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Thursday, September 14, 2006
Susan Sontag’s Diaries: on the Need for Egotism
Excerpts from Susan Sontag’s journal were in this past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. The highlight for me was the following section from early in the portion of the journal (1958) included in the NYTM:
Why is writing important? Mainly, out of egotism, I suppose. Because I want to be that persona, a writer, and not because there is something I must say. Yet why not that too? With a little ego-building — such as the fait accompli this journal provides — I shall win through to the confidence that I (I) have something to say, that should be said.
My “I” is puny, cautious, too sane. Good writers are roaring egotists, even to the point of fatuity. Sane men, critics, correct them — but their sanity is parasitic on the creative fatuity of genius. (link)
The “creative fatuity of genius”; I think she might be thinking of Norman Mailer. Here one can’t help but think Sontag is criticizing the discourse of “genius” even as she’s aspiring to join the club. I also find it intriguing that Sontag writes about discovering and reading the diary of her friend (and lover, I believe), Harriet Sohmers—where she’s found a very unflattering post entry on herself:
Confessions, I mean sincere confessions of course, can be more shallow than actions. I am thinking now of what I read today (when I went up to 122 Bd. St-G to check for her mail) in H’s journal about me — that curt, unfair, uncharitable assessment of me which concludes by her saying that she really doesn’t like me but my passion for her is acceptable and opportune. God knows it hurts, and I feel indignant and humiliated. We rarely do know what people think of us (or, rather, think they think of us).. . .Do I feel guilty about reading what was not intended for my eyes? No. One of the main (social) functions of a journal or diary is precisely to be read furtively by other people, the people (like parents + lovers) about whom one has been cruelly honest only in the journal. Will H. ever read this? (link)
In short, no “confession” is ever sincere. And diaries are always meant for other eyes: either to be discovered by the subjects under discussion, or (since the diarist presumes she will be famous, and in this case she will be) the general public. Anonymous blogging is somewhat similar, I think: one unconsciously wants to be found out.
Comments
I wonder, has anyone done a history of diary writing (in the West)?
A good question—I’ve not seen one, though I think most people would say it starts with Samuel Pepys. As for why him exactly, and why then (the 1660s), that I don’t know.
It definitely seems to be associated with the modern idea of a split between public and private realms. It also goes with the idea of the act of writing as something that happens privately, even if the output of that writing is going to be public.
Past Author Ray Davis draws our attention to an interesting example & has some thoughts.
<a href="http://www.pseudopodium.org/ht-20041224.html#2005-01-16">link<>
The most visited area of the Repress, however, is the illustrated Diary of a Nobody.
I wonder, has anyone done a history of diary writing (in the West)?
I’d love pointers to a good book or two on the subject. Casual browsing’s led me to believe something happened Europe-wide in the mid-seventeenth century—in other words, after the evolution of the essay. Letters, diaries, and memoirs after that date seem more vivid than earlier examples, as if their writers’ features had suddenly snapped into focus. Perhaps the energy had previously been directed exclusively towards less secular or more commercial ends?
The old Cambridge History suggests a similar story. not mentioning much about diaries or letters until the Civil War, and only really giving them space in the Restoration.
It might just be a matter of what’s been available to me, though. Despite their literary, historical, psychological, you know, human interest, diaries and letters don’t get much institutional respect. To cite a 1997 note on Mr. Barbellion’s own favorite diarist. Marie Bashkirtseff: “Readers will eagerly anticipate the next volume, whose publication is not yet scheduled.”
On more or less general principle I’d suspect a post-Cartesian flourishing of diaries.
"And diaries are always meant for other eyes: either to be discovered by the subjects under discussion, or (since the diarist presumes she will be famous, and in this case she will be) the general public. Anonymous blogging is somewhat similar, I think: one unconsciously wants to be found out.”
I will agree in part that the diarist wants his/her writings looked upon by someone other than him/herself, but I’m not sure fame is the necessary motive. Sontag states that writers are egotistical, but not all diarists are writers in the sense I think she alludes. Two examples that came immediately to mind were penultimate diary of the 20th Century, The Diary of Anne Frank, and the lesser-known Zlata’s Diary, written by a young girl during the Bosnian-Serbian war in the 1990s. My argument is psychological: perhaps diarists write out the realization that a particular situation they enduring is more than their own selves can bear, therefore they “put it out there” for others to deal with as they (the others) stumble across it. The whole “Dear Diary” idea is fraught with implications of a reliance on a separate therapeutic identity, “Diary” really being whoever is nosy enough to discover what’s wrong.
I would argue that “anonymous blogging” is really not a suitable term, given that most bloggers tack on a pseudonym to their real persona, in a sense creating a separate identity (e.g. I’m not “Greg” per se, but “kittycat69” or some other hideous attachment) that actively seeks readers while putting a barrier up to the blogger’s true identity (otherwise, why the pseudonym?). It’s too coy, too come-hither, too controlled.
Does this topic, in some strange way, connect with the recent post about James Frey refunding his readers due to his “false self?” Is there a sense of Paul de Man’s theory of the author in that the true diarist actually gives away their identity to those who want to find it out?