Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag

Memoirs are a tough genre to pull off. There’s always the danger of TMI. How do you write honestly about yourself without being candid to the point where you’re violating everyone’s privacy, including your own? Then there’s the potential for boring or annoying your readers like a guest at a dinner party who began every sentence with that most hazardous of pronouns: I. And how do you avoid an excess self-absorption? What if the experiences that you thought were universal turn out to be trivial instead? Not everyone—not even (or perhaps especially) your cabin mates—wants to hear about your bed-wetting travails at summer camp half a century ago.

It’s even harder to write about others. It’s not only your version of what they’re like, but your version of what you’re like. Describing a relationship makes you complicit: if you’ve been too critical of your friend or parent or lover (or even your enemy), it’s sure to provoke resentment. Remember Henry James’s advice: “Be kind, be kind, be kind.” But if you’re too kind, no one will believe you. A portrait that leaves out lying, cheating, cruelty, prevarication, cowardice, and moral turpitude—I’m just getting warmed up—omits the essence of human character.

What’s so impressive about Sigrid Nunez’s memoir of Susan Sontag is how even-handed it is—both unsparing and affectionate. Sontag was a formidable figure: magisterial, brusque, dramatic. It’s not enough to say she dominated a room: for a long period, she dominated the cultural and intellectual life of New York. Nunez, the author of six highly acclaimed novels, was just starting out as a young writer when she met Sontag, which led to dating Sontag’s son, David Rieff (now himself a writer of distinction), and moving in to “340,” their apartment on Riverside Drive, with mother and son.

Their friendship endured long after the end of her relationship with Rieff, and Nunez had the opportunity to observe Sontag from many vantages: disciple, confidante, companion. Her depiction of this brilliant and infinitely complicated woman is nuanced: she makes Sontag real. Isn’t that the greatest compliment of all?