Following the success of "Why this World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector," Benjamin Moser was approached by Susan Sontag’s son, her agent and her publisher to capture the writer’s life and legacy in a project that was recognized with the 2020 Prize in Biography. Lauded by the Pulitzer Board for its authoritative construction, "Sontag: Her Life and Work" explores complicated writings, sexual ambiguities, and volatile enthusiasms with “pathos and grace.” Read on to learn how Moser’s presence as biographer informed the work and what it felt like to win a Pulitzer via an “exploded” phone.
PULITZER PRIZES: In an interview with Pandemonium U, Pamela Druckerman described you as a shapeshifter, able to “go inside the soul of another person.” What did it feel like to enter the soul of Susan Sontag?
BENJAMIN MOSER: The key to any writing is empathy. You have to know how to understand a person — real or fictional — different from yourself. This doesn't mean you have to become that person, in the way an actor might. Nor does it imply demonic possession. It means setting aside your experiences, your prejudices, and approaching a person from that person's experiences. And then adding your own experience of life in order to understand theirs.
This can be exhausting, especially when you see people doing things that you know are going to hurt them or others. You have hindsight; they don't; and as silly as it sounds, you really, really want to warn them. So when you see Sontag entering a relationship with a person you know is terrible, you want to say: "Stop! Don't!" And it's hard, emotionally, to see a person I care about committing unforced errors.
On the other hand, the ability to enter so deeply into someone's life is incredibly rewarding. You learn so much when you spend this much time with a person like Susan Sontag. Just to give one example, she once made a list of her 50 favorite films. (You can find it in The New Yorker.) And because I wanted to enter deeper into her mind, to know everything about her, I watched all 50 of them. It was a thrilling education.
PP: In this same interview, you mentioned that you “concentrate on the things that you’re interested in” when building a biography. What most interested you about Sontag’s life and achievements?
BM: When you're writing a biography of someone as complex as Sontag, you can't possibly go into every single aspect. It's very important — but also frustrating and painful — to leave a lot on the cutting-room floor.
And as much as a biography is about its subject, it is also, and maybe primarily, about its biographer. This may sound strange, but the metaphor of painting might make it clearer: there are lots of paintings of flowers or of people or of landscapes, but if you are interested in a painting it's because of the painter, and only secondarily because of the subject. There are lots of books (not to mention photographs, films, plays, portraits) of or about Susan Sontag. What makes mine different is that it's by me, so I am very emphatic that I do not hide my personality or my opinions. I make choices another writer would not have.
For example, like Sontag, I am obsessed by the mysterious operation of metaphor: how words can save people and how they can destroy them, how they hide reality and also reveal it. This was, in a way, the subject of my previous biography, of Clarice Lispector. I am thrilled to contrast these writers' approaches to representation and language. These books are my dialogue with them — and through these books, at least in my mind, they are also dialoguing with each other.
Another thing: this is a book about a gay writer, by a gay writer — and it's for gay readers. It was obvious from the reactions that gay people understood it in a way that straight people did not always. That's not to say straight people can't read it, of course! But I always think of what Toni Morrison said about being a black writer writing for black readers. She refused to see this as a limitation. Neither do I.
PP: Sontag includes many journal entries woven between your narration. What was your thought process as you sorted through the countless primary documents and 573 interviews?
BM: Remember those computers from the '50s or '60s that were as big as a room? Operated by a serious-looking scientist in a lab coat? I often felt like I needed one of those. Sontag was such a huge figure. She was written about from almost the moment she set foot in New York. People always knew that she was somebody, even before she herself quite did — and looking at the amount of commentary she generated, in the archives, in my interviews, I felt like I was standing in front of the Himalayas.
So the key becomes organization. It's tedious, but you have to check and bold and italicize and underline and file and type all this stuff every single day. It's a discipline, and I came to think of it as something like yoga: you advance by millimeters. But then, when you come to the writing, you are so thankful for that groundwork.
PP: In an interview with OutSmart Magazine, you mention Sontag's influence on “politics, culture, sexuality, illness, film, dance, painting, literature, or anything at all.” How do you see this biography adding to her legacy?
BM: The thing I was most proud of with my work with Clarice Lispector, which is still ongoing, is that people started to read her again. That was what I hoped would happen with Susan, too. Because from very early on I noticed that people had these very fierce opinions about her hair, or how she took her son to too many parties, but they hadn't actually read her books. The personality and the gossip had somehow crushed the actual work. It's easy to recognize the woman in the photograph, but it's a lot harder to read this huge body of very challenging writing. So I am very thrilled to see that people are doing that again, in America and all over the world. Wherever I go, there are new translations: last week I heard that On Photography had been published in Catalan! This is really a huge satisfaction for me.
PP: How did you find out you won the Pulitzer, and what does this award mean to you?
BM: I was watching TV on my couch, and at the end of the show my phone looked like it had exploded. Why? I found out.
To get such an affirmation in the middle of the lockdown, when I, like everyone else, was feeling listless and blah and wondering what the point of anything was, was a great stimulus To anyone looking for an antidepressant, I can recommend winning the Pulitzer Prize.
The Pulitzer means that the decision I made to become a writer, a terrible and very solitary decision for a young person, was the right decision. I was grateful on behalf of that young person.
I was grateful that my parents were still alive. My mother had Covid, and for the first time the idea of losing them became real and immediate. I was glad that they got to see the support they always gave me rewarded.
And I was glad for Susan. I had hoped to erect a monument to her life and work, and this prize will bring her legacy to the attention of more people, all over the world. The Pulitzer is hers, too.