The New York Times - 19.09.2019

C6 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

she was 14, the principal of North Holly-

wood High announced that they had noth-

ing left to teach her. She briefly studied at

Berkeley (although San Francisco’s lesbian

bars seemed to make more of an impres-

sion). She later transferred to the Univer-

sity of Chicago, where she attended a sociol-

ogy class taught by 28-year-old Philip Rieff.

He proposed marriage after a little more

than a week. A year and a half later, David

was born. Sontag was 19.

The marriage provided her first taste of

intellectual companionship — and servi-

tude. Rieff put Sontag to work, drafting the

book reviews that appeared under his

name, and even, Moser argues, ghostwrit-

ing his study “Freud: The Mind of the Mor-

alist,” this biography’s juiciest claim.

“My mother was a leftist,” David Rieff

would later say. “My father was to the right

of Attila the Hun.” The marriage curdled.

Moser offers an elegant, sensitive summa-

tion of the decades that followed their ugly

divorce, with Sontag establishing herself in

New York, engaging in relationships with a

series of extraordinary women and doing

heroic work in Sarajevo during the Bosnian

war.

Can a biography be a work of art? Virgin-

ia Woolf once asked, wondering why so

many are published and so few endure.

Among those likely to last is Moser’s ravish-

ing life of the Brazilian writer Clarice

Lispector, “Why This World” (2009). The

book seemed like a happy haunting, so

deftly did Moser divine Lispector’s secrets

and unlock the workings of her alluring,

enigmatic sentences. He seems immune,

however, to the aloof charisma of Sontag’s

style. (In fairness, he is not alone.) About

“Illness as Metaphor,” he writes: “Despite

its grim subject, the book is fun to read.”

Meanwhile, “if ‘Styles of Radical Will’ is of-

ten impressive, it can hardly be called fun.”

It’s an odd criterion to bring to her work.

Fun was never a consideration for Sontag.

The word appears rarely in her writing, and

with maximum suspicion, e.g., “the pictures

were meant to be circulated and seen by

many people: It was all fun.” Sontag is writ-

ing about the photographs taken at Abu

Ghraib.

Seriousness was the prime virtue, and

rapture. The desire to know, she said, is a

“carnal desire.” Certainly none of the wom-

en in her journals elicit the kind of charge of

her intellectual labors. “If only I could feel

about sex as I do about writing!” she once

wrote.

It’s a pity that Moser is only dutiful about

the work, given that in a sense, the work

was her real life, the place where she found

the eros, the excitement and fulfillment she

long sought; it is perhaps why he gives such

centrality to her myth instead.

In the future, I doubt that “Susan Sontag”

will loom so large, however: the celebrity

intellectual “with the looks of a musketeer,”

as Moser describes her, the “thinker un-

afraid of men.” What will matter is what she

thought about. It is impossible to address

any number of topics — high and low cul-

ture, camp, photography, illness, New Wave

cinema, genocide, the notion of witness, the

work of the writers she championed from

Elias Canetti to Walter Benjamin — without

reckoning with her work. It was the best of

her: that ravenous curiosity and the rest-

less desire to share what she knew.

“Writing is an embrace, a being em-

braced,” she once wrote. “Every idea is an

idea reaching out.”

mosexuality and grieved for her unhappy

relationships. Monographs, memoirs and

remembrances have followed, including

her son David Rieff’s account of her final ill-

ness, “Swimming in a Sea of Death”; Phillip

Lopate’s affectionately rivalrous study of

her work, “Notes on Sontag”; the scholar

Terry Castle’s tart essay on their friend-

ship; and the novelist Sigrid Nunez’s “Sem-

pre Susan,” an account of sharing an apart-

ment with Sontag when Nunez and Rieff

dated in the ’70s. To add to the shelf, there is

now the authorized biography, “Sontag:

Her Life and Work,” by Benjamin Moser, a

book as handsome, provocative and trou-

bled as its subject.

One note recurs through many Sontag

stories. It is puzzlement — ranging from the

amused to the appalled — at the gulf be-

tween her public preoccupation with ethical

action and some truly filthy private behav-

ior. She was prone to fits of grandiosity and

torrential abuse, particularly to her long-

time partner, the photographer Annie Lei-

bovitz. She was said to oscillate, as a

mother, between neglect and invasive

closeness. There was “Good Susan and Bad

Susan,” Salman Rushdie wrote in his mem-

oir, “Joseph Anton.” “Bad Susan could be a

bullying monster.”

Admittedly, these are the minor leagues

where writers are concerned; nothing ap-

proaching V. S. Naipaul’s virtuosic cruelty,

Colette’s and Muriel Spark’s abandonment

of their children or, more horribly, Anne

Sexton’s abuse of her daughter. Objectivity

is impossible when writing a life, Judith

Thurman, Colette’s biographer, once said.

“Vigilant subjectivity” is what’s required,

and playing it straight — presenting all the

information and allowing the reader to

make the final judgment.

Moser, however, is triggered. His book

has an interesting, jumpy, adversarial ener-

gy, with its author caught up in the drama

and not so subtly taking sides in the clashes

surrounding Sontag. (Rieff, her son, comes

in for the book’s most lacerating portrayal.)

Moser’s frustration reaches fever pitch with

Sontag’s refusal to come out of the closet

during the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

But he also positions his biography in a curi-

ous way, by using one of Sontag’s most fa-

mous ideas against her.

Sontag was alert to the ways reality can

be distorted — in photographs, for example,

or with metaphorical language, falsifica-

tions that numb our responses. Moser, how-

ever, claims that it is as a metaphor that

Sontag matters most: “Sontag’s real impor-

tance increasingly lay in what she repre-

sented. The metaphor of ‘Susan Sontag’ was

a great original creation. It rose far above

her individual life, and outlived her.”

We encounter Sontag as a series of

masks, motifs, symptoms and symbols,

with her biographer presenting a set of

master keys that might explain her behav-

ior. Moser begins with the beautiful and

chilly Mildred Sontag, an alcoholic, who im-

printed upon her daughter “a sadomaso-

chistic dynamic that recurred throughout

Susan’s life.” Her pattern of withholding at-

tention kindled an anxious, supplicating af-

fection in her daughter, and a lifelong taste,

Sontag wrote in her diary, for “weak, unhap-

py, confused, charming women.”

Mildred’s drinking lay at the root of many

of Sontag’s difficulties, Moser argues, draw-

ing primarily on a self-help book from 1983,

“Adult Children of Alcoholics,” by Janet

Woititz. He leans on it so heavily, in fact, that

I became curious and tracked down a copy.

It’s not a clinical book or a scientific record

of research, it turns out, but “a sharing of

my observations,” as Woititz puts it, includ-

ing the 13 characteristics such individuals

supposedly share, some maddeningly

vague (these adult children are often “su-

per irresponsible or super responsible”).

Woititz makes it clear that she is not de-

scribing “character defects,” but Moser

uses her book precisely in service of such

analysis. “Many of the apparently rebarba-

tive aspects of Sontag’s personality are

clarified in light of the alcoholic family sys-

tem,” he writes. “Her enemies, for example,

accused her of taking herself too seriously,

of being rigid and humorless.” (A moment,

please, to appreciate the fact that self-seri-

ousness and humorlessness in women can

invite a diagnosis.)

At another point, Moser suggests that

Sontag suffered from one of the personality

disorders grouped in “Cluster B,” with

symptoms like fear of abandonment, rude-

ness and volatility — all of which were exac-

erbated by her dependence on amphet-

amines.

Such interpretations aren’t always off-

base. People, like nations, have their found-

ing myths: It was this deprivation that

made me, or that piece of unutterable good

luck. Sontag herself was obsessed with Mil-

dred’s influence on her life. But meta-

phorical thinking, as she warned, is often

lazy thinking — even a recourse fromthink-

ing.

Where Moser shines is not in analysis but

in narrative, no easy feat for a life commit-

ted to reinvention. “I write partly in orderto

change myself,” Sontag once remarked, ex-

plaining her penchant for famously revers-

ing her most public stances.

She was born in New York, in 1933. Her

childhood was a “long prison sentence,” she

wrote, marked by the death of her father

and dislocation as the family moved west

hoping to find a more hospitable climate for

Sontag’s asthma. Books became her sanctu-

ary, and contempt a kind of psychic insula-

Follow Parul Sehgal on Twitter: @parul_sehgal. tion. She became a “demon reader.” When

PARUL SEHGAL BOOKS OF THE TIMES

A Metaphor That Takes Center Stage

Benjamin Moser

MARCEL WOGRAM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Sontag: Her Life and Work

By Benjamin Moser

Illustrated. 816 pages. Ecco/HarperCollins

Publishers. $39.99.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE C1

THE YOUNG JOHN LENNONand
Paul McCartney spend a life-
changing night in a Florida hotel
room in the Northern Stage pro-
duction of Bob Stevens’s “Only
Yesterday,” at 59E59 Theaters. Al-
though fans of the Beatles will un-
doubtedly find themselves in nos-
talgic bliss, those less versed in
the Fab Four don’t need to know
their “Abbey Road” from their
“Sgt. Pepper’s” to be delighted by
the elegant storytelling and sensi-
tive performances.
Book-ended by snippets of a
2001 “Fresh Air” interview with
Mr. McCartney, in which Terry
Gross asked about the meaning of
“the night that we cried,” from his
poem “Here Today (Song for
John),” the play imagines a blus-
tery day in 1964 when Hurricane
Dora forces the world’s most pop-
ular band to make an unexpected
stop in Key West, Fla., on their
way to a Jacksonville gig, where
over 30,000 fans await.
“This takes the biscuit,” sneers
John (Christopher Sears) as he
looks around the humble motel
room their road manager (Chris-
topher Flockton) has procured for
them. “It’s not so bad,” Paul
(Tommy Crawford) counters,
warmly. Thanks to Michael Gan-
io’s beige and brown set design,
you can almost smell the mold and
cigarette smoke permanently at-
tached to the walls.
Trapped in the room to avoid
getting soaked or having their
clothes torn off by the rabid fans
who’ve discovered their location,
the two young men slowly ex-
haust their entertainment options
— drinks, Monopoly, a pillow fight,
impromptu guitar covers of their
favorite musicians — until they
are left with nothing but each
other and a conversation about
fame, joy, grief and loss.

Mr. Stevens, who is no stranger

to nostalgia, having served as a

producer and writer of the televi-

sion series “The Wonder Years,”

avoids facile psychology and

winking dialogue. Instead he cap-

tures two frail men who never

take off their Beatles uniforms,

even when no cameras are

around. Allison Crutchfield’s rec-

reations of their suits, stylish but a

little too tight, perfectly convey a

duo in limbo: no longer school-

boys, not yet legends.

“Only Yesterday” exists in de-

lectable extremes. We see the

young Beatles at their most me-

nial: unpacking, tediously an-

swering questions from reporters

on the phone, pouring another

drink when they realize Fidel Cas-

tro’s voice is all they can hear on

TV and radio (the witty sound de-

sign is by Jane Shaw).

Yet we also learn that the band

took a stand against racism when

they refused to perform for a seg-

regated audience in Jacksonville.

Carol Dunne’s spry but unob-

trusive direction gives the show a

relaxed pace. Mr. Crawford is all

wide eyes and shaggy hair as a

Paul who’s chosen to ignore deep

emotional pain, while Mr. Sears’s

revelatory take on John has him

play the human version of a whip:

Get too close, and you won’t know

what hit you.

It’s impossible to pretend we

don’t know what the future holds

for Paul and John, or that their

lives post-fame were ordinary in

any way. Because of the actors’

chemistry, it’s easy to believe their

characters have known each

other forever. Because of their hu-

manity, it’s impossible not to wish

we could take away their pain.

JOSE SOLÍS THEATER REVIEW

Only Yesterday

Through Sept. 29 at 59E59

Theaters, Manhattan;

646-892-7999, 59e59.org.

Running time: 1 hour

10 minutes.

Tommy Crawford, left, as Paul McCartney, and Christopher Sears as John
Lennon in “Only Yesterday,” a play written by Bob Stevens.

CAROL ROSEGG

Two Guys Needed

A Place to Hide Away

Imagining a night in

1964 with Lennon and

McCartney.

TEN DANCERS IN COVERALLSlie onstage in
near darkness. As if waking from a night-
mare, one raises her head, curls her body
and begins rocking. That motion soon
spreads to the others, in waves, until they
are all crouching and twisting and kicking
over, like B-boys vamping in preparation for
power moves.
In these first moments of Victor Quijada’s
“Ever So Slightly,” much of its method and
mood are established. Mr. Quijada’s apt
term for that method, Rubberband, is also
the name of his Montreal-based company,
making its Joyce Theater debut this week.
Borrowing body-inverting floorwork and
an elastic flow from hip-hop, his choreo-

graphic style takes its patterning and con-
struction from contemporary dance. At its
most exciting, as when a dancer tossed in
the air hangs in suspension before flying
into reverse, the choreography has stretch
and snap.
Here, the style is applied to group dynam-
ics. The 10 dancers leave the stage only once
and then en masse. Although there are solo
breakouts, flashes of individuality at the
center of the dance circle, Mr. Quijada is
most interested in chain reactions, reflexes
rippling through a pack, breaking points
when something or somebody snaps.
“Ever So Slightly” would seem to imply
subtle shifts, though, and there is nothing
subtle about this production. Yan Lee
Chan’s lighting goes red or blasts the danc-
ers from behind, and the music is even more
heavy-handed. Jasper Gahunia and William
Lamoureux, playing an impressive assort-
ment of electronic and amplified instru-
ments on one side of the stage, occasionally
accent the action with distortion but keep
snapping back into sappiness.
Increasingly, that’s the tone of the chore-
ography, too — that of an emo band or of an-

guished adolescent poetry. The dancers

twitch and contract as if troubled by stom-

ach cramps. They mill and tussle with all

the spontaneity and menace of a choreo-

graphed mosh pit. Everyone points at ev-

eryone else, spreading the blame.

They strip one another of their coveralls.

They drag one another around by the cover-

alls. They cover their heads with the cover-

alls, some forcing others to kneel like pris-

oners. Don’t you see? Things are getting

dark.

Almost none of this is believable, neither

the aggression nor the feints at sociopoliti-

cal relevance. And after a blackout, with the

dancers now vulnerable in their underwear,

the mood of pitiful brokenness sinks further

into cliché. This is the kind of dance in which

one dancer after another has a little mad

scene while everyone else stands around

and watches dumbly. It’s the kind in which

everyone suddenly gangs up on someone,

who then expresses his pain by hitting him-

self and falling over and flinching from

touch. It’s the kind with hysterical laughter.

And it’s the kind that ends on a more

hopeful note, with the dancers in pairs, one

holding the other off the ground and spin-

ning together as the curtain falls, just as it

has fallen on many similar scenes.

BRIAN SEIBERT DANCE REVIEW

A Little Stretch and Snap but Ultimately Limp

Victor Quijada’s choreography

evokes an emo band’s tone or

anguished adolescent poetry.

Members of Rubberband in

Victor Quijada’s “Ever So

Slightly,” at the Joyce Theater.

RACHEL PAPO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Rubberband Dance
Through Sunday at the Joyce Theater,
Manhattan; joyce.org.