is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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bedtime reading.
For the past couple of months, until a week or so ago, I�d been reading Susan Sontag�s journal at night before bed, on those nights when I�m alone. At first it was really inspiring, or possibly intimidating: at age 14 she was having thoughts I�m sure I didn�t have until I was in my 20s, and so forth. But then once she hit her 20s things got depressing. A loveless marriage. A whole lot of shame over being gay. Some dysfunctional lesbian relationships.
Of course, a journal is where most of the dark stuff gets kept. It will never be an accurate description of a life if taken on its own. Anyone who keeps a journal knows this.
One thing that surprised me about Sontag is that she made it a habit of reading her lovers� journals, finding out what they wrote about her, and then internalizing it all as the whole truth. But she was also someone who kept journals, so she should have known, on some level, that a journal rarely tells the whole truth. (She also should have known that she shouldn�t read other people�s journals, but that�s a separate topic.)
Of course if you read your lover�s journal and find out that sometimes she doesn�t like you so much, it is devastating. But every relationship is full of moments where maybe you don�t like the other person so much. In a good relationship those moments don�t last very long or run very deep. But they�re there. It�s called: two people trying to share a life without sharing a brain. And that�s what journals are there for, to let you rehearse your petty or useless dissatisfactions or annoyances, so that you don�t have to impose them on the larger world, or, possibly, so you can see those irritations for what they are, important or unimportant, worth thinking about more, and discussing with your lover, or worth dismissing because they�re petty, and so on.
So, after a while, it wasn�t such good bedtime reading anymore, because it sent me off to sleep depressed about the sad inner life of someone whom I admire. The journals still have lots of really interesting self-examinations, ruminations on literature and film, and descriptions of intellectual life in New York and Paris�and that is all fascinating and fun. I�m just hoping that upcoming volumes of her later journals will be balanced more toward the light.
Lately I�ve been reading the correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy at bedtime. It�s really good.
11:31 p.m. - May 19, 2009
laura - 2009-05-20 15:51:58
How do you have the head space to read those sort of things before bed? I'm lucky if I can get through an article in The New Yorker.
I have been curious about Sontag's journals, however; you do recommend?
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js - 2009-05-20 19:11:19
I do recommend it. Like I said, be prepared for some depressing moments, but if you like Sontag at all, or if you're curious about that kind of intellectual life in the 60s, it's pretty cool.
For a couple of months I read all of the books in the Twilight series at bedtime, heh. I try to use bedtime reading as a time when I don't have to read work-stuff. The Sontag journals fall under that category and thus, strangely, fall into a category with Twilight, as downtime reading and thus enjoyable in a way different from work reading.
However, about this let us be clear: Stephenie Meyer is not a great writer. Susan Sontag is.
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laura - 2009-05-21 03:33:42
indeed, yes, good clarification! I'll look for the journals, thanks.
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