats like. Its not the easiest. An ideal world perfectionist is held up to you in a lot of different ways and i think that in america particularly if you come from the west and this is what is important to talk about californias literature. Gertrude stein came from the west in this sort of similarity. Its similar because the responsibility to live up to this country that you have been given becomes very isolated and i think you can find that already in massachusetts in the 17th century. God has given you this place as the richest country in the world and you are a little slow if not quite measuring up, so i felt it keenly. She finds it in socrates and the greek moralists she really does feel strongly about morality and aesthetics are the same thing and this is some thing that she resists in a certain way. Shes trying to be kind of more of shes trying to get away. Shes basically trying to get away on the one hand from the systems that were quite suppressive to people i think in this generation because they were so dominant and overarching and complicated and they did offer you the key to culture if you could really master the remarks you could understand how the world works, how the personality and psychology and politics and aesthetics but then already by her generation they are sort of starting to show so she chooses something that isnt natural at all which is just kind of rocking out enjoying music and painting and film and people. Its not a natural thing for her. And i think when she gets back into the moralism she is on more of a solid ground. I dont know what you mean it wasnt natural. There was something sort of very exciting about this that she found that she was thrilled by it in a way that i think, and i dont want to put words in your mouth, but it seems that over time, she became less comfortable with that. Of these things are time bound so the interpretation is very much product of the age that shes living in and by the time say for example shes going to bosnia or even before that the trip you talk about very, very well she writes a trip to hanoi and the key herself ma maybe its realizing that she needs to rethink some of this pleasure or she sort of wants to reintroduce a plaintive view. I think when you look at this it is important to begin to realize how much has changed and also how much did change. Four years, five years, 63 to 68. Whabut what happens come and something that i found touching but i didnt realize and maybe its wrong but somebody said to me and it makes sense the literature of postwar america until after the 50s, a lot of it is about the personal struggle. So, even if it is you are living in a country that won the war of the most rich powerful in the world would have all these problems it is also the time of the black Civil Rights Movement and a time of feminism and all this new exciting american freudianism that seems to be exerting people to live more free lives and so you have books like jack and norma o. Brown and even Alec Ginsburg would be part of that and its kind of about you. Its not really about society. It has society and it but then you have the greatest triumph of the new generation symbolized by john f. Kennedy. But she is held in 1956. But the death of kennedy is close to a lot of people and me also because my mother almost saw it happen. She was from dallas and saw it before it happened when america kind of snaps, what happens almost immediately after that will indeed immediately when the talks and Lyndon Johnson continued to escalate the war in vietnam which is something that my father always says is the biggest difference between the generations when he was in college and when he was a young man off he thought about was getting drafted. There was a darkness that settles that i dont think we could have gotten rid of that comes out of this time in vietnam. And so there is its just one second about the interpretation. Experiencing this and all of a sudden 30 years later it seemed normal there was a new masterpiece and its so exciting, but that excitement becomes a nightmare. And she was very far from being the only one and she is really struggling reconcile the vietnam that shes wrote about in the New York Times which is a metaphor which is a description narrative and place and finding that she doesnt really know what people are talk about. Exactly. She doesnt understand the language, all looks the same to her, do i look the same to them . In america people see that im different, i have a personality, a name, here am i a tourist, what am i i think to it here, she ruffles with it in the essay in the way that make it, i think, really comparing and again when youre talking about watching the profession of the mind, yes, even in the pages of the one essay you see that. Yes, yes, because there was a distancing too that some shes trying. Not quite there yet. Well, shes trying, well, i should be objective about this, i should write it this way and not that way, but its very rare to have that kind of dram dramatiization and i specially as a biographer, critic, i dont mean credit nick the sense of criticism but one that has a point of view about her own work is that we learn a lot about her and the way shes thinking through how she writes about other people. I love that. Your idea. [laughter] yeah. Thank you. Its true when you read the profiles because shes the first person in america to write about the mainly european authors thats right. Often not translated, people that she learns in france or europe, she has reputed great social functions in the literary culture ecosystem was that she would tell you about the new person in france or italy or somewhere at a time when france and italy were further away than they are now because books come on amazon in 2 dais, days and its hard to imagine how paris it was, it took a week. When you have these portraits, really interesting things about her contribution but i think that one one of the functions oe biography, when you look behind it, thats why shes so interested in the book, its because shes talk about the same thing, whether its intellectually, or in her career, these people stimulate her and i could tell you all sorts of things this this personal that im personally interested in and that i foreground more than somebody else would. Sure, of course, thats inevitable. Of course, thats inevitable and doesnt disqualify her as the writer anymore that would qualify you writing about her, i mean, we are all sort of understanding motif or understand or see or pick up different motifs, i mean, you know, you come at her underseing what shes doing and i think that is what gives the book shape really in many ways, we want to see that because there was a way, at least in your telling and strikes me as very true, a way that she was probably not the best phrasing but the way she was escaping very often in the creation of well, a persona and you have to speak eloquently. Shes a little girl and reading, thats her escape from her dreary loveless unhappy childhood and, of course, she continues doing that and i find it i find it quite touching and i find it really interesting to see how, its a use of literature, i think that the idea that youre writing something, reading something that would be outside would be relevant to your own life, i can tell you if thats the case, you dont finish the book. Right. Thats absolutely right. You read things and youre touched by things and impressed by things and stimulated by things because theyre relevant to you. Dont have to be in any literal way. No. Makes sense to you or they put into language a feeling that you didnt have the language for, you dont have the images for and shes definitely able to do that and she does that very, very well, whats interesting too is that shes not just satisfied with one form of imagemaking which is their language, she becomes a selfmaker and you talk quite a bit about the films that she makes, i dont think we do. You put on youtube. Are they . Promise land is the best one and also the film that she makes in venice also on youtube, its on the internet. One of the fascinating things about this is work is when i went to sweden which is when she made the first two films of 1968 and she was actually, she has taken or inviteed to sweden because sweden was one of the countries, along with canada american draft dodgers draft, im sure theres a nicer words for that because these were courageous people and took a lot courage to do that. There were a lot of american deserters. She got to stockholm and what she does is make her first film in the style, sort of homage to birdman whom about she had written a famous essay about the film persona and they are completely lacking, i mean, have you ever watched them . I saw duets a long time ago. Thats the first one, to say that they are unwatchable is sort of accurate [laughter] and as a biographer it raises questions because they are really, really weird, whats going on, this woman is insane, shes not stupid, thats the biographers question. Its really fun and thats why you have to give some sort of judgment even if its a reflection of peoples settle ment at the time. What do you mean judgment of the people at the time or judgment of you now . Well, my judgment now, i dont really try to put in book because i dont really want to watch the films, but i do want to understand your job is Something Else. Well, thats the thing, you do have to tell what is this about and what what is it. Its really challenging, its easy in a certain way to write about stuff that you really like but as a biographer is fun to try to get into the reasons why you might not like something or understand something and whats happening about the film is that you see the cinematic world that she sees and may be liberating people and writing about things that people werent writing about or people didnt know about because you didnt have it on netflix. You had one little cinema somewhere and if you lived in houston, thats where im from or minneapolis, you probably didnt have it at all and you would read about it and think what is happening in paris, it was thrilling. Right, except there was more access, you make the point that movies were so much part of the culture at that exactly. You learn how to smoke and you learn how to kiss and wear a raincoat. From movies. [laughter] if anyone wants a home project, as if my book isnt long enough. I was going to say. Google top 50 films, new yorker piece that publish it is list of those. Really . What was number, do you remember . I think it was tokyo story. Interesting. Fabulous. It is a good movie. I watched all of the movies and i loved them and some of them i really didnt understand and the more i watched them the more it lets you get into the mental world that she was coming from and impressed her and so you think, well, this is 50 years ago, people were interested in Different Things and why was that. I try to explain that a little bit. No, no, its interesting. It brings me to a different kind of question, research question, okay, you went through the list and you watched these perhaps unwatchable movies of hers and unwatchable, at what point do you have this or at what point do you begin to organize it in some way in your mind or on your desk in order to start making it visible to us the readers so that we understand it . Theres a point when that becomes possible, im sure you know it. Im not the one [laughter] no, but as a biographer. Theres so much, theres a political writing, theres a cultural criticism, movies that she makes and she writes about, theres the changes, theres her looking back and theres a lot. You start seeing the patterns. One thing shes obsessed with in the films also and also in her early novels is images and this becomes something that once you start seeing it, you start seeing it and shes really trying to see and including against interpretation, and i think that when you thats one theme you see a lot of themes, the point when i felt confident about the writing was never, ill be honest. Yeah. Had to start. You did have to start at some point you had to say yeah. That was it. So i will tell you 3 weeks ago, 2 weeks ago. [laughter] i realized in this dream that i couldnt change anything anymore because the book had already been printed an it was complete agony because i had been even in the last minute that maybe you should do this or that, and when you get to that point where you feel like i know enough about this person and i know where it begins and i know the reason that happens is you find image of extras and one of the very first hollywood spectaculars. In archives. Amazing. I figured out what the film was and what the picture was and this was the last picture ever taken of the girl and her mother, girl and her grandmother. A mix called auction of souls, armenians you know we are still in army and genocide and already there was an attempt to create enactment of the genocide in the other side of the world and a lot of the people in film which is partially lost and partially preserved were actual armenian refugees who made it to the United States and there was too much, they had women crucified and people started fainting, thats not acting, people who have seen that happen back home where they were from and couldnt take it. Horrible but its also the question that comes on how do you look at things especially yes, exactly. Exactly. Wonderful beginning by the way of the book, its just sort of they knew this is where you wanted to begin. This is where she comes from. It gives genealogy and goes all the way to photography and last which is regarding the portrait of other, almost 100 years later. Thats amiaing when you think of the shape of that. Well, you know, it doesnt give shape to a life that doesnt seem seemed shaped because shes living in that particular way. Right. But does in that sense why work is because this will sound funny, not making it up, its actually there, somebody else will take different motifs and put them together and having done what youve done started in that point with that film is going all the way regarding of the torture of others and its regarding and creates a kind of whole and brings somebody together. Its so funny, i dont know if theres aspiring biographers but one of the funny things about biography is that so much stuff happens that you wouldnt, if you were a novelist you wouldnt make that up. Nobody would believe you. The idea that they knew everyone and all the things, you think, okay, well, thats sort of cheesey, and as shes walking out of the film, waited for her to be finished with the film, east german border guard opened the flood gate that had been closed for almost what, 35, 40 years and she teargas from east germans escaping east germany. If youre novelist trying to read you lose credibility. Whats interesting about where she is, she happens to be there, you know, on the spot, one of the interesting things later in the book and becomes problematic, i think, for the way people respond to her is 9 11. Yeah. Its 18 years ago but, people in college dont remember it. Thats right. Thats exactly right. She wasnt here. She was in berlin. If you havent seen something yourself such an interesting metaphor. Amazing. I even have a picture of cnn, the guy on cnn looking at the twin towers with the smoke coming out because she was in the lawn watching this on tv and she wrote this essay that i think i must say is a really good essay. One of the interesting things about the essay and we should talk, the first sentence i didnt realize was cut. It changes everything. Heartbroken american, new yorker. It was a time just those of us who are less old than i am. Younger. Whatever. [laughter] i had a birthday. Happy birthday. Certainly never in the city in the middle of the empire was the most shocking that anything that has happened in the country and lifetime and it was absolutely not a time when there was any sense of nuance in the culture because people were wounded, people were physically dead and wounded and the city stink for weeks and weeks and people started sending anthrax to the white house and i mean, it was just absolutely terrifying and and she wrote an essay that basically said that these people were not coward and tariffs who had killed themselves in a spectacular fashion and that the United States rather than lashing out at other countries and starting a new war should look at why people hated america and this was something that the americans always had a hard time understanding that america is ferocious extremely violent empire which it has been since days, really, and if you go back 1619 which im happy that we are now going back to, im sure [laughter] you know that this is a country thats in many ways built on cruelty and slavery and racism like every other country. Yeah. I lived in europe, america compare today france or england, germany or italy, you know, weve got our stuff, so do they. Yeah. Its not maybe worse china or india. The physical emotional wound that this was, that it was very hard to say anything and compare today compared to a new republic, whats the word . Liberal. Liberallish, liberal light. The new republic got it. Yeah. This was at the time and so i really think that when you look at her legacy also and you think about what it means for us now, theres a new trend to resist jargon especially at these times when everybody agrees because everybody in america and everybody around the world agrees that this is absolutely horrifying, theres no words to describe it and specific those times that you need the adversarial voice and i mean now everybody has adversarial board because everybody is on twitter yelling all of the time, thats really different. Yeah, yeah. You need that ability to step back maybe. Yeah, yeah, no, its interesting, but its interesting too because as they go back when they i wonder why they cut that first sentence because of the piece because it does orient it, she is saying it, you know, i am feeling and then goes beyond that, you know, to be kind of analytical about, you know, this isnt isolated, this didnt come out of nowhere. Right. Its not act of randomness. Thats what a thinker does, is not easy to denounce terrorism, its not that original. No. Let me sort of shift a little bit because its related slightly different and i want to get to this point too because one of the things you talk about and i think, you know, youll see why the connection im making, one of the things that you talk about is her need more and lack of empathy which itself its an interesting motif in the book and i guess in that essay its the i agree with you, its important to have that kind of analysis that she offers but sometimes theres a way in which it need to be it need to be woven with empathy at the same time. One of the really challenging things was that question because theres no question at all that it was herself often incredibly cool and this is something that she performed almost in public to her loved ones including her son. Her son. She could be absolutely brutal to people and she could humiliate people and if you lived in new york and youve known a few stories everybody had a story like that where me as a biographer wants to understand her and figure out what shes thinking and it becomes really oppressive to hear all the stories and you know theyre true at the same time stories are true. In 9 11 piece what she was accused of being insensitive to what people were feeling and theres a way in which i like the adversarial side of that, but then someone told me, ask after 9 11 she said she didnt care about the bankers and exactly. She just people who worked in the restaurants or Something Like that. And this woman [inaudible conversations] yeah, yeah. The empathy is something that goes throughout her work. Shes often trying to right her way into empathy rather than actually feel things and its painful for her not to have that, she writes about it and the result is that people say, oh, she slept with everyone and had all the lovers, kind of jealous or something. Slept with her a lot of people didnt want to, of course, because she was so beautiful, but i think that when you look at the what you look at what that actually means and somebodys life having a whole lot of relationships means that you have a whole lot of broken relationships and means that time and time again it didnt work out and this is a real source of pain for her. Yeah, yeah. Its interesting because i find it. It is something that she wrestles and something as biographer and beyond that it becomes interesting for the biographer, in other words, i think what youre saying too is that theres a way in which a precondition, if you will, of a biographer is to have empathy, wouldnt you say . Oh, yeah, demands as a biographer she demands a lot of empathy. Do you think she could have been a biographer . Thats a great question. I dont know. I think probably not. Yeah. I think probably not also because the if maybe its related problems with fiction also. Fiction is an art of empathy and art of its not really a rational thing. Right. And i think that thats one of the reasons why people who write, i dont like the word nonfiction but we will just use it. Theres a different sensibility between the person who writes fiction or the person who writes nonfiction. But it is, i think, at its base a need to go into somebody and it was somebody who had to go time and time again and really try to step back and try to rise above the emergency she unlearned on you. Or on me. Im on her side, i want to understand it but she makes it tough sometimes. I bet, i bet. How did you do with it, walk away, go to a different chapter . No, i actually wrote it straight on through strangely enough. Yeah. How did i deal with it . I kept trying to understand her and think why is she doing this and why is she doing this and why shes doing this and i didnt always have the explanation and often she would have the same dinner party. You would have one story about it in which she was great and the other story she was terrible person. What i try to do in the book, okay, x, y, z, benjamin, abc. Right. And not really try to be in there myself to extent that the emotional stuff well, the emotional stuff and you have to navigate i guess is contemporary word, works in that sense but at the same time you do have a very strong voice, in other words, i think for me biographies dont work, they dont work because theres no voice and i dont mean im ben mosa and im going to tell you this in the first person and clear that there are times that you are separating yourself out from what she is doing or what she thinks shes doing and what other people think shes doing and you are making, you have a point of view, let me say that. I thought she would like that, i thought she was not i thought a book about susan son tag would not be a book about susan sontag. In essence youre engaging with her. Absolutely. Talking back and talking with and sometimes talking back and talking with sometimes. I hope that my engagement with her is something probable. That people i dont want everybody to reach every conclusion about susan. I dont know if conclusion is the right word because i dont necessarily want to have the last word, but id like the conversation to go on. Yeah. You this it will with susan, do you think people that will reinvent her, reread her . Its already happening. Is it . Its funny to read the reviews, i couldnt write the review myself. Could or couldnt . I could. [laughter] you could say maybe you should. Thats true. Right. You know. One example, i talk a lot about what the jewish intellectual person would hate which is what they call pop psychology. Right. I write a lot about the fact that her mother is an alcoholic and i write about the fact that she was gay and in the closet. These were things that were not understood at the time. Right. Parental alcoholism. People that know about it, it wasnt something that existed and i knew, i knew that this would trigger people because i know that people dont often take seriously, the mind of the moralist and dream, that is okay, but they look down right. Yeah, pecking order of intellectually respective. Well, its very funny, similar thing you can say about going to yoga or exercising. You should exercise more, you feel better. So obvious and yet if you put that into intellectual biography of intimidating seeming thinker people would say, oh, come on, you know in your own life that actually you feel better if you sleep more. Yeah, yeah, which she didnt. Well, she says if youre having trouble writing, i just stay up for 2 weeks. [laughter] and you think, she took emphetamines, people got it to lose weight and a lot of things treat today treat to treat add and youre not trying to judge it necessarily, youre trying to kind of set the parameters so that people can understand why. Something you just said and i want people to have the benefit of beautiful quote and the end of the book speaks to im not going to give away anything, not to worry, but speaks to what you said before that yours is not necessarily the last word on susan sontag and i think what ben is able to do is bring a number seeing which we are talking about tonight, but also in such a way that its still very nice too because it brings back to issue of biography and questions about this and this is what ben writes, to a divided world she brought divided self, greatest things due to part from it, metaphor consists on giving the thing a name and belongs to Something Else and sontag formed how metaphor formed, language could console and how it could destroy, how representations could comfort while also being obscene, why even a great interpreter ought to be against interpretation and to warrant against the mistfication of photographs and portraits including those of biographers which is really nice sort of wonderful end to kind of biography and opens the door, with that lovely last paragraph let me open, there may be some other people besides me that want to ask questions of ben. [applause] [inaudible] so the question was if susan son testimony chicago would read me book, what would she have to say. I could tell you that i dont know but something i thought 24 hours a day when i was writing it. I wanted her to feel fairly treated and a certain sense understood, i wanted to argue with her but i sort of wanted her to enjoying the conversation because she was a great talker, great arguer, i hope that she would feel that with the access i had to her stuff we didnt really talk about like the fact that i was allowed to see her computer and go through email and just go through everything personal that i was respectful of that access and i didnt i didnt treat her sensationalistically that she would see that i tried to understand her and that she saw that im trying to bring her work into a new generation. One of the things she would take a step back and look at things and give a bit more comprehension to things that seemed incomprehensible that maybe this can be a key to a whole world of culture and politics and sexuality and economics and everything that she that he helped shaped, thats what i hope. I thought that the look was so striking and her appearance, so i group up in jamaica and didnt know much about her until i came to new york, i didnt know she was gay until the photographic exhibition in chelsea somewhere and i didnt know that they were partners, i wonder how do you think her looks, appearance considered to her aspect . Thats a fantastic question that interests me deeply, sontags great theme the difference between photograph and metaphor and the person behind it, what people think about you and what you give off, who you actually are and what sontag she writes, its not camp is not a woman but a woman in clothes and i wrote a lot about the difference between susan sontag or sue as she calls herself, the little girl, susan sontag read every book and went to every opera and the appearance of sontag is a story of its own, one thing that im proud of which sounds cheesy and i can make it fancier, it was really fun as biographer is that i found the guy in hon honol. I thought it was natural. It was created in honolulu. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, her mother who is this like fancy jewish lady with jewelry, lipstick, looked perfect all of the time, her best friend was her hair dress. [laughter] i talk about him in the piece in the times and he was excited about it. Her hair went white when she had chemo in 1975, she didnt lose her hair but lost the color in her hair and she she went to visit her mother when she was recovered and she was a wreck physically, she had gone through 3 years of chemotherapy and almost died and her mom said lets go to the hair dresser which was trying to do anyway, and paul the hair dresser said, why dont we leave part of it white and die the rest of it and she said, sure, a conversation that took 2 seconds and this image of the white streak, it really became, im trying to think of whose hair would have been more famous than susans, you will definite i will say elvis. [laughter] youd say maybe andy warhol or i have one, angela davis. Angela davis. Thats a good one. Absolutely. Pretty short list and in fact, there was a wig in saturday night live Costume Department with the white streak and symbolized and you can put it on and everybody knew it was susan sontag, that becomes oppressive for her and the people that we project is scary just like anyone knows, anyone even moderately public like us realize we publish books but we are not like, you know yeah. People said horrible, horrible things about her that were completely untrue, this was before twitter. Feel entitled, yeah. Feel entitled because youre a public person to say to attack them in any way and also a theme, for me its still the most detriment and how the image can take over the person and destroy the person, so it seems like its about cosmetics but its funny so many of the famous women writings have always taken the theme seriously. Right. Because they know what it does to your life trying to live up to the photograph. Right. Thank you, thank you. Youre welcome. Some others. I can see you but you have to shout. Or go to the mic. Youre closer, come on, yeah, yeah. Very brief question. You know, i happened to be from the vermont claire, im curious about her grandmother, so what was the family name and, you know, of that side of her family and do you know anything about her grandmothers growing up or what the family did in thatmont claire area. No her interestingly enough both of her grandparent were born in poland, all her mothers side of the family but they came to the United States very young and so in an age where most jews in this country had foreign parents or grandparents, her, even her grandparents were basically american, it was what was the maiden name. Did it begin with an l. Anyway. Its in the book anyway. Jacobson. Jacobson. Her father jacobson had a Sporting Goods store. Thats where i bought my first baseball mitt. Yeah, its quite a famous, at least in my generation very famous store. I thought they were scandinavia scandinavian. They were jews. That was her grandfather but they move today california. Her grandmother died and they came back to new jersey. Thats funny. I will use the microphone. What was the biggest difference in who you thought she was at the beginning and who you thought she was at the end, were they the same person . Well, that is almost like the image of the person versus the actual person. I think that when you write biographies, if youre about to embark on this thing you know enough about the person that youre not ignorant of the person, you wouldnt do it if you didnt know something. But the difference is so vast between and i had this too, the person that you think she is and the person, not the person she actually is, the person that shes actually for you after going through the process and so i would say maybe the biggest difference for me would be the difference between how vulnerable she was and how nervous and insecure she was behind the facade of assurance and she really looks so certain and she was so impressive and so cosmopolitan and so sophisticated and just really a little scratch beneath the surface and you found this other person. Very vulnerable. Very vulnerable. Behind that she seems to intimidating to people. People were put off by her. Ucla when i was doing this restream, i was teaching class on Latin American Literature which was really fun and this girl in my class said, i talked to my mother about susan son testimony tag and the mother said, well, you know, i never really identified with her because shes like im a middle class mexican housewife from california, she always seemed like this enormous figure that i couldnt really approach. Yeah. If you could go to the mic. Yeah. That way everyone can hear. Thank you. [inaudible] she what . [inaudible] are you a mother . Grandmother. [laughter] well [inaudible] i didnt hear the last part. [inaudible] yes, yes, thats true. The mother thing is fascinating to me because theres an excellent essay by leslie jimson in the republic this week and leslie has a very young daughter who is i think 2 and it is true that susan when she was 19 had her first child and her only child. At 19 if you see the pictures in the book she looks like shes 12, i mean, is really shock to go think, oh, my god, horror, what do i do with this person. When she herself was in the middle of creating her own person of herself. She leaves her husband and she goes to europe on a scholarship when he is 5. And she stays away for more than a year and a lot of women at the time her friends and now including leslie jimson this week were very judgmental about that and thought how could you possibly leave this tinny little kid and go off and have a love affair in paris. Well, i think actually, i dont have children, my sister has small children and i think that, you know, grandparents are also here, i dont think my sister would leave her kids for a year and go to paris and have a love affair but i can definitely think being around these kids all of the time the temptation, you know, i understand it, but like leslie was fascinating about how the temptation to judge this was something that she needed to pull back on, pull back from because its very hard i think when you look at some of the for example, did not perceive to be cruelty that other people did. Yeah. When i spoke to andy about that she kind of shrug ged. Been at the top of her career for 50 years, shes anything but a door mat and so to portray her as this kind of sad housewife with the husband who drinks too much and beats her up, it has nothing to do with her, so People Project and i think its really important not to project on people as a biographer as well because the temptation is always there and i think that people do think for so many reasons and i think susan really more than she needed to take care of her child she needed to get out of that marriage and that was the way she did it. So one more question. I want to press you a little bit on your decision in the biography to label her as gay and closeted gay women, for a life that was so interested in kind of defying genre and resisting labels, i want to ask you i guess pick up on the previous question, kind of how you feel that you can claim her in a way that she did not claim herself and what that would be something that you have to grapple with in biography of sontag of all people, the photograph, the person and the person behind it, labeling her in a way that she chose very actively and consciously not to identify with seems like controversial decision, i wanted to press you on that . It is a controversial decision, absolutely, im glad that you asked me that because its a hard thing to do. I can answer that in several ways, the first one is that she was gay, i mean, if you read 100 volumes of her journal and you talked to she does every once in a while she sleeps with a man but its very clear that her emotional investment is in women, her Real Relationships are with women, the people she falls in love with are women. The other thing is if you are jewish, if youre a female, if youre black, if youre gay, if youre whatever, we all know that labels are not all of that and we know that if youre in a minority and especially a minority that people dont like like jews or gays or whatever, that having a label to you is very dangers, it can be physically dangers, gay people get killed every day in the world. Its not the entirety of everyones identity but what happens when sontag is a young woman, not a Homophobic Society but gay people do not exist at all and the culture was was so closeted that there was novicability for that and at the same time, i dont know, but someone that she didnt know she was a lesbian, lesbians knew she was a lesbian. I talked to a woman in colombia, young woman, 19 or 20 and she was gay, the early 60s and she told me about the first time she saw susan sontag and glamorous, the first time i realized that i could be gay and i could be myself and i could be a woman and i could also be a professor and i could write books and she did go onto do those things and the really important thing to say is that this was sort of in the realm of hypothesis until aids. Yeah. And what happened with aids is not only did it kill 40 Million People plus still counting and dying every day, much more invisibly than they did but that imposed a label on people that would not have wanted that label because it was a disease associated with sex and gayness and gay sex specifically, and i think when we look back at the pioneers because im very i loved the great Freedom Fighters and im romantic and i love i have a dream, i loved the guys in the warsaw ghetto. [laughter] like nobody in my world cares that im gay. Right. But i think its important to realize people did care and this was a label. Im not trying to label her, im just trying to accord the facts of her life and show how those labels just like the other metaphors could liberate and also destroy. Good. This has been a fabulous conversation but we do have to wrap it up and im going the take the opportunity to ask the last question. Great. Because im curious about your distinction between the role being designated the authorized biographer but not the authorized biography, thats a really nice distinction i think but leads me to ask i guess authorized biographer to the fabulous journalists which is any biographers dream to get that kind of material, did was there any pushback from i guess its the son who gives was there any afterwards. Is he unhappy with the book . No, there was this sort of moment where, i mean, first of all, i had an agreement that was negotiated and it was lawyers and agents and written agreement. Written agreement at the beginning that i i would have te authorization and he would have the right to read it and give comments and i liked those comments actually because i think its useful and often you get stuff wrong, you just do. Have other readers is extremely helpful, but one of the reasons i was attracted was i knew about controversy, i knew about the electricity and i thought i really dont know if i want to step in the middle of that but she said to me, david said to me, just so youre clear im not going to like this book. [laughter] its not my mother, its your version of it and i thought that i was so smart to say that. He said at the beginning. I havent read a word. I might not even read it, i just want you to know that they were clear that i know that, im not going to like it and i thought that was really mature of him because the thing that you dont really arent really prepared for, you can do all the stuff, take into consideration and trying to be fair, people are going to get offended by stuff that you do not see coming. Someone got offended by this line about divorce, the least controversial thing in the book, she started dressing differently, i dont remember what it was, people were outraged, i got twitter reaction, you just never know what its going to be and so i think if you are in a state or if youre somebody who might have biography written about someone close to you really understand that this is not her, this is a book, its a narrative, its a metaphor. Metaphor. Its not her, so this is my version of her just like of the photograph. Its not her. But i hope it does bring people closer to her and i hope that she inspires you to read her work and to go back to it and and move her spirit forward into new generations and then into new thoughts, so thanks, everyone so much. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] out in the lobby and both ben and brenda will be signing books. [inaudible conversations] here is a look at some books being published this week, follow the case against socialism republican senator rand paul of kentucky offers critical look at socialism. He will be a guest on book tvs after Words Program in a few weeks. John kasich, president ial candidate lists 10 ways that citizens can promote change in its up to us. In resistance at all costs, the wall street journals Kimberley Strassel contends that overzealous critics of the Trump Administration pose a threat to our rule of law. She will be on cspans q a Interview Program this sunday. Catch and kill, pulitzer investigative journalist with efforts made by others to stifle his reporting and also being published this week, emily recount time at cia operative in life under cover. Detail examination of how human body works, body, guide and gail colins looks at how women have changed. Watch for many of the authors in the near future on book tv on cspan2. Importance of dreaming big and working hard through f