Transcripts For CSPAN2 Benjamin Moser Sontag 20240713

Is this live . Can everyone hear me . Welcome. My name is kyle byrd im the executive director of the leon leavy center for biography. Over the past 12 years the leavy center has awarded 44 major fellowships to working biographers. Each of these fellowships is not worth 72,000 so its not chump change. To date some 20 biographies have been published including ruth franklins biography of Shirley Jackson which won the Prestigious National book critics circle award biography. I also want to spread the news about our brandnew holy unique Masters Program in biography and memoir is just started this autumn with at least 17 students enrolled which is phenomenal. Brenda is actually both former director of the leon leavy center and teaches the core courses in new Masters Program. Our next program is next wednesday, september 25 at 6 30 p. M. With david netzel giving the annual leon leavy lecture on biography. Tonight im very delighted to have Benjamin Moser in conversation with brenda one apple. As i said, brenda is the former director of the leon leavy center and shes the author most recently of the end teachers. The trial of Andrew Johnson and the dream of a just nation very widely reviewed and timely book for our times. Then mosers book why this world a biography of a finalist of the National Book critics circle award. Bens new books on sontag was just published two days ago and already an amazon bestseller and has garnered long and really quite interesting reviews in the New York Times, the new yorker and elsewhere. For instance, in todays New York Times, abdescribed 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 for about 40 minutes. [laughter] i always say that. Its an interrogation of the author. Then they will take some questions at the end. Afterwards both ben and brenda will be signing their respective books sold by books oncall of new york city. Brenda and ben, please tell us about Susan Sontags life. [applause] thank you. First of all, thank you hi, ben, its wonderful to be here with you and your wonderful new book, its a book for our times. Its going to be i think already the definitive word on susan sontag. You did an enormous amount of work for this book and one of the thing that is stunning about it is the material you had to go through the archives and the share at mahogany interviews there were. I think its been said i think you told me this ive known ben i should confess, for a while so its not really an interrogation im a great admirer of your coterie specter. And of course this book and consider myself an honored friend. I understand i guess theres been unauthorized book. If you could talk about what that means for an audience. What are the advantages and maybe even addition a disadvantages to the authorizations. Then we will get to susan sontag. Thats an interesting question because its very hard to explain even though it doesnt seem like a hard concept to me. I was the biographer, but this book was not the authorized biography. When you say authorized biography it sounds like you got a seal of approval from somebody or that it had to be signed off on. I dont think i wouldve done it i think i wouldve had as a writer i have to be independent to draw my own conclusions knowing that sontag was incredibly political person. Often correct or incorrect i was actually in rio doing my last event ever for clarice i thought i was finally off the hook and i can go to the beach or something. Not really go to the beach that much just to be honest. I got an email, guess what we appointed you. Appointed but some people including her agent and her son and her publisher head who read a bunch of books and thought why this world was something that showed that i could take on sontag. Then i had an agreement that meant that the state could look at the book comments on the book and if theres any legal issues they could talk about that. They can make suggestions and those were helpful. But i couldnt have written the book. Of course not. Did that give you access to the enormous numbers of people or maybe inhibited some of those people . I would say it definitely gave access to some. Following sontags death there was a risk between her son david and her partner in elizabeth. The people in their world split into these two camps for all sorts of reasons i go into in the book. That didnt go well postmortem. So annie and her friends didnt like it because they thought i was davids little errand boy or something. Whatever access i think it gave me it also took away. And he did eventually speak to me but i did get access the really exciting thing about access to with archives that were restricted. Thats kind of. Its very exciting because you make tremendous use of journals in the book. You have a very strong voice and i want to talk about that. I mean that in all complete positive sense. Sontag herself has a strong voice. One of the most heaps in the book is that theres a difference between sontags inner voice or personal voice whatever you want to call it interior voice and the voice she cultivated for the public. I was wondering in coming to book the book together when did you start to think about the motives you use to understand sontags life . Let me quote you there was one quote that was really very interesting. It might give us a way to understand that. You say at one point you say, a mines process is narratives to the writers lives. So one of the things thats wonderful about bens book and we want to talk about is that the mines progress gives narrative to the writers life. So that you are looking for the way she thinks. But you have to have a way to develop that for the reader and make that explicit. When did you begin to feel you have an understanding of sontag in the terms that you present her to us . I think it comes back to the question of how political she was and how many opinions were affixed to her. From the time she was very young, already in her 20s the first time she was featured as a character in a 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 know the facts. One of the things that happens with her peoples opinions are very negative about her work. To give an example she wrote four novels its very common for people to say she wrote all these essays she was so smart how did she write all these horrible novels . Theres two ways. First of all i dont agree. I think some of the essays fall short. As a biographer since were the biographical setting. Im not the person judging that in a way that book critic looking at this is one book saying three stars or four stars, whats interesting about sontag shes in constant revolution. Its the evolution of the mind thats the story of biography. We understand it in life i think or hope but understanding it in a book very often we get a kind of set piece a set piece of a person and then we just exemplify that over time. You cant do that with sontag because she really is evolving. There were certain life motifs that are very interesting. Maybe we should go back for people who dont know much about her life i want to get to those motifs. One of the things im going to talk more about with you about her life and then i will talk about the motifs just for people who dont know, she is actually from the west which many people dont know and she lived in so many different places. She lived in california, she lived in arizona, do you want to talk about that a little bit . Give us a thats really important not only that she is from the west but that she had a peripatetic childhood. Her father died in china of all places when he was 33. Her mother was an alcoholic who was from new jersey, from Montclair Verona grew up there and then moved very young to los angeles. At the Time Los Angeles was still a little city before the First World War. Her mother was grew up as hollywood grew up. Its a former jewish neighborhood east of downtown. It was ruined by all sorts of typical urban disasters in the 20th century. Her mother and her grandmother from eastern poland came to los angeles because they love 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 Famous Industries in the country and hollywood became famous, certainly was famous in brazil, the first books about hollywood and brazil came out about 1913a914. Already its gone all around the world and in europe the same. The mother loses her mother at age 33. The grandmother is 33 and then the father died and then the mother is an unhappy woman is very beautiful and dedicated to appearances shes always kind of looking for a place to be happier. They moved to florida, new york, new jersey, arizona, they moved to los angeles and then finally they moved to hawaii. They, the parents, not susan herself. This is really an isolating experience for children i think if you know people in the army or not only does she not have a father, she doesnt really have a mother and she doesnt really have friends because shes being moved around every couple years. So she does have an this sounds like a cliffhanger but its not because we know where this is going. But she has her books. She has a world that is in her mind and her imagination and that becomes extremely important. It sustains itself throughout her life. Through a very tough life. Absolutely. Sort of when one thinks of susan sontag one doesnt think of even though necessarily even though she wrote eloquently about illness, somebody whos really suffered terribly and especially when she had Breast Cancer the kinds of chemotherapy that was available and the kinds of surgery. It just really grueling. Even when she had an abortion when she was very young, the way it was illegal and the only thing you did the only anesthesia you had was to turn up the radio lots of people wouldnt hear you scream. Theres a lot of that that people didnt see behind this iconic figure. And pain. Terrible pain that becomes an interesting phenomenon that there is an iconic figure but theres a human being thats living and suffering behind the very often. And in point of fact, she is evolving, shes changing, one of the interesting things and i think its made much of and i think its a real contribution being very clear about the fact that when she got married, she got married very young and then she barely knew the man she married. They got engaged after a week. And he was her teacher, she was the student. But beyond that, this is really astonishing to read about in 2019 if he was assigned reviews or things to do, she read the books and wrote the reviews. And she was excited about that. Shes like, great. Thats what women did. It wasnt like some big eminence with all these grad students. Too much time to time management problems. But beyond that, beyond the reviews, as i started to say can you make it very clear, she was the writer of the book that he became known for which is freud the mind of the morrow. In that in private i think she was very clear about thats what she had done. But it wasnt publicly known. No. I think one of the fascinating things about this book and about the life is that susan sontag seemed if you look at her on the cover she seemed like a very contemporary figure. The picture is 50 years old almost. She looks like shes on sixth avenue or something. She probably is walking down sixth avenue. A lot of the categories have changed so much that its hard to think back to the times. She does write this book and Everybody Knows she writes the book. I saw her sister couple days ago and she was quoted in the times and of course eroded we all knew that. But that wasnt something you could really say and it was funny when there is a piece in the guardian they got a copy of it and break this big news to everyone shed actually written freud, mind of the moralist. A lot of the older women i interview during this process all emailed me liquid is so but just like everybody so surprised about this happens to everybody. Everybodys forgotten what its like we all wrote our husbands book back in fort 1948. One thinks of his susan sontag in the 20th century. Not that she was born in 1933, two weeks after hitler came to power. But lately it was funny to see outrage among younger women compared to the eye rolling blasc big deal for older women because academic women were very rare in her generation. Very few role models. Since were in a biographical setting i will feel free to mention karen hellmans ab says that girls i guess shes younger than sontag by a bit. Not by too much she said that growing up if you are an intellectual girl who wanted to write or wanted to be an artist or she was only one figure you could really look to and that was madame curie whose biography by her daughter who is the only member of the family not to macwin a nobel prize. ab that was the only thing that girls had to look to so now we are so used to a woman professor woman writer, woman journalist. She was the first journalist ever in brazil in the 40s. It calls itself short and makes us think time to do change. One of the things that i dont think you mentioned this or if you did i dont remember, was the title her title or do you think he was his . I dont know but its very her. Thats why i wanted to ask that because the mind of the moralist and the reason i thought that was so interesting is theres this kind of tension abtheres sontag as moralist and sontag as aesthetician. She talked about early on in interpretation about the erotic support and that we understand artists as purely aesthetic. We think of her later work especially when she revisits photography she becomes she becomes herself so clearly a moralist. I think that was always there in a way. Its interesting that that would be the title whether hers or his. She was always interested in the moral response of the artists and you make much of this representation which becomes interesting. What. Which is very problematic and fun to talk about if anyone will indulge me i can go on and on about that for a long time. We are here to indulge you. [laughter] its funny because her moralism she says, im puritans twice over american. Thats right. You think of god, so are we, right . We know what thats like. Its not the easiest heritage always because youre always sort of an ideal of moral perfection is held up to you. In america particularly if you come to the west this is important. a its similar because i think you can find that already in massachusetts in the 17th century. God has given you this place the richest country in the world and you are a little slog, not quite measuring up. Sontag felt that very keenly and she finds it in the creeks, and socrates and the greek moralists come back to moralism. She really does feel very strongly that morality and aesthetics are the same thing. And this is something that she resists in a certain way because shes intellectual. Shes trying to get away. This is another thing thats changed so much. Shes basically trying to get away from freud on the one hand and marks on the other hand. Thats right. They were quite oppressive to people i think in those generations. They were so dominant and overarching and collocated. They did offer you the key to culture. If you could really master freud, for example, or marks, you could understand understand how the world works. But then already by her generation those are sort of starting the cracks are starting to show. She chooses something that was not natural for her at all which is essential approach to art. Enjoying film, enjoying sex, enjoying people, its not a natural thing for her, its not really her natural mode i think when she get back into moralism shes on more solid ground. I dont know what you mean it was a natural. The something very exciting about this that she was thrilled by that. I dont want to put words in your mouth. You know so much more. But it seems like over time she became less comfortable with that. These things were time bound. Against interpretation is very much product not just of her and her age but the age she is living in and by the time for example shes going to bosnia or even before that, there is more problematic before that is her trip you talk about very well to vietnam she broke the right stripped of annoy, she herself may be is realizing that she needs to rethink some of this pleasure or that she wants to reintroduce a point of view. I think that when you look at this its really important to realize how much change has changed but also how much did change between her interpretation to trip to hanoi. What really changed. And how many years is that . Five years. Four years, five years 63 to 68. But what happens and something i found really touching that i didnt realize and maybe its wrong emma correct me if im wrong but somebody said to me and it made sense that the literature of postwar america right after until the 50s, what it is about the personal struggle. Even if you are living in a country thats won the war they have all these problems yet its also the time of the black Civil Rights Movement its the time of resurgent feminism and all this new exciting american freud he is him that seems to be exerting people to live more free lives and so you have books like Jack Kerouacs on the road like lets head out into the desert. With brown. Norman o brown absolutely. Even Allen Ginsberg would be part of that. Definitely. But its kind of about you its not really about society. It has society in it but its about exploring yourself. Then you have the great triumph of the new generation ab spoiler alert, not to give anything away but she was killed in 1963, im sorry, its in the book. I should say that. Just to get people curious. But the death of kennedy, which is something that 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 downtown dallas. I know exactly the street and the time and its a really specific time and you can trace it to the minute where america kind of snaps and what happens almost immediately after that indeed immediately after that Lyndon Johnson becomes president and continues to escalate the war in vietnam which is something that my father always says is the biggest difference between my generation and his is that when he was in college and when he was a young man all he thought about was getting drafted and going to vietnam. Theres a darkness that settles over america i dont think weve ever really gotten rid of. Shes experiencing all the essential art she said an essay 30 years later it seemed normal there was a new masterpiece every week. Its exciting but that excitement becomes a nightmare really. Especially by 68 especially by abnear the height of the vietnam war. You talk about that book very well. Im not so sure that people are familiar with it. It was a big deal at the time it was up there with jane fonda going. It was funny, ken burns talking about vietnam, which i watched like 24 hours long. I didnt watch it, sorry shouldnt say that on television. Its okay it was fascinating to see the degree of detail because of course you sort of know it was this horrible massacre war that went on and on and on and on and when you watch over 24 hours you feel the anxiety of it but in 1968 she was invited by the north vietnamese government to visit hanoi which was the most heavily bombarded city in the world in which was this communist dictatorship. She fell for completely because i think she was so disillusioned with her own country and she was very far from being the only one and shes really struggling to reconcile the vietnam shes read about in the New York Times which is a metaphor which is a description narrative in the actual place shes seeing and shes finding she does know what people are talking about she doesnt understand their language. They all looked kind of the same to her and she said, do i look the same to them . In america people see different i have a personality i have a name, here im just in my a tourist . What my doing here . She really rustles with it in the pages of that essay in a way that make it i think really compelling add when youre talking about watching the progression of the mind, even in the pages of that one essay you see that. Yes. Because it was a distancing too quick shes trying. But not quite there yet quick shes trying shes sort of things, i should be objective about this, i should write it this way and not that way but its very rare for sonntag to have that kind of dramatization of what shes looking at in the text box thats interesting because one of the points i think you make an interesting point you make in the biography i think which is that shes not comfortable really writing the first person and that the way especially as a biographer biographer critic 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. Thank you. I love the credit im getting from brenda here. Its true that when he read her profile which becomes famous shes the first person in america to write about all these mainly european authors often not translated, people she learns about in france or europe so she was always reputed to functions and 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 a lot farther away than they are now because books come on amazon in two days. Its hard to imagine how far away paris wouldve been in her time. It took a week to get there. It was far away. When you have these portraits, these are fascinating portraits. Its really one of the interesting things about her contribution but i think one of the functions of the biography is that when you look behind it and you think, thats why shes so interested in the bulgarian theorist of kraut. Its because he started talking about the exact same thing shes going through at that moment whether 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 also ask of things in this book im personally interested in and that i foreground more than somebody else would. Thats inevitable. It doesnt disqualify her as a writer about say canetti or whoever any more than it would disqualify you writing about her. Moral understanding motifs and someone else will understand and pick up different motifs. You come at her seeing that in what shes doing thats what gives the book shape in many ways. Its probably not the best phrasing but a way in which she was escaping self very often. In the creation of a persona i think you speak very eloquently about it. She does it always through literature even when shes a little girl shes reading that to escape from her dreary loveless and happy childhood. Of course she continues doing that i find it quite touching and i find it really interesting to see how its a use of literature i think the idea that you are writing something or reading something that would be outside yourself would be completely irrelevant to your entire life. I can tell you if thats the case, you dont finish the book. You read things and you are touched by things and oppressed by things and stimulated by things because they are relevant to you. But it doesnt have to be in any kind of literal way. It makes sense to you or 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 is that shes not just satisfied with one form of image making which is to say language. She becomes a filmmaker and you talk quite a bit about the films she makes. I dont think we have access to them. We do. The one she makes in israel is the best one. And also shes actually taking to make a film about vietnam that was her idea. Sweden was one of the countries own along with canada where american draft dodgers draft im sure theres a nicer word for that because i think these were very courageous people there were a lot of american deserters she got to stockholm and she found somebody else was already making a film about that so she thought oh god, what i do and she makes her first film these films are completely wacky. Have you ever watch them . I saw duets for kennedy a long time ago. Thats the first one to say that theyre unwatchable is sort of both and as a biographer it raises questions. There really really weird and you think whats going on like this woman is insane shes not stupid, why, thats the biographers question. Exactly. Why. Did she choose to do this this way. Its fascinating. Its really fun you have to give some judgment even if its a reflection of peoples befuddlement at the time. What you mean judgment of the people of the time or judgment of you know . My judgment now they dont try to foreground that in the book because i wouldnt really want to watch these films of him honest about it i wouldnt but i do want to understand. But your job is Something Else. Thats the thing. You do have to tell what is this about and what is it and its really challenging. Its easy in a certain way to write about stuff you really like but i think is a biographer its fun to try to get into the reasons why you might not like something or you might not understand something. Whats fascinating about the films is that you see the cinematic world she comes from. A lot of which is in the interpretation and made them seem to be a liberal abshe was writing about things people work writing about and people didnt know about. You didnt have it on netflix. You had one little cinema somewhere and if you lived in houston or minneapolis, you probably didnt have it at all he read about it and say whats happening in paris that was sort of thrilling. Except there was more access i think there were more Movie Theaters and make the point that movies were so much part of the culture that certain time. People were talking about. And you learn stuff she always talked about you learn how to smoke and kiss and wear a raincoat all the stuff from watching movies. [laughter] there is a great thing i would courage if anyone wants a homework project that will last a year as if my book isnt long enough. I was going to say if you google sontags top 50 films. Which one do you remember what was number one . A bigot was tokyo story. Thats interesting. It was fabulous i wouldve never watched it without her. I watched all these movies and some of them were just breathtakingly magnificent and i just love them. Some of them i really didnt understand and the more i watched of them, the more it lets you get into the mental world she was coming from and things that oppressed her. You say, this is 50 years ago people were interested in Different Things and why was that i try to explain that. Its interesting. It brings me to a different kind of question or Research Question this brings up because you think you went to the 50 list and watch these perhaps watchable movies and initially unwatchable. At one point you have this you taking this in at one point he began 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 whos sitting in that. But its a biographer you know. As any kind of writer but im curious when you did because theres so much. Theres a political writing theres a cultural criticism there is a movies that she makes and writes about. Theres the changes, theres her looking back at photography. I think you start to see the patterns. One thing shes very obsessed with in these films in her early novels and fiction is the image of seeing and blindness in the eye. This becomes something that will start seeing it you start seeing it and you see it and everything. Shes really trying to see including an interpretation. The question of how do you see what you look at becomes really urgent for her. I think thats one theme. You see a lot of themes and then the point when i felt confident about the writing was never. I will be honest. It never happened. You had a start. I had it and too. But you did have to start at some point you had to say you had that wonderful vignette at the beginning. That was it. I will tell you three weeks ago, two weeks ago abi had a horrible nightmare. I realized in this dream i couldnt change anything anymore because the book had already been printed. It was complete agony because i had been always feeling ab even to the last minute maybe i should do this or that. 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 and archive of her mother, grandmother at as extras in one of the very first hollywood spectaculars. She cited new york, is that where you found it . I found it in the archives and then i figured out what the film was and what the picture was and that this is the last picture that was ever taken of the girl and her mother, her mother and grandmothers. Its an image of a film called roberts germania for auction of souls film the newhall california if there any californians here Southern California 1919 which if theres any armenians here you know still in the middle of the Armenian Genocide there was an attempt to create artistic reenactment of this genocide on the other side of the world. A lot of the people in this film which is partially lost but partially preserved were actual armenian refugees who made it to the United States. It was too much you had this whole aball these people started fainting and what happened is thats not acting it was people who actually seen that happen back home where they were from and couldnt take it. Its gruesome and horrible but its also this question that comes throughout her life of how you look at things . Especially cruelty. Exactly its a wonderful beginning of the book. It just when you file that you knew that this was where he wanted to begin. This is where she comes from it gives her a genealogy and all the way up to photography in her very last essay which is regarding the torture almost exactly 100 years later. Its amazing when you think about the shape of that in that particular way. It gives you a shape to a life that doesnt seem to. Most. But it does in that sense why it works, this will sound funny, youre not making it up, its actually there. Somebody else would maybe take different motifs and put them together but having done what youve done starting that point with that film going all the way to regarding of the torture of others and its regarding it creates a whole and brings somebody to get a quick so often it so funny adam of their inspiring biographers or fellow biographers here but one of the funny things about biography is it so much stuff happens you wouldnt if you are a novelist you wouldnt make that up. It would be a nobody would believe you you would think, that sort of cheesy. Yet, when the berlin wall falls, shes in a Movie Theater in berlin and as shes walking out of the film, almost as if they waited for her to be finished with the film, the east german Border Guards opened the floodgates that had been closed for almost 35, 30 years and she smells the teargas coming from the writing hordes of east german escaping east germany, if you are a novelist trying to write about somebody who was everywhere and did everything you would be like a yes, you would lose all credibility. 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 becomes problematic i think for the way people respond to her is 9 11. It still 18 years ago but. People who are in college now dont remember it is not weird. Thats exactly right. But she wasnt here. She was also in berlin and its fascinating she writes over and over about if you havent seen something yourself, if you havent actually experienced it. At such an interesting metaphor. I saw in the book i even have a picture of cnn of the guy on cnn looking at the twin towers at the smoke coming out because she was in the ad long written by the gate in central berlin watching this on tv as she wrote this essay that i think, i must say its a really good essay. One of the interesting thing about the essay and then we should abwe havent said what it is but the first sentence i didnt realize was cut. It changes everything. It changes everything. She refers to herself as a heartbroken american any worker or something. It was a time, for those of us who are less old and i am a younger. Thats the word i was looking for. I just had to say. Happy birthday. Thank you. Emerging toward moral rather than younger. It happened to be the scorebook cataclysm that had happened in the United States since 1941 and certainly never in the city in the middle of the empire. It was the most shocking of anything i think happened in this country in my lifetime. Its absolutely absolutely not the time of any sense of nuance in the culture. People were wounded people were physically dead and wounded and the city stink. I dont know people remember that as well as they should but for weeks and weeks there was a smell of dead bodies and this toxicity and then people started sending anthrax to the white house and it was just absolutely terrifying. She wrote an essay that basically said that these people were not cowards. The terrorists who had hijacked the planes and kill people in spectacular fashion. In the United States rather than lashing out at other countries and starting a new war should look to why people hated america. This was something that americans always had a hard time understanding that america is is very ferocious extremely violent empire. Which it has been since day one really. If you go back 1619, which im happy we are now going back to you know that this is a country that is in many ways built on cruelty and slavery and racism. Like every other country. Yes. I lived in europe most of my life in america compared to france or england or germany or italy we got our stuff, so today. Its not maybe worse than china or india but still, the physical emotional wound this was meant it was hard to say anything. I think it was very signatory to the attack she was compared to the new republic which is very usually a pretty, whats the word. Liberal . Liberal ask. But the new republic compared her to osama bin laden. That i a yes. This was at the time abi really think when you look at her legacy and you think about what can she mean for us now . Theres a need for intellectuals to resist jargon, especially at these times when everybody agrees because everybody in america that everybody around the world agrees this is absolutely horrifying. Not truly different than actually yeah, yeah. You need that able to step back. Its interesting. But its interesting, too because as they go back when they dish wonder why they cut that first sentence. Of the piece. Because it does orient it. She is saying, i am feeling and then goes beyond that to be kind of analytical about this isnt isolated. This didnt come out of nowhere. Its not an act of randomness in that thats the not easy to denounce terrorism. Not that original. No. But let me shift. Its related but slightly different. One thing you talk about youll see the connection you talk about her need for and lack of at times empathy. Which i think is itself an interesting motif in the book. I guess in that is say, 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 needs to be it needs to be woven with a kind of empathy. At the same time. Well, one of the really challenging things was that question. Theres no question she was a very herself often incredibly cool person. And this was something that she performed almost in public to her loved ones, including Annie Leibowitz and her son. She could be absolutely brutal to people and she could humiliate people. I you lived in new york and you have known these stories, everybody had a story like that. To the point where for me as biographer and someone on her side and wants to understand her and figure out what she is thinking and why, it becomes really oppressive to hear all the stories and you know theyre true and you, and the 9 11 piece, as she was accused of was being insensitive to what people were feeling. And there is a way in which i like at the adversarial side of that and then someone told me after 9 11 she said, she didnt care about all the bankers and the world trade center. Just cared but the restaurant works. People who worked in in the restaurant. Some said deafblind. My make the distinction. The banker jumped 100 stories to his death on live television. Yeah. It wasnt and the empathy is something that guess throughout her work. She is often trying to write her way into empathy rather than actually feel things intuitively, and its very painful for her not to have. Is that node she doesnt have that. The writes about and that the result is that people say, she slept with everyone, had all these lovers, isnt that interesting because they were kind of gelus, maybe. But maybe they want to have slept with her. A lot of of people wont to of course because she was so beautiful. But i think that when you look at the what that actually means in somebodys life, having a whole lot of relationships means you have a whole lot of broken relationships and time and time again it didnt work out and this is a real source of pain for the. Its interesting because i fine find it. It is a source of pain, something she wrestles with and you as a biographer have to wrestle with and then it becomes interesting for the biographer. What your saying, too, is that theres a waugh in which the precondition, if you will, of a biographer is to have empathy. Wouldnt you say . Oh, yeah, and sontag demand as a biographer she demands a lot of empathy. Do you think she could have ban biographer. Thats a great question. I dont know. I think probably not. I think probably not. Also because the maybe its related to some of her problems with fiction also because the fiction is an art of empathy and an art of its not really a rational thing, and i think that thats one reason why people who write i dont like the word nonfiction but well use it there is a different sensibility between the person who writes fiction and the person who writes nonfiction. But it is i think at its base a need to go into somebody, and sontag for me was somebody that had to go into time and time again and really try to step back and try to rise above the emotions she unleashed in people. Or in you. Or in me. Yeah. Because often im again, im on her side, i want to understand it. She makes it tough sometimes. I bet. I bet. How did you teal with it . Walk away . Go to a different chapter . No. I actually wrote it straight on through, strangely enough. How did i deal with it . I kept trying to understand her and think, why is she is doing this and i didnt always have the explanation, and often with sontag because she was to political you would have the same dinner party and you would have one story about it in which she was great, and the other story was she was this terrible person. When i had to do a little bit in the book was say, okay, Brenda Wineapple says xyz, Benjamin Moser remembers abc and not really try to be in their myself to the extent that the emotional stuff not to the extent of the emotional stuff. You navigate is the contemporary word for it, iboard i dont like but it works. At the same time you have a very strong voice, and in other words, the think for me biographieses that dont work are they dont work because there is no voice, and i dont mean an i vice, im ben moser and going to tell you this. The first person. But in the sense of, were very clear that there are times when you are separating yourself out from what she is doing or what she thinks she is doing or even maybe what other people think she is doing, and you are making you have a point of view, let me say that. Well, i thought she would like that. I thought that she was not dish thought book but susan sontag that was boring and wasnt argumentative would not be a book about susan sontag. Youre engaging with her. Engaging, yeah. Talking back or talking with. Talking back sometimes and talking with sometimes. I hope that my engagement with her is palpable and its something definitely palpable. And that people i dont want everybody to agree with every conclusion i have 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. Do you think it will . Ways. You think people with reinvent her, reread her. Its already happening. Its so funny toread reviews. You get to read reviews. Could write these reviews myself. Could or couldnt. I could. If you gave me the stats, you could say, like maybe you should, whitman wrote his own reviews. Thats true. Because you know ill tell you one thing, one example i knew everyone was going hate this. I talk about what the classic jewish intellectual freudian person would hate, which is what they call pop psychology. I write a lot about the fact her mother was an alcoholic ask the fact she was gay and in the closet. These are things not understood at the time. What parental alcoholism people didnt 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 12 step stuff. They do take the mind of the moralist and the dreams and that is okay, but they look down on the fact. Yeah, yeah, pecking order of what is intellectually suspectable. Its very funny and a similar thing about going yoga for exercising. You should exercise more. Youd feel better. So obvious. And yet if you put that in an intellectual biography of an intimidating seeming thinker, people would say, come on, but you know in your own life you feel better if you sleep more. Which she didnt. She she has a great cameo in this. She says, you know, if youre having trouble writing, what i do is i just stay up for two weeks. And you think. Oh, my god. She tack amphetamines which my own mother says you have to remember, my doctor gave me amphetamines to study. People got it to lose weight and concentrate things given to treat add and stuff. Yeah. And this was something whose dangers werent quite as understood as they would later be. So your not trying to judge it. Just trying to kind of set the parameters so people can understand why. Theres something you just said and i just want to read something so people have the benefit of your beautiful prose, and because it i think the end of the book speaks to not im not going to give away, not worry but speaks to what you said before, 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 the themes, some which were talking about tonight and also in such a way that its so very nice, too because it brings us back to the issue of biography and maybe well get some questions about this. This is what ben writes. To a divided world she brought a divide self but if she herself was one with her age, her greatest themes stood apart from im. Our struggle written that metaphor consistent give thing thing a name that belongs to Something Else. And sontag showed how metaphor formed and then deformed the self. How language could console and could destroy. How representations could comfort while also being on scene. Why even a great interpreter ought to be against interpretation. And she warned against the mystifyication of portraits pord those of biographers which is a nice sort of wonderful pen to the kind of extent and limits of biography and the opens the door. So, with that lovely last paragraph, let me just open there may be in other people besides me who want to ask questions of ben. [applause] the question was if susan sontag could read my book what would she have to say. I can just tell you i dont now but definitely something i thought about 24 hours a day. I wanted her t feel fairly treat to feel a certain sense understood. I wanted to argue with her but i sort of wanted her to be enjoining 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 i was allowed to see her computer and go through her email and everything personal that i was respectful of that access and i didnt treat her sensationalisticly. She would see that i tried to understand her if. She saw im trying to bring her work into a new generation. Into these generation of people who dont remember 9 11. So, we the world moves fast, and i think one of the things she was able to do, which is take a step back and kind of tick another look at things and give a bit more comprehension to things that seemed income presentable that maybe this can be a key to a whole world of culture and politics and sexuality and economics and everything, that she witnessed and that she helped shape. Thats what i hope. The made in the form and broke it. Yeah. I thought her look was so striking and her appearance. I gentrify in jamaica, didnt know too much about here until i came to new york and didnt know she was gay until an any lib bow witness had that exhibition and i dont know they were partner, how did her looks, her appearance, contribute 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 it. So what people think about you, what you give off, and who you actually are win. Sontag in notes on camp, camp is not a woman but a woman in quotes, and i wrote a lot about the difference between susan sontag, or sue as she calls herself, this little girl, and susan sontag this tower of power who knew everything and went everything and wrote everything and read every book and went to every opera. The appearance of sontag becomes a kind of story of it own. One of the things i was really proud of, which sounds kind of cheesy but i can dress it inand make it sound fancier, just really fun as a biographer, i found the guy in honolulu who gave her the white streak in her hair. I thought it was natural. Yes. Well in he book you will discover it was created in a salon in honolulu. Oh, wow. Yeah. She had her mother, who is this fancy jewish lady with earrings and hair and lipstick and looked perfect all the time, her best friend was her hairdresser. He actually email met and said mahalo which is hawaiian for thank you. Because i talk about him in his 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 again through almost three years of chemotherapy and almost died. Her mom said, let go to the hairdresser. She was always trying to get her to do anyway. And paul, the hairdresser, said lets leave part of it white and die the rest. She said, sure, this a conversation that probably took two seconds and then this image of the white streak, it really became im trying to think of whose hair would have been more famous that susans a. You would say elvis, maybe andy warhol or dolly parton. I have one, angela davis. Angela davis. Absolutely. Its a pretty short list there was a wig in the saturday night live Costume Department with the white streak and just symbolized the new york intellectual. You could put it on and everybody enough i was susan sontag. And sew but that becomes really oppressive for her and think things that People Project on to that are scary just like anyone knows, anyone even moderately public, like us, were like we books but not elvis presley. People said horrible, horrible things about her. They were completely untrue. All the time and this is above twitter. This was feel entitled, into. Because your a public person to say anything about the person, to attack enemy any way. But it also is a theme of photography which is her great collection. This most resonant collection because its the difference between the person and the image of the person and how the illinois can take over the person and destroy the person. So, it seems like its about cosmetics but its funny that so many of the famous women writers have always taken that theme seriously. Because they know what it does to your life, trying live up to the photograph. Thank you. Thank you. Youre welcome. I think theres some others. I can seal you but you have to shout. Or go to the mic. Heres someone coming to the mic here. Your closer. Come on. Very brief question. I happen to be from montclair and im just curious about her grandmother. Some what whats family name and that of that sued of her family and do you know anything about her grandmothers growing up or what the family did na that montclair area. Actually verona but on the border. Next town. But it was right there and her interestingly enough, both of the grandparents were born in poland on her mothers side of the family. They came to the United States very young, and so in an age where most jews in the country had foreign parents or grandparents, her even her grandparents were basically american. The name was rosen deafblind ballot. On that seem of the family family its in booktv jacobson. Her grandfather, jacobson, had a Sporting Goods store. My god, really, thats where i bought my first baseball mitt and bat. Its quite a famous in my generation a very famous store and i always thought they were scandinavian. They were jews. Thats my next book. It was that was her grandfathers store and then they moved to california and no one her grandmother died they came back to new jersey, and russian. They died when she was pretty young. He grandmother died before she was born. I see. Thanks very much. Thats funny. Ill 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 when you write biographies you definitely if youre about to embark on this thing, you know enough about the person that youre not ignorant of the person. Obviously you wouldnt do it if you didnt know something. But the difference is so vast between i had this with the person you think she and is then the person its not the person she actually is. Its the person she actually is 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 majesty. She just looked so certain and she was so impressive and so cosmopolitan and so sophisticated. And just really a tiny little scratch beneath the surface and you found this other person. Very vulnerable, yeah. Very verbal. Very vulnerable. Thats white she is so interesting. She seems so intimidating to people, and people were put off by her. When i was teaching at ucla when i was doing this research there i was teaching a class on Latin American Literature which was really fun. This girl in my class said, oh, i talked to my bauer but susan sontag, and the mother said, you know, i never really identified with her because she is like im just a middle class mexican house wife from california. She always seemed like this enormous figure and i cooperate really approach couldnt really approach and now i hope i should email that girl say give her my book and maybe you mom will understand she wasnt as different from other people as she may have seemed. Yeah. In that way. People could go to the mic over here. That would about better. That way everybody can hear. Can i speak without the mic . Here you are, i see you now. Thank you. Sure. [inaudible question] i think knowing that ethical opportunity the question [inaudible question] did she what . [inaudible question] thats interesting. Are you a mother. Im a jewish grandmother. Okay. Well, [inaudible question] i didnt hear the last part. Oh, yes, thats true. The mothering this fascinating to me because theres actually an excellent essay by Leslie Jamison in the new republic this week. And leslie has very young daughter who is 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 becomes she locks leak she is 12. Its shocking to think you can see their horror, what die do with this person 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 guess to europe on a scholarship when he is five. And she stay earns for more than a year, and 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 good off and have a love affair in paris . Well, i think actually a lot of i dont have children. My sister has small children and i think that whose grandparents are also here. I dont think my sister would leave her kid for a year and good to paris and have a love affair but i can definitely think being around this kid all the time, the temptation 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 for example, Annie Leibowitz did not perceive to be cruelty that other people did. When spoke to annie but that, she kind of shrugged, and Annie Leibowitz is one of the most powerful influence shall successful women in the america. At theof her career for a spears anything but a door mat and to portray her as a fab housewife with the husband who drinks to much and beats her upits just not who Annie Leibowitz is, has nothing to do with her. People project its important not to project on to people. As a braver as well. Biographer as well. Its a temptation to do that and people do things for so many reasons and i think susan need more than needed to take care of her child, she needed to get out of the marriage and thats the way she did it. Order your copy today. Wherever books and ebooks are sold. Journalist Janice Kaplan highlighted some women geniuses who have gone unrecognized by society. In this portion of the program she discusses whod discovered nuclear this amazing woman in the 1930s who discovered Nuclear Fission. She was the first person to understand that when you split an atom, the nuclear of an atom of uranium there was a beg explosion of energy and that led to nuclear energy, it lead unfortunately to Nuclear Weapons which she was unwilling to have any part of and also something that turned physic on its head, a really important and it won the nobel prize. I say it won the nobel prize because she did not win the nobel prize. It went to her lab partner, who was a chemist. From what i read he was a very nice man and a very good chemist and maybe emen deseries the nobel praise for Something Else but sure didnt deserve it for Nuclear Fission because the didnt understand Nuclear Fission but the men and of course they were men on the Nobel Committee just couldnt wrap their heads around the idea that it could have been a woman responsible for this enormous breakthrough. They fell back into what we were talking about before, that confirmation by must be the woman behind the man. Right . Always the man who disit and its the woman behind the man so they gave the nobel prize to the man. Many years later, the proceedings of that nobody number committee were released. Theres a certain number of years the nobody anybody proceed nobel proceedings are released and a group of physicists look at that and called the most egregious and indefensible oversight ever and there is a lot of competition for that. But what kelly was referring to is that many physicists since have tried to make it up to her and theres nowen asteroid named for the. A statues all over berlin where and my favorite, the periodic table, theres now a element on the periodic table named after her. To watch the rest of the talk visit our website, booktv. Org. Type in her name her to title of the book, the genius of women in the search box at the top of the page. Working on legislation and policy that benefitedded disabled and nondisabled people. Praised by Hillary Clinton for her insight, knowledge sass and witness some served in bill Clintons Administration shaping disable policy in the department of education and appointed by barack obama as the special adviser on disability right ford the state department. Shes also a former senior fellow at the Ford Foundation and adviser to the world bank. She joins us tonight to discuss her life, work, and new book, being heumann, an unrepentant memoir of a disability rights activist