Book Review, Interview: Thoughts On The Literary Achievement Of Susan Sontag

When one writer critically examines another respected author, readers should be skeptical. In Notes on Sontag, Phillip Lopate reflects on Susan Sontag's essays, book-length nonfiction and fiction. He works from his strength as a personal essayist: intimate, balanced, and a generalist. Lopate's appreciation of literature keeps the focus on her writing and not her personality. In fact, he cautions this is not, “Thank God,” a biography. He does, however, interweave some personal encounters with this fellow New Yorker. More significantly, he digs deeply into her writing. He quotes widely and at length from her body of work. And he chooses wisely. Look at this Sontag gem from an essay on Nazi symbols: "The color is black, the material is leather, the seduction is beauty, the justification is honesty, the aim is ecstasy, the fantasy is death." Throughout, Lopate writes honestly, as readers should expect from an essayist, on her strengths and weaknesses as a writer.

The organization is an extended essay; the style is direct and conversational. There is no table of contents, only section headings. The arc is predominately chronological with the bulk of the criticism addressing her nonfiction, which he regarded as her best material. To be clear, Sontag was considered a literary essayist and novelist, not a personal essayist; she offered her ideas, not herself, to readers. Lopate excels at breaking down the source of her ideals (European) and the ideas, structure, and style in her writing. More intimately than a lecture, yet with the vocabulary of a professor, he conveys the important points. Here are some remarks on Sontag's title essay from Under the Sign of Saturn:

Her tribute is a rare act of sympathy by which one author assimilates another, transmits unselfishly that spirit to the reader, rendering his notoriously difficult aspects into something coherent and attractive. The key is her explication of melancholia (Saturn being the astrological sign of melancholics), as fundamental to Benjamin’s work. The prose is dense, but clear, never stuffy or derivative; one would have to quote the entire Sontag essay to convey its method of piling idea upon idea, so that each insight builds on all the previous ones.

Lopate devotes less time her fiction. He dismisses her first two novels as not successful and modestly praises the third, The Volcano Lover. Even Sontag only wanted to talk about that novel. She loved it. However her natural strengths worked better in essays than in fiction.

Thinman: You allude to Sontag's persistence with fiction and her view that the novel was the “literary big game.” But the bigger force in her life seemed to be art. Do you think she considered that in literature only the novel, and not nonfiction, should be considered art?

Lopate: I certainly think that essays, memoirs, and other types of belletrist nonfiction are every bit as much a part of literary art as novels are. She came to regard herself as a novelist, and to want others to see her that way, which was a problem because she had very little knack as a fiction-writer.

Thinman: Sontag appears to have chosen the right line of work: writing. However, within that profession, she farmed many fields. Do you think, for the most part, she found her material?

Lopate: In her writing, especially in her essays, Sontag certainly found her material. She was both an aesthetician and a moralist, and increasingly the two got intertwined.

Understanding the mind of a dead writer is never easy. Lopate probes cautiously. The anecdotes, which nicely capture a sense of the times, are not that revealing since Sontag carefully managed her public persona, and Lopate did not move in her most intimate circle. Talking about her need to feel "enthusiasm," he writes: "Part of what makes her essayist voice so exciting and audacious - but also untrustworthy at times - is the violence she does to her own sense of caution and skepticism, by coercing herself to push ideas and feelings to their most extreme formulation." This was very much in contrast to Lopate’s balanced, “on the other hand,” approach as an essay writer.

Thinman: It does seem that you and Sontag had similar personal interests, but different writing styles. As you read or re-read her works for the book, did you discover any new areas of resonance or discord?

Lopate: It's true, Sontag and I had many overlapping interests, and overlapping tastes. I would characterize the difference in our writing styles and personalities as: she was an enthusiast, I am skeptic. My skepticism involves thinking against myself, doubting myself and arguing with myself, whereas she tended to back a position hard, never looking back. It was only years later that she might begin to express reservations about what she had said earlier. I also think I write with more humor than she does, which may be a product of that selfsame skepticism. It wasn't so much that I changed my mind about our areas of resonance or discord, as that I acquired a deeper sense of our differences: for instance, she needed to position herself on the cutting edge, to support what she regarded as "radical" in art and politics, whereas I don't find that so important, being in the vanguard.

It would have been nice to hear at least one righteous rant on some of her extreme positions. Lopate points them out, but almost always balances the criticism with a positive, tacking like a sailor. The occasional storm is exciting. As a reference book, the organization, with its lack of table of contents and index, can be frustrating. Still, this is a very approachable dissection of a difficult essayist. In the end, even non-admirers of Sontag’s blaze - albeit brief or enduring - through the Counterculture period should enjoy this book. In this case, the personal and profession connections brighten the color of Lopate’s remarks.

Lopate concluded our email exchange with a characteristic essayist expression of affection for Susan Sontag, who died in December of 2004: Her boldness and intelligence will be missed.

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