Susan Sontag - As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

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Table of Contents

FICTION

The Benefactor Death Kit I, etcetera The Way We Live Now The Volcano Lover In America

ESSAYS

Against Interpretation Styles of Radical Will On Photography Illness as Metaphor Under the Sign of Saturn AIDS and Its Metaphors Where the Stress Falls Regarding the Pain of Others At the Same Time

FILM SCRIPTS

Duet for Cannibals Brother Carl

PLAY

Alice in Bed

JOURNALS

Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 19471963

A Susan Sontag Reader

The right hand = the hand that is aggressive, the hand that masturbates. Therefore, to prefer the left hand! To romanticize it, to sentimentalize it!

I am Irenes [ the Cuban-American playwright Mara Irene FornsSSs lover for a time in Paris in 1957 and then her partner in New York between 1959 and 1963 ] Maginot Line.

Her very life depends on rejecting me, on holding the line against me.

Everything has been deposited on me. I am the scapegoat.

[ This entry is emphasized by a vertical line in the margin: ] As long as she is occupied in warding me off, she doesnt have to face herself, her own problems.

I cant convince herpersuade herwith reasonthat it is otherwise.

Any more than she could convince mewhen we lived togethernot to need her, clutch at her, depend on her.

There is nothing in it for me nowno joy, only sorrow. Why do I hang on?

Because I dont understand. I dont really accept the change in Irene. I think I can reverse itby explaining, by demonstrating that I am good for her.

But it is as indispensable for her to reject meas it has been indispensable for me to hold on to her.

Whatever doesnt kill me, makes me stronger. [ a paraphrase of Goethe ]

There is no love, no charity, no kindness for me in Irene. For me, to me, she becomes cruel and shallow.

The symbiotic tie is broken. She cast it aside.

Now she only presents bills. Inez, Joan, Carlos!

I have damaged her ego, she says. I and Alfred [ the American writer Alfred Chester ].

(The inflated, fragile ego.)

And no repentance, no apology for, no change from what was truly damaging in my behavior will appease her, or heal her.

Remember how she received the revelation at the New Yorker [ a Manhattan movie theater that showed foreign and revival films, where SS went several times a week in the 1960s ] two weeks ago!

I am a stone wall, she says. A rock. Its true.

There is no responsiveness, no forgiveness in her. To me, only hardness. Deafness. Silence. Even a grunt of assent violates her.

Rejecting me is the shell Irene constructs around herself. The protective wall.

Why I didnt nurse David:

Mother didnt nurse me. (I vindicate her by doing it to Davidits ok, I do it to my own child)

I had a difficult birth, caused M[other] a lot of pain; she didnt nurse me; she stayed in bed for a month after.

David was big (like me)a lot of pain. I wanted to be knocked out, not to know anything; it never occurred to me to nurse him; I stayed in bed for a month after.

Loving = the sensation of being in an intense form Like pure oxygen (as distinct from air)

Henry James

All based on a particular stylization of consciousness

Self & world (money)no body consciousness, among many ways of being-in-the-world which he omits.

Edith Whartons biography. Banal sensibility capped, periodically, by strong intelligent conclusion. But her intelligence doesnt transform the eventsi.e. disclose their complexity. It only supervenes upon the banal telling of them.

Ontological anxiety, Weltangst. The world blankor crumbling, shredding. People are wind-up dolls. Im afraid.

The gift has meant to me: I wouldnt buy this for myself (its nice, a luxury, not necessary) but I buy it for you. Denial of self.

There are people in the world.

A constriction in the chest, tears, a scream that feels as if it would be endless if I let it out.

I should go away for a year.

To say a feeling, an impression is to diminish itexpel it.

But sometimes feelings are too strong: passions, obsessions. Like romantic love. Or grief. Then one needs to speak, or one would burst.

The desire for reassurance. And, equally, to be reassured. (The itch to ask whether Im still loved; and the itch to say, I love you, half-fearing that the other has forgotten, since the last time I said it.)

Quelle connerie [ What idiocy ]

I valued professional competence + force, think (since age four?) that that was, at least, more attainable than being lovable just as a person.

I cant drive out my obsession with I[rene]my grief, my despair, my longingwith another love. Im not capable of loving anyone now. Im being loyal.

But the obsession must be drained, somehow. I must force some of that energy elsewhere.

If I could get started on another novel

From Mother, I learned: I love you means I dont love anyone else. The horrid woman was always challenging my feelings, telling me I had made her unhappy, that I was cold.

As if children owe their parents love + gratification! They dont. Though parents owe these things to their childrenexactly like physical care.

From Mother: I love you. Look. Im unhappy.

She made me feel: Happiness is disloyalty.

She hid her happiness, challenged me to make her happyif I could.

Therapy is deconditioning [ SSs therapist at the time, Diana ] (Kemeny)

Mary McCarthys gringrey hairlow-fashion red + blueprint suit. Club woman gossip. She is [ her novel ] The Group . Shes nice to her husband.

Fear of the other going away: fear of abandonment

Fear of my going away: fear of retaliation by the other ( also abandonmentbut as revenge for the rejection of going away).

I have a wider range as a human being than as a writer. (With some writers, its the opposite.) Only a fraction of me is available to be turned into art.

A miracle is just an accident, with fancy trappings.

Changelifecomes through accidents.

My loyalty to the pastmy most dangerous trait, the one that has cost me most.

Self-respect . It would make me lovable. And its the secret of good sex.

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