Agon: A “Muse” for Sontag

Review essay of Sigrid Nunez, Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag (New York: Atlas & Co.,2011), 140 pages, ISBN 978 1-935633-22-8, Hardcover, $20.00.

In Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag, Sigrid Nunez offers a window into the psyche of one of the most prolific intellectuals of the 20^th century. Nunez gives us a heartfelt portrait of Sontag’s struggles as a writer, activist, celebrity, mother, role model, lover, and vulnerable woman.

In 1976, at the age of 25, Nunez became Sontag’s secretary. Simultaneously, Nunez became lovers with David Rieff, Sontag’s son by sociologist and cultural critic, Philip Rieff. She moved in with Susan and David, but within two years she moved out. Nunez’s connection with Sontag continued long after the ending of her relationship with David. Her memoir tells the story of her ongoing relationship with Susan over the next three decades. (For additional biographical and autobiographical information on Sontag, see Rollyson and Paddock, Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, 2000; Poague, ed., Conversations with Susan Sontag, 1995; and David Rieff, ed., Reborn: Journals and Notebooks 1947-1963, 2008.)

Nunez depicts Susan in all her neediness: failed love affairs, three bouts of cancer (ultimately dying from the third, leukemia), loneliness, restlessness, and dashed hopes and dreams. Nunez offers us a window into Sontag’s inner world. Sontag’s internal conflicts included her desperate need “to feel exceptional” (p. 22). Out of this came her rejection of the quotidian and her horror of conventionality. She had absolutely no curiosity about the natural world and felt that childhood was a complete waste of time. Sontag “equated teaching with failure” (p. 67) and that having to take a job was humiliating.

Nunez tells us that Sontag saw herself as self-created (p. 67) and that she seemed in continual conflict with herself. An under-

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standing of what might have driven Sontag’s creative engine can be found in a conversation that she had with Nunez, wherein Sontag told Nunez that in order to write, “You need an agon” (p. 62). For Sontag an “agon,” or struggle, constituted the necessary ingredient for one’s creative output. From Nunez’s observations, Sontag’s conflicts included her feelings of “never doing the right thing” (p. 124) and never feeling satisfied. She reports that Sontag felt that she had not lived right. Sontag wanted to be “more artist and less critic, more author and less activist: that was the way [she felt] she ‘should’ have lived” (p. 124).

Nunez offers a sympathetic portrait of Sontag. The reader is left with feelings of amazement that Sontag was able to accomplish creatively as much as she did given all her psychological baggage. On the other hand, these internal struggles may have provided the fuel for Sontag’s creativity. The paradox of Sontag is that she held a “belief in her exceptionalism and in the power of her will, in self-creation, and in the possibility of being reborn, the possibility of endless new chances, and of having it all” (p. 133). Yet, Nunez also reports that Sontag “was not happy with her life’s work…she had failed to reach the goals she had set for herself in her youth” (p. 124).

Nunez tells us that one of Sontag’s favorite movies was the Japanese film by Ozu, Tokyo Story (1953). In the last frames of the movie, the characters Kyoko and Noriko have the following dialogue: Kyoko states, “Isn’t life disappointing?” and Kyoko responds, “Yes, it is.” For this reader, Nunez’s memoir does not disappoint. Nor do Sontag’s cultural contributions.

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