Transcripts For CSPAN2 Benjamin Moser Sontag 20240713

Worth 72,000. It is not chump change. Some 20 biographies have been publish including ruth franklins biography of shirley jackson. Circle award for biography. I also want to spread the news about our brand new unique Masters Program in biography and memoir. Just started this autumn with at least 17 students enrolled which is phenomenal and brenda is actually both a former director and she now teaches one of the core courses. Just a reminder, our next program is next wednesday, september 25 september 25 at 6 30 p. M. With david nassau giving the lecture on biography. Tonight i am very delighted to have with us ben mosher in conversation with brenda. As i said, brenda is a former direct their and she is the author most recently of the mp chairs. The trial of Andrew Johnson in the dream of a just nation. Very widely reviewed and timely book. Ben moshers last book was why this world . A finalist for the National Book critics circle award. His new book was just published two days ago. It is already an amazon best seller. Garnered long and really quite interesting reviews in the New York Times, the new yorker and elsewhere. In todays New York Times, described it as a book as handsome, provocative and troubled as its subjects. Clearly this is a biography not to be ignored. Brenda will interrogate ben now for about 40 minutes. [laughter] i always say that. It is an interrogation of the author. Then they will take some questions at the end. Afterwards, both then and brenda will be signing their respective books. Sold by books on call new york city. Brenda and ben, please tell us. Thank you. [applause] first of all, thank you. It is wonderful to be here with you and your wonderful new book. It is a book for our times. It is going to be, i think think already the definitive word. You did an enormous amount of work for this book. One of the things that is stunning about it is the material that you had to go through. The archives. I did not even know how many interviews there were. I think, i think you have told me this, i should just confess for a while, not really and interrogation, i am a great admirer. I consider myself an honored friend. It is so nice to be here interrogating you as a result of that. [laughter] i understand that you are the authorized biographer. I guess there have been unauthorized books. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what that means for an audience that may not know what that is. What are the advantages and maybe even the disadvantages of authorization. That is an interesting question. It is very hard to explain even though it does not seemed like a hard concept. This book is not the authorized ir graffiti. It sounds like a seal of approval from somebody or that it has to be signed off on. I do not think i would have done it if i had that. I think for me as a writer, i have to be independent to draw my own conclusions. This incredibly polemical person who is a fascinating person and attracted all sorts of projections and thoughts and opinions about her, often correct and even more often incorrect, i would not have stepped into that. I was actually in rio doing what i thought was my last. I thought i am finally off the hook. I can go to the beach or something. I dont really go to the beach that much, just to be honest. Kind of relax. Have a nice day. I got an email saying guess what. We have appointed you. Not appointed, but some people had sort of read a bunch of books and thought it was something that showed i could take on. But then i had an agreement that meant that i could look at the book and comment on the book. If there were any legal issues that could talk about that. They could make suggestions. Those were helpful. I could not have written a book with the sensor looking over my shoulder. Of course not. The did that give you access to the enormous number of people . Maybe it inhibited some of those people . It definitely gave access to some. There was sort of a rift between her son david and her partner. The people in their world split into these two camps. For all sorts of reasons that i go into in the book. That did not go well postmortem. Annie and her friends did not like it because they thought that i was david little errand boy or something. Whatever access he gave me, it also took away. I think the really exciting thing i got access to where archives that were restricted. That is very exciting. You made tremendous use of the journals. You have a very strong voice. I want to talk about that. I mean that in a complete positive sense. One of the things, there is a difference between sans tag inner voice or personal voice, whatever you want to call it in the voice she cultivated for the public, even though that changed over time. I was wondering, and coming to put the book together, when did you begin to think about the motives that you used to understand the life. Let me just quote you. There was one quote that is really very interesting, i think. You say at one point, a mind process gives narrative to the writers life. One of the things that is wonderful about the book, the mind progress. The progress gives narrative to the writers life. You are looking for the way she thinks. You have to have a way to develop that for the reader and to make that explicit. When did you begin to feel that you had an understanding of sans tag in the terms that you present her to us . It comes back to the question of how political she was. From the time she was very young already in her 20s was the first time she was featured as a character in the novel. She was somebody that really was quite fictional seeming to people. They say things about her that are not true. Objectively, obviously not true, if you if you know the facts. One of the things that happens with her is peoples opinions are often very negative about her work. She wrote four novels. It is very easy for people, very common common for people to say she wrote these great essays, why did she write all these horrible novels . I like some of the novels. Some of the essays fall short. As a biographer, since we are in a biographical i am not the person judging that in the way a book critic looking at this as one book saying three stars or four stars. What is interesting is she is in constant evolution. Not all of her books are equally fabulous. But they lead to something. Evolution of the mind. If you dont have that, you dont dont really need the biography. It is very interesting. Very hard for people to sometimes understand that people do change over time. Understanding it in a book very often we get a set piece of a person. We just kind of exemplified that over time. You cannot do that with sans tag because she really is evolving. Maybe we should go back for people that dont know much about her life. I want to get to those motifs. I will talk more with you about her life and then i want to talk about the motifs some. She was actually from the west which many people do not know. She lived in so many different places. She lived in california, she lived in arizona. You want to talk about that a little bit . Not only that she is from the west. Her father died in china when he was just 33. Her her mother was an alcoholic from new jersey. From montclair verona. And then moved very young to los angeles. At a time that los angeles was still a little city right before the first cold war. Her mother grew up as hollywood grew up. It is the former jewish neighborhood east of downtown that was ruined by all sorts of typical urban disasters. Her mother and her grandmother who was from eastern poland came to los angeles because they loved the movies. They loved this thing that was just coming up. From the beginning of the First World War to the end of the First World War became one of the most recognizable and Important Industries in this country all around the world. Hollywood became something that was famous. In brazil, the first book about hollywood and brazil come out and about 1913, 13, 1914. Europe, the same. The mother loses her mother at age 33. The grandmother is 33. And then the mother is just an unhappy woman who is very beautiful and dedicated to appearances. She is always kind of looking for a place to be happier. They moved to florida for a while. They moved back to new york. They moved to new jersey. They move to arizona. They moved to los angeles. Finally, they moved to hawaii. They, the parents, not susan herself. This is really an isolating experience for children. If you know people that are in the army, not only does she not have a father, she doesnt really have a mother. She doesnt have any friends because shes being moved around every couple of years. This sounds like a cliffhanger, but its not. She has the world that is in her mind and in her imagination. That becomes extremely important a very tough life. Absolutely. One does not think necessarily even though she wrote eloquently about illness. Somebody who has really suffered terribly. Especially when she had rest cancer. The kind of chemotherapy that was available and the kind of surgery. Just really grueling. Even when she had an abortion when she was very young. The only anesthesia you had was turning up the radio loud so people would not hear you scream people did not see behind these figures. Absolutely. Pain. Terrible, terrible pain. That becomes an interesting phenomenon. There is an iconic figure. There is a human being living and suffering behind that. Point of fact, she is evolving. She is changing. I think, you know, it is a real contribution. Very clear about the fact of, she got married very young. She barely knew the man she married. Got engaged after a week. He was her teacher. She was his student. Beyond that, this is really astonishing. If he was assigned reviews are things to do, she read the books and wrote the reviews. She was excited about that. Yes. Not some big eminence with all these grad students. Time management problem. Beyond that, beyond the reviews, you make very clear that she was the writer of the book that he became known for which is dash in private, i think think she was very clear about what she had done. It was not publicly known. No. At all. No. One of the fascinating things about this book and the life, if you look at her on the cover, she looks like this contemporary figure. Very photogenic. She probably is walking down sixth avenue. A lot of the categories have changed so much. It is hard to think back to the time. She does write this book. Everybody knows she writes the book. I saw her sister a couple of days ago. She was quoted in the times. Of course you wrote it. We all knew that. That was not something you could really say. There was a piece in the guardian. They got a copy of it. They were going to break the news. A lot of the older women that i interviewed during this process all emailed me and said what is everyone so surprised about. This happens to everybody. Everybody has forgotten what its like. We all wrote our husbands books back in 1948. [laughter] the 21st century. Born in 1933. After hitler came to power. Exactly. It was so funny to see all the outrage among the younger women compared to the eye rolling kind of big deal in front of the older women. Very rare in her generation. Very few role models. Since we are in a biographical setting, excellent writing a womans life. I guess she is younger. A bit. Not by too much. She said that growing up, if you were in intellectual girl that wanted to write, there was was only one figure you could look to. Biography by her daughter who is the only member of the family not to win a nobel prize. Her husband, her brother, her dad, her dad, her mom, everybody she did write an excellent biography. That is the only thing that girls had to look to. Now, we are so used to woman professor, woman writer, woman journalist. Yes. It makes us think, you know, times do change. I dont think you mention this. If you did, i dont remember. Was the title her title or do you think that it was his . I dont know, but it is very her. The mind of the moral. The reason i thought it was so interesting is this kind of tension that i feel. I think that you kind of speak of. Between sans tag as more or less as an aesthetician. She talks about early on. The interpretation about the erotics of art. We understand art as something that is purely aesthetic. And yet when we think of her later work, we think, especially when she revisits photography, she becomes herself so clearly a moralist. I think that that was always there in a way. It is interesting that that would be the title. Whether it was his or hers. She was always interested in the moral response of the artist to representation. Which is very problematic and very fun to talk about. I could go on about that for a long time. It is funny because her moralism, she says i am puritan twice over. You think we know what thats like. Its not the easiest heritage always. You are always sort of, an ideal moral perfection is held up to you. In a lot of different ways. In america, particularly, i read about californias literature. It is interesting. Some similarities. Go ahead. It is similar because the responsibility to live up to this country you have been given. It becomes very isolated. I think you can find that in massachusetts. God has given you this plate and you are a little slob. Not quite measuring up. And then she finds that also in the greeks. She finds it in socrates and in the greek world. She really does feel very strongly that morality and aesthetics are the same thing. This is something that she resists in a certain way. Early on. She is trying to kind of be, she is trying to get away. She has basically trying to get away. That is right. Quite oppressive to people in those generations. So dominant. So overarching and so complicated. They did offer you the key to culture. If you could master floyd or marks, you could understand how the world works. Personality and psychology works but then, those are starting to show. And so she chooses something that was not natural for her at all. The sensual approach to art. Kind of rocking out. Enjoying music. Enjoying painting. Enjoying music. Enjoying people. It is not a natural thing for her. It is not really her natural mode. I think when she gets back, she is on more solid ground. I dont know what you mean it wasnt natural. Theres something very exciting about this. Thrilled by it in a way. I think, and i dont want to put words in your mouth, it seems that over time she became less comfortable with that. You know, these things are time bound. Against interpretation very much product for her and her age and the age she is living in. By the time, say for example, she is going to bosnia or even before that. More problematic before that. She herself maybe is realizing that she needs to rethink some of this pleasure or she wants to reintroduce a point of view. I think that when you look at this, its really important to begin to realize how much did change. What really changed. How many years is that . For years. Five years. Sixtythree to 68. What happens, something i found really touching that i did not realize, maybe it is wrong, you can correct me if i am wrong, but somebody said to me, the literature of post america, until the 50s, a lot of it is about personal struggle. You are living in a country, the richest and most powerful country in the world. It has all these problems. Also the time of the black civil rights movement. The time of resurgence feminism and all of this new exciting american that seems to be exerting people to live more free lives. You have books like that on the road. Lets head out into the desert. Absolutely. Even ginsberg would be part of that. It is kind of about you. Its not really about society. Its really about exploring yourself. And then you have the great triumph of the new generation symbolized by john f. Kennedy. 1960. Spoiler alert, not to give anything away, but he is killed in 1963. Im sorry. I know. Its in the book. I should say that. [laughter] it is close to a lot of people. Its close to me because my mother almost saw it happen. She was from dallas. She saw him right before it happened in downtown dallas. I know exactly the street and the time. It is a really specific time. You could trace it to the minute where america kind of snaps. What happens almost immediately after that, Lyndon Johnson becomes president and he continues and escalates the war in vietnam. Something that my father always says is the biggest difference between my generation in his. When he was in college and when he was a young man, all he thought about was getting drafted. There is a darkness that nettles over america that i dont think we have ever really gotten rid of that comes out of that time in vietnam. Just one second about the interpretation. She is experiencing all this sensual art. She said it seemed normal that there was a new masterpiece every week. That excitement becomes a nightmare, really. You are in the height of the vietnam war. You know, you talk about that book. I am not so sure that people are familiar with it. It was a big deal at the time. Sort of up there with jane fonda ken burns documentary about vietnam. Twentyfour hours long. I did not watch it. It is okay. It was fascinating to see that degree of detail. You know there was this horrible massacre war that went on and on and on and. You feel the anxiety of it. In 1958, the north viennese government. The most heavily bombarded city in the world which was this communist dictatorship. She fell for completely. Dissolution with their own country. She was very far from being the only one. Really struggling to reconcile the vietnam she is read in the New York Times which is a metaphor which is a description, a narrative. Finding that she does not really know what people are talking about. She does not understand their language. They all look kind of the same to her. Do i look the same to them . And america people see that im different. I have a personality. I have a name. What am i doing here . She really wrestles with it in the pages of that essay in a way that makes it, i think, really compelling. When you are talking about watching the progression of the mind, even in the pages of that essay you see that. Which is that shes not comfortable writing the first person and that the weight especially as a biographer critic, i dont mean critic in the sense of criticism but one who has a kind of 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. Its your idea. It is. Thank you. I love the credit im getting from greta here. Its true that when you read her profile which become very famous because shes the first person in america to write about all these mainly european authors, often not translated. She learns about in france or in europe and so she was always refuted, one of her great social and i think functions in the literary cultural ecosystem was that she would tell you about new person in france or italy or somewhere at a time when france and italy were further away than they are now because books, on amazon in todays. Its hard to imagine how far away paris would have been in her time. But it took a week to get thereon a boat. Its far away. When you have these portraits, these are fascinating portraits and is one of the interesting things about her. Her contribution, but i think one of the functions of a biography is that when you look behind it, and you think oh, thats why shes so interested in the bulgarian theorists of crowds, its because shes talking about the exact thing that shes going through at that moment whether its intellectually or amorously or in her career. These people stimulate her to these reflections and of course they are about the person. But i can tell you all sorts of things in this book that i am personallyinterested in. That i foreground more than somebody else would. Thats inevitable. Of course, thats inevitable and it doesnt disqualify her as a writer about the that any more than it would disqualify you writing about her. Were all understanding motifs and someone else will understand or see the different motifs. Then you come after seeing that in what shes doing and i think thats what gives the book shake, really in many ways. We want to see that because there was a way at least in your telling and it strikesme as very true , the way that she was, this is probably not the best phrasing but theres a way in which she was escaping herself very often in the creation of a persona. You speak very eloquently about it. She does that even when shes a little girl and shes reading, thats her escape from her dreary loveless unhappy childhood. So of course she continues doing that and i find it quite touching and i find it really interesting to see how its use of literature. I think that the idea that your writing something, or reading something that would be outside yourself that would be completely irrelevant to your own life, i can tell you if that is the case you dont finish thebook. Thats right. Read things and youre touched by things and impressed by things and stimulated by things because theyre relevant to you. But it doesnt have tobe in any kind of literal way. It makes sense to you when they put in language afeeling that you didnt have the language for , that you dont have images for. And shes definitely able to do that and she does that very well. Whats interesting to is that shes not just satisfied with one form of image making which is to say language. She becomes a sale maker and you talk quite a bit about the films thatshe makes. I dont think we have access to them. A friend of mine usedto. Promised land is once you mix in israel i think is the best one and also unguided to her which is the films he makes is also on youtube, its on the internet. Of the fascinating things about this for was when i went to sweden which is where she made the first two films in 1968 and this was, she was invited to sweden to make it, a film about vietnam. That was her idea because sweden was one of the two main countries along with canada american draft dodgers , im sure theres a nicer word for that because i think these were very courageous people. And they took a lot of courage to do that. There were a lot of american deserters in stockholm. But she got to stockholm and she found nobody else was already making the film about that so she said what do i do . What she does is she makes her first film in the collage to Ingmar Bergman about whom she had written a famous essay about her film persona and these films are completely wacky. Have you ever watched them . I saw due to a long time ago. Thats the first one. To say their unwatchable is sort of both accurate and as a biographer it raises questions because theyre really weird and you think whats going on . This woman is not insane, shes not stupid, why thats the biographers question. To do this this way, right . Its fascinating. Its fun and thats why you have to give some sort of judgment even if its just a reflection of peoples befuddlement at the time but. Your judgment of the peopleat the time or your judgment of you now . I dont want to foreground in the book because i wouldnt want towatch these films if im honest. What i do want to understand. But your job is something else. Thats the thing. Youdo have to tell what is it about them. What is it is challenging. Its easy in a certain way to write about stuff you like but as a biographer its fun to try to get into the reasons why you might not like something or might not understand something and was fascinating about these films is you see the cinematic world that she comes from. A lot with is open to interpretation and a lot of these essays made her seem to be a liberating figure because she was writing about things that people work writing about people didnt know about because it didnt happen on netflix. You had one set of us somewhere and a few of them in houston or where im from four from minneapolis, they probably didnt happen at all and you greet about it and you think what is happening in paris that was thrilling . Except there were more Movie Theaters. You make that point that movies were so much part of the culture. Its that people were talkingabout. You learn how to smoke and you learn how to kiss and learn how to wear a raincoat. From movies, yes. I would encourage youif anyone wants a homework project that will last a year , as if my book isnt long enough. But its fun, if you google sontag theres new yorker piece that publishes a list of those films. And i watched. What was number one . I think it was tokyo story which is fabulous. I never would have watchedit without her. And i watched all these movies and some of them were just breathtakingly magnificent and i love them. Some of them i didnt understand. And the more i watched them, the more it lets you get into the mental world that she was coming from. So you think this is 50 years ago, people were interested in differentthings and why was that like tried to explain that . This brings me to a different kind of question, the Research Question displays up because you think you went through the list and you watch these perhaps unwatchable movies of hers or initially unwatchable. At what point do you, you have this, youre taking us and what point 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 reader so that we understand it . There is a point when that becomes possible. Im sure you know it. Im not the one whos sitting there. As a lab for, you notice. Im serious when you did because theres so much. Theres a political writing, theres little criticism, theres movies that she makes and that she writes about. There are the changes, theres looking back at photography. Theres a lot. I think you start seeing the patterns. For example one thing shes assessed within these films and also in her early novels and fiction is the image of seeing and blindness in the eye. This becomes something once you start seeing it you start seeing it and you see it in everything and you see shes trying to see including an interpretation, the question of how do you see, what you look at comes urgent for her and when you, thats one theme. You see a lot of themes and then point when i felt confident about the writing was never, ill be honest. It never happened. But you had to start. At some point you had to say. You have that wonderful vignette at the beginning. That was it. Ill tell you just three weeks ago, two weeks ago. I had a horrible nightmare. I realize industry that i couldnt change anything anymore because the book had already been printed and it was agony because i have been always dealing at the last minute i maybe should do this or that but i think when you get to that point where you feel like i know enough about this person that i know where to begin and the reason that happens is that i found an image in archives of her mother and grandmother at , in an extras in one of the veryfirst hollywood spectaculars. Is that where you found it . I found it in the archive and i figured out what the film was and what the picture was and this was the last pictureever taken of the girl and her mother. And its an image of a film called ravished armenia or auction souls, filmed in newhall california if there are any californians here in 1914 which if there are any armenians here you know were still in the middle of the Armenian Genocide and already there was an attempt to create an artistic reenactment of this genocide on the other and of the world and the people in this film which is partially lost but partially preserved, were actual armenian refugees who had made it to the United States and it was too much. I have this whole panorama of these women being crucified and all these people start thinking and what happens is thats not acting area was people who had seenthat happen back home where they were from and couldnt take it. So again you have this, its gruesome and its horrible but its also this question that comes throughout her life and how do you look at things . Exactly. Its a wonderfulbeginning by the way of the book. When you found it, you know this is where you wanted to begin. This question was already, because its kind of her genealogy and it goes all the way up to photography and the last which is regarding the torture of others by head. Almost exactly 100 years later. Amazing when you think about the shape of that. It gives you a shape to a life that doesnt seem to have one. Because her life seems so she because shes letting it in that way does in that sense why it works is because this will sound funny, youre not making it up. Its actually there. Somebody else would take motifs and put them together but having done what youve done, starting in that point with that film and going all the way to the regarding of thetorture of others , it creates a kind of whole and brings together. But its so funny, i dont know if the aspiring biographers or other fellow biographers here but another funny thing about biography is so much stuff happens that if you were a novelist you would not make that up. It would be too uncanny. The idea that sontag knew everyone and slept with everyone, thats easy. And yet when the berlin wall falls, shes in a Movie Theater in berlin and as shes walking out of the film its almost as if it waited for her to be finished with the film. The east german Border Guards open the floodgates that had been closed for almost 35, 30 years. And she smells your gas from the writing words of east germansescaping east germany. If you were a novelist trying to write about somebody was everywhere and it did everything it be like, thats hokey. You lose all credibility. But whats interesting about where she is, that she happens to be there on the spot, one of the interesting things later in the book and it becomes problematic i think for the way people respond to her, is 9 11. Its still 18 years ago but. People in college dont remember. Isnt that weird . Thats exactly right but she wasnt here. She was always in berlin and she writes over and over again but if you havent seen something yourself, if you havent experienced it. Its an interesting metaphor. In the book i have a picture of cnn of the guy on cnn looking at the twin towerswith the smoke coming out. She was in the long which is by the Brandenburg Gate in central berlin watching this on tv and she wrote this essay i think, i must say is a good essay. One of the interesting things about the essay and we talk about it, the first sentence, i didnt realize was cut. That changes everything. It changes everything but she refers to herself as a hardworking americanand new yorker or something. It was a time just for those of us who are less old and i am when, thats what i was looking for. I just had a part there, thank you, and edging towards more old rather than younger. It happened, this horrible cataclysm had not happened in the United States before 1941 and certainly never in the city in the middle of the empire. It was the most shocking bit of anything that happened in this country in my lifetime. And it was absolutely not a time when there was any sense of nuance in the culture because people were wounded. People were cynically dead and wounded and the city stank. I dont know if people remember that as well but for weeks and weeks, there were just smells of dead bodies in the city and people started sending anthrax to the white house it was just absolutely terrifying. And she wrote an essay that basically said that these people were not cowards. The terrorists who had hijacked these planes and killed themselves in this spectacular fashion were not cowards and that the United States rather than lashing out at other countries should look to why people hated america. And this was something americans always had a hard time understanding that america is this repurchase extremely violent empire which it has been since day one, really. Go back to 1619 im happy that we are now going back to , im sure we will you know that this is a country that is in many ways built on cruelty and slavery and racism. Like every other country. Ive lived in europe for most of my life and i have to say america compared to france or england or italy, you know, weve got our stuff, so today. Maybe not worse than china or india. But still, the physical emotional wound that this was , it was hard to say anything but it was i think terry salvatori to say something. She was comparing the new republic which is usually a pretty whats the word . Liberal like. Then it was, still but the new republic compared her to osama bin laden. This was at the time, so i really think that when you look at her legacy also and you think about what can she mean for us now, theres a need for intellectuals to resist jargon, especially these times when everybody agrees, because everybody in america and everybody around the world agrees this is horrifying, just there are no words todescribe it. And specifically, the idea of those times that you need these adversarial voices. I knew, now everybody has an adversarial horse because everybodys ontwitter yelling at each other all the time and difference. You need that ability to stepback. Its interesting to because as i go back when, i wonder why they first sentence because of these, because it does oriented. Shes saying it. I am feeling and then goes beyond that to be analytical about this isnt isolated. This didntcome out of nowhere. Its not an act of randomness in that particular point. Thats what a thinker does is not, because its easy to denounce terrorism. Its not that original. Let me shift a little bit because its related slightly different and i want to get to this point is one of the things you talk about and i think youll see why in the connection on making, one of the things you talk about is her need for lack of times the. Which i think is itself an interesting motif in the book and i guess in that essay, i agree with you, its important to have that kind of analysis that she offers, but sometimes theres a way in which it needs to be, it needs to be woven with a kind of empathy at the sametime. One of the really challenging things about writing about sontag was that question because theres no question at all that sontag was herself often an incredibly cruel person and this was something that she performed almost in public to her loved ones including a leibowitz and her son. She could be absolutely brutal to people and shecould humiliate people. If youve lived in new york and youve known these stories, everybody had a story like that. The point where for me as a biographer and someone was on her side and wants to understand her and want to figure out what shes thinking and why shes doing, it becomes really oppressive to hear all those stories. You know their true and at the same time you know the heroic Great Stories are true and in the 9 11 piece what she was accused off was being insensitive to what people were feeling. And there is a way in which i like the adversarial side of that but then someone told me after 9 11 he said she didnt care about all the bankers in the world trade center. She just cared about the restaurant workers. The people who work at restaurants or something. And this woman said why care about, the banker jumped hundredstories to his death on live television. And the empathy is something that goes throughout her work. Shes often trying to write her way into empathy rather than actually feel things intuitively. And its very painful for her not to have that. She knows she doesnt have and the results of that, people say she slept with everyone, she had all these lovers and isnt that interestingbecause theyre jealous or something. They wish they slept with kennedy or whatever. Maybe they wanted to know why people slept with her. Well, she was so beautiful but when you look at what that actually means in somebodys life, having a whole lot of relationships means you have a lot of broken relationships. It means time and time again it didnt work out and this is a source of pain for her its interesting because i find it , it is a source of pain. It is something that she wrestles with. Its something you as a lab for have to wrestle with and beyond that becomes interesting or the biographer. In other words i think what youre saying to is that theres a way in which a precondition if you will of a biographer is to haveempathy , when you say mark. And sontag demand as a biographer a lot of empathy. She could have been a biographer. Thats a great question. I dont know. I think probably not. I think probably not, also because maybe its related to some of her problems with action because fiction is the art of empathy and its not really a rational thing. And i think thats one of the reasons why people who write, i dont like the word nonfiction but ill just use it. There is a different sensibility between the person who writes fiction and the person who writes nonfiction but its at its base a need to go into somebody and sontag was somebody you had to go into time and again to step back and try to rise above the emotions that she unleashed in people. Or in you. Or in me because often im again, im on her side. I want to understand it. She makes it tough sometimes. I bet. How do you deal with it after mark you walked away, goad to a different chapter . I wrote it straight on through, strangely enough. How did i deal with it . I kept trying to understand her and think why is she doing this and why isshe doing this . And i didnt always have the explanation and often with sontag because she was so polemical you to have the same dinner party. You have one story about it in which she was great and the other story in which she was a terrible person but what i tried to do in the book was say Brenda Wineapple says xy and z. Benjamin moser remembers abc and not really try to be in there myself to the extent that the emotional stuff was. Not to the extent the emotional stuff is, you have to navigate is the contemporary word for it. At the same time you do have a very strong voice. In other words for me biographies that dont work, they dont work there is no voice and i dont mean and i voice but im been moser and im going to tell you this isnt in the first person but in the sense of, were very clear there are times when you are separating yourself from what she is doing or what she thinks shes doing or evenmaybe 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 knocked, i got a book about susan sontag that was boring and wasnt argumentative to a certain extent wasnt a book about susan sontag. In thatsince you were engaging with her, talking back or talking with and talking back sometimes and talking with sometimes. I hope my engagement with her is palpable. And that people, i dont want everybody to agree with every conclusion i have about susan sontag. I dont necessarilywant to have the last word. I like the conversation to go on. Do you think people will reinvent or reread her. Its already happening. Its so funny to read the reviews. I could write these reviews myself. I could. If you gave me the stats, you could say. Maybe you should, whitman wrote his own reviews. Because you know, ill tell you one thing. One example that i knew everyone was going to hate this was i talk a lot about what the classic jewish intellectual royalty and person would hate, which is what they call psychology. I write a lot about the fact that her mother was an alcoholic and i write a lot about the fact that she was gay and in the closet. These were things that were not understood at thetime. What parental alcoholism , they didnt know about it. It wasnt something that existed and i knew, i knew this would trigger people. Because i know that people dont often take seriously 12 step stop. They do take the mind of the moralist and division of dreams, thatsokay but they look down on that. The pecking order of whats intellectually respectable. Its funny and a similar thing you could say about Something Like going to yoga or exercising. You should exercise more, you feel better. Its so obvious and yet if you put that in an intellectual biography of intimidating human figures, people would take him on. But you know in your own life you feel better if you sleep more. Which she didnt. She told camille probably up who has a greatcameo in this. She says to her if youre having full writing, what i do to push my appetite is stable for two weeks. And you think all i got. She took amphetamines my own mother says you have to remember, my doctor gave me amphetamines to study for my f8 sats like, she got c. People got to lose weight , concentrate and a lot of things are given to treat add and stuff. And twaderstood as they woul later be area so youre not trying to judge it necessarily. Youre just trying to set the parameters so that people can understand why. Is something you said and i want to read something for the people out there. So their benefit from your beautiful pros and because it i think the end of the book seeks to im not going to give away anything. But it seeks 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 together a number of this seems some of which were talking about tonight. But also in such a way that its so very nice to because it brings us back to the biography and maybe we will get some questions about this. This is what ben right thing, to a divided world he brought a divided self but if she and her son was one of each, a great experience to the park, and written that metaphor consists of giving the bank a name that belongs to something else. And sontag showed how metaphor form and form itself. How language could console and how it could destroy. The representation could, further while also being, white wild even a great interpreter at the end against interpretation and she warned against the mystification of photographs and portraits including those of biographers. Which is a really very nice sort of wonderful thing to extend some limits of biography and sort of opens the door. So with that lovely last paragraph , let me just open, there may be some other people besides me one asked russians. [applause]. [inaudible]. The question is if sontag could read your book, what would she have to say mark tell you that i dont know. When it was definitely something i thought about what four hours a day when i was writing. I wanted her to feel fairly treated. I wanted her to feel a certain sense understood. I wanted to argue with her but i wanted her to be enjoying the conversation because she was a great polemicist is a great talker. A great arguer. I hope that she would feel that with the access i had over staff , we talk about the fact that i was allowed to see her computer and go through her email and go through everything personal that i was respectful of that access and i didnt treat her sensationalistic lady. That she would see that i tried to understand her. Shes all really that im trying to bring her work into a new generation. These adoration of people who dont remember 9 11. So the world moves fast and i think one of the things that she was to do, which is a setback and kind of take another look at things and give a bit more comprehension the things that seem incomprehensible, but maybe this can be a key to a whole world of culture and politics and sexuality and economics and everything that she witnessed and she helped shape. Thats what i hope. Made the form and she brokeit. I just thought that the look was so striking the way she presented herself and just her appearance. So i grew up in jamaica. I didnt know too much about her until i came to new york and i didnt know he was gay until leibowitz had that photographicexhibition. In chelsea somewhere. And i didnt know that they were partners. I just wondered you think her looks, her appearance contributed to her affect . Thats a fantastic question that interests me deeply because sontags great theme is the difference between the photograph, the metaphor and the person behind so what people think about you, what you get off and who you actually are and what sontag in notes on camp she writes is not a woman but a woman. I wrote a lot about the difference between susan, or soon as she calls herself, this little girl and susan sontag, this power of power who knew everything and wrote everything and read everybook , went every opera. The appearance of sontag becomes a kind of story of its own. One of the things that i was proud of which sounds cheesy but i can dress it up and sell fancier. But it was fun as a biographer is i found the guy in honolulu who gave her a white streak in her hair area which, you know. I thought it was natural. In the book you will discover, it was created in honolulu. She had chemo. Her mother who is this fancy jewish lady with earrings and hair and lipstick and looks perfect all the time. Her best friend was her hairdresser. She emailed me and said, which is a lien for thankyou. I talk about him in this 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 she lost the color in her hair. And she went to visit her mother when she was recovered and she was a wreck physically. She had gone for almost 30 years of chemotherapy and almost died. And her mom said lets go to the hairdresser. Which she was always fighting for you anyway. And paul, the hairdresser said why we just leave part white. And died arrest wife and she said sure, this was a conversationthat probably took two seconds this image of the white streak , it really became, im trying to think of you spare would have been more and seasons you definitely say held up. Youd say maybe andy warhol were dolly parton. Angela davis. Thats a good one. But its a pretty short list and in fact there was away in saturday night live Costume Department with the white streak and it just symbolized the new york intellectual. You could put it on and everybody knew it was sontag. But that becomes oppressive for her and the things People Projectonto that , our harry, just like anyone knows, anyone even moderately a. Like us. Were like we published books. People said horrible, horrible things about her. That were completely untrue. And this was before twitter. Feel entitled because youre a public person to say anything about the person. You know, attack them in any way but it also is the theme on photography which i think is a great collection. For me its the most resonant collection becauseits about the differences in a person. And how the image and take over the person and destroy the person. So it seems like its about but its funny that so many of the famous women writers always take that same evening seriously because they know what does your life, trying to live up to this. Iq. If theres some other questions . I can see you but youll have to shout area. For the area theres someone coming to the mic here. Are closer, come on. I have a great question. I happen to be from montclair and im curious about i guess her grandmother. So what was the family name and that that side of her family and do you know anything about her grandmothers growing up or what the family did in that month. I think it was grownup but it was on that same quarter. But it was right there. Her interestingly enough, both of her grandparents were born in poland. On her mothers side of the family. They came to the United States young area and so in an age where most jews in this country had foreign parents or grandparents, even her grandparents were basically parents. The name wasrosenblatt. What was mildreds maiden name mark anyway, its in the book. Jacobson. Jacobson, sorry. Her grandfather jacobson had a Sporting Goods store. Thats where i boughtmy first baseball minute. Its quite a famous, at least in my generation it was a famous door and i thought they werescandinavian. Like, oh thats fascinating. Thats my next book. That was her grandfather store but then they had moved to california and then when her grandmother died and came back to newjersey. But they died when she was pretty young. Her grandmother died before she was born. Thanks very much. Thats funny. Hi. 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 . That is almost like the image of the person versus the actual person. I think that when you write biographies, you definitely , if youre about to embark on a thing, you know enough about the person that youre not ignorant, obviously you wouldnt do it if you didnt know some type of thing but this difference is so vast between and i had this, the person you think she is and then the person, is not the person she actually is, if the personshe is for you. Having gonethrough this 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 this facade of assurance and she just looks so certain and she was so impressive and so cosmopolitan. She was so sophisticated. And just really a tiny little scratch beneath the surface and he found this other person. Very vulnerable. And thats why i think shes sointeresting also because behind that , she seemed so intimidating to people. People were put off by her. When i was teaching at ucla doing this research there i was teaching a class on Latin American Literature which was fun. And this girl in my class said i thought to my mother about susan sontag. And the mother said you know, i never really identified with her because shes like, im just a middleclass mexican housewife from california. She always seemed like this in normas figure i couldnt really approach area and now i, maybe ive emailed girl and say for my book and maybe her mom will understand wasnt actually different from other people as she may have seemed. If people could go to the mic. School over. That way everybody can hear. Here you are, i see you now. Sure. [inaudible] did he want . Thats interesting, are your mother . Im a jewish grandmother. I think youre the last part. Thats true. The mother is fascinating to me because theres an excellent essay by Leslie Jamison in the new republic about this this week. If you know her. Leslie a very young daughter whos i think two. And it is true that susan, when she was 19 had her first child and her only child. And 19 if you see the pictures in the book, she looks like shes 12 and it is shocking to think all my god. You can see the horror. Like, what do i do withthis person . When she herself was in the middle of creating her own person, herself. She leaves her husband and she goes to europe on a scholarship when she he is fine. And she stays away for more than a year. And a lot of women at the time, her friends and now including Leslie Jamison this week were very judgmental about that and thought how could you possibly leave this tiny little kid and go off and have a love affair in paris . I think actually i dont have children, my sister has small children and i think that cruise 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 think being around these kids already, its atemptation. I understand 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 what for example any legal its did not perceive to be cruelty that other people did. When i spoke to annie about that, she shrugged and Annie Leibowitz is one of the most powerful successful women in america. Shes been at the top of her career for 50 years. Shes anything but a doormat so to portray her as this kind of sad housewife with the husband who drinks too much and beat her up it has nothing to do with her so People Project onto it and its important not to project onto people as a biographer because the temptation is always there and people do thingsfor so many reasons. 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 that shedid it. I think one more question. On that note i want to press you a little bit on your decision in the biography to label her as gay and a closeted day women. For a life that was so interested in defying genre and defying conventions and resisting labels, i want to ask you how you i guess that on the previous question, how you feel that you can claim her in a way that she did not claim herself and what the effects are of that for you. It seems like that would be something you have to grapple with in a biography of sontag of all people as you mentioned, thinking about the photograph, the person and the person behind. Labeling her in a way that she chose very actively and consciously not to do identify with seems like controversial decision so i wanted to press you one. Is a controversial decision and im glad you asked me that because its a hard thing to do. And i can answer that in some ways, the birth weight is that she was gay. If you read 100 volumes of her journals and if you talk to her, she does every once in a while sleeps with a man but very clear that her emotional investment is with women. Her Real Relationships are with women. The people she falls in love with our women. The first thing is i think if you are jewish, your email, your black , if youre gay. If youre whatever, we all know that labels are not all of us. And we know that if youre in a minority andespecially in minority peopledont like , jews or gays or whatever , that having a label affixed to you is, it can be physically dangerous. The people getkilled every day all over the world. Its not the entirety of anyones identity. I think that what happens when sontag is a young woman and this is whyim not judging it , she grows up in a completely, not even a homophobic society, its as it gave people do not exist at all. I say in the book, people were shocked tolearn liberace was gay. That is a true story. This was, the culture was so toxic there was no visibility for that at all. And at the same time, i cant see. We have lights here but someone said she didnt know she was a lesbian. The other side of that is lesbians didnt know she was a lesbian and they were existing in a world where they didnt have any role models at all and they really , not just women intellectuals lesbian intellectuals pacifically idolized her because she represented a kind of possibility. I thought this moment was at columbia and she was this young woman, maybe 19 or 20 and she was a. This was the early 60s and she told me about the first time she saw as an sontag walking across the campus and how glamorous he was and she said the first time i realized i could be gay and i could be myself andi would be a woman and also be a professor and write books and she did go on to do those things. And the really important thing to say is that this was sort of in the realm of hypothesis until age and what happened with aids not only did it kill 40million people plus , still counting dying every day. Much more visibly than they did, but that impose a label on people that would not have wanted that label because it was the disease that was associated with gayness and gay sex specifically. When we look back at the pioneers, because i have a kind of filial piety. Even when i was a kid i love great Freedom Fighters and im sort of romantic and idealistic in this way. I have a dream and i love the guys in the warsaw ghetto and i love all this time to stop and not slightly embarrassing but i have absolute generation as a gay person for the gay people who came before me and you made my life completely boring in a certain way. In my world nobody cared that im gay but i think its important to realize people didnt care and this was a label im not trying to label her, im just trying to record the facts of her life and show how those labels just like these other metaphors that liberate and also destroy. Thats a great question. This is a fabulous conversation but we do have to wrap it up and i want to take the opportunity to ask the last question because im curious about your distinction between the role of being designated the authorized biographer but not be authorized biography. Thats a really nice distinction i think. But it made me ask you got access i guess at the authorized biographer to the catalyst journals which any biographers dream to get that kind ofmaterial. Did, was there any pushback from i guess its the son who gives. Is included. Was there any. Afterwards. Was there any attempt to say you shouldnt be using this or is he unhappy with the book . There was a moment where first of all, i had an agreement that was associated and it was lawyers and agents. It was a written agreement. An agreement that they would have the right to read it and other people would also have the right to read it and give comments and i like those comments because i think its useful. And often you get stuff wrong, you just do. Its 600pages wrong. To have other readers is extremely helpful. One of the things i was attracted to you because i knew about the controversies, i knew the electricity that surrounds sontag and i thought i really dont know if i want to step into the middle of that. But she said to me, david said to me just so youre clear, im not like this book. Its not my mother. Its your version of it. And i thought that was so smart to say that. At the very beginning, she said i had read a word. I might even read it. I just want you to know that so were clear i know that. Im not going to like it. And i thought that was really mature of him because the thing about biographies is that you dont really really prepared for it area you can do all this stuff, even be thinking about an always find the bear, people are going to get offended bystop. That you do not seecoming. Someone not offended by this line about clarissa specters close after her divorce. Like the least controversial thing in this book. When she parted dressing differently or idont even remember what it was i got all this twitter reaction , and i thought i knew it was going to be and i think if you are in a state or if youre somebody who mighthave a boundary written about someone close to you , really understand that this is not her. This is a book. Its a narrative, a metaphor. Its not her. So this is my version of her just likethats a photograph. Its not her. But i hope itdoes bring people closer to her. I hope she inspires you to read her work , to go back to it and move her spirit forward into new generations thoughts. So thanks everyone so much. [applause] out in the lobby and jeff andbrenda will be signing books. Heres a brief look at an event both the cupboard about the challenges women face with reporting on their home countries. I was surprised by the extent to which the authors were honest and intimate in these essays. Its not that i didnt expect them to write honestly, it was more that they shared their struggles in such a harrowing way that i found myself frequently in tears when i was editing the book and also, there were a couple of authors who they were experiencing trauma themselves. They were on the field or in these places but they were also not quite ready to articulate the trauma or to decide what story they wanted to tell you so i had to then them through that process coaching them to tell me one thing or another or telling them please open up to me in this way it was a delicate balance and i found it surprising all of them, all the offers to push through whatever barriers they had and write really openly and honestly about their deepest levels. One of the essay that comes to mind is as you mentioned, its such a real and honest account of greek loss and also reflects the state of the arab world today this is an uplifting book. Its not a beach read but theres moments of hope and resilience and dark humor throughout but i was surprised by certain details just shook me. Theres another detail on a palestinian journalist who said at some point that she had been covering the war and she had to help a mother who lost her child agreed. And the way she described it, i dont want to do that myself. I hope youll read the chapter and the way she decided it was so harrowing and theres another piece by a syrian journalist who says shes talking about how this is a pay life for syrians and to a certain extent, many people start to feel desensitized by the tragedy. And she sees blood on her car. She parked her car next to a school. The bombing and there was one on her car and she wiping the blood off the car and casually says what are we having for lunch today. I was priced by firstly the bravery, the extent that women were sharing the details and being so honest about them and how i reacted myself which is that i got incredibly emotional. I cried a lot when i was editing and then reading and rereading. Is on his new book is our women on the ground. Whats this program in its entirety, visit our website, booktv. Org and type the name of her book into the search bar at the top of the page. Heres a quick look at whats up next. Columnist Michelle Malkin weighs in on Us Immigration policy. Then former nsa contractor Edward Snowden reflect on his life and his decision to expose the United States Mass Surveillance Program and later this afternoon, andrew pollock, the father of a student killed in the shooting at Marjorie Stillman Douglas High School in parkland florida offers his thoughtson School Safety and guns