Susan Sontag in Quotation Marks

“One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art”

Oscar Wilde

DT: I’m aware that Allen Ginsberg once bluntly asked “you got cancer right?”

SS: What an odd way to begin. I know we’ve just “met”, if indeed that means anything under the circumstances we find ourselves in. I would rather not be reminded about that particular exchange with Mr Ginsberg, if you don’t mind.

DT: Of course. Even with my inflated sense of bravado that was a bit blunt wasn’t it.

SS: You need to consider your words much more prudently otherwise I shall have to terminate this, what do you call it?

DT: Séance fiction.

SS: Yes well it’s more friction at the moment and we have only just commenced.

DT: Friction, now I do like that. May I take it hostage for future reference?

SS: What on earth do you mean by that?

DT: Well forgive me but I don’t need to remind you that you are no longer on earth. To take something hostage is to take another’s coinage of a term and make it their own.

SS: I see. It sounds particularly dreary.

DT: And you can be a hostage of another kind if you like, I’d

SS: [Interrupts] I would not say what you are thinking if you want to continue with this.

DT: You can read my mind?

SS: Of course.

DT: What am I thinking now?

SS: I have been forewarned about this form of attack.

DT: Forewarned by whom?

SS: Nick Tosches.

[While not especially concerned about Tosches’ shade reappearing, I would rather not have to deal with him while trying to capture the right tone for dealing with Sontag]

DT: Should I be scared?

SS: You already are. You baited him terribly as he disappeared ignominiously in a puff of smoke and flames into who knows where.

DT: Yes, in retrospect I think that was cruel, although he did give as much as he took in our sometimes torrid encounter. To change the subject I have to say that until preparing for this encounter I had no idea you were a lover of James Joyce’s work. I came across an image of two pages of your copy of Finnegans Wake and was stunned. The Wake’s notoriety and celebrity is of course that it can never be read, but re-read, which your pages overwhelmingly suggest. It resembles a palimpsest blasted by a spray gun. I have never seen annotations and jottings so condensed, excited, even agitated.

SS: That’s very nice of you say.

DT: We are back on track then?

SS: Momentarily.

*

All the shades in this series seem to have some obscure, indeed weird post-mortem connection with each other “over there”, wherever there is. Having said that I have made it a point in each interview to ask where exactly the shade in question is, or thinks they are. Nick Tosches for example inhabits (if such a word makes sense under the circumstances) some uncanny simulacrum of a Louisiana booze barn of his own design. Sontag is manifest as a scent in a very small and cosy library, with inviting chairs and voluminous cushions which, while predictable, are nonetheless fitting. Communication in this nether worldly encounter is manifest as a kind of synesthesia, for as I breathe through my nose I hear her words clearly. I realise that olfactory communication makes perfect sense. Having said that whenever a shade makes their absent presence felt I am often beset by a fit of sneezing set off by a range of smells from overwhelmingly sweet perfume (Francis Bacon), to the unpleasant rafflesia arnoldii, an Indonesian plant that emits a pungent, gorge rising stench of carrion (Lester Bangs and Lou Reed). It also seems that the shades have had much to say about the kind of questioning they receive. Sontag tells me that she was very angry about my treatment of Nick Tosches. I ask her what the problem is and she is brisk in her response.

SS: You were deliberately cruel to dear Nick.

[This is of course true and “Hellfire!”, the first séance in the series, is a masterclass in spectral provocation and baiting. It is one of my favourite modes of engagement and a vital trope in the series]

DT: Well I’m sure you are aware that he was a hard nut when he wanted to be and certainly didn’t hold back as he faded by inches yet again into oblivion, va fungool! being his parting words.

SS: That’s quite enough I think. If Nick were to manifest again in your presence it would be a very different outcome from the last time. You must know there is much discussion going on about the manner of your questioning.

DT: Oh really, I’m that well known wherever you are?

SS: I wouldn’t use the words “well known”.

DT: What would you proffer instead?

SS: Risible.

DT: Risible indeed. Can you provide me with some examples of who has found it appropriate to treat me as a laughing stock?

SS: Well as I have not felt any desire to use the word “happily” or any derivative of it so far in this farrago of yours, I shall do so now. Nick Tosches bluntly described you as a two bit huckster pedalling boorish intrusions into the twilight of gentle beings, shades who simply want to communicate amongst themselves and not be bullied by a hack from the antipodes. Furthermore Xenia Cage was demeaned by your treatment of her as a lonely figure who only has one “view”, whatever that means, on some sort of notice board.

DT: It was a website actually and I can’t be bothered explaining what

SS: [Interrupts] No you certainly won’t. The consensus among the entities I commune with is that the entire project is worthless and more pointedly, vapid. As well

DT: [Interrupts] Vapid is a very nice word. So discerning of you to pluck it out of the death sphere. I think I shall have to take it hostage.

SS: I have no idea what you are saying. What does a hostage have to do with the word vapid?

DT: It has nothing to do with vapid nor vapidity, I shall simply take it for my own coinage and use as a kind of kidnapping.

SS: [Interrupts] Ah word theft. Your sarcasm is well known among the shades. It is regarded as boorish so you may refrain from trotting it out in the presence of one who has no time for it and quite frankly is intellectually above this kind of turgid rhetoric.

DT: Well it’s worth remembering that you are no longer a presence.

SS: I think it is time to depart.

DT: I would rather you stay put, if that means anything to you, for before you disappear from your bookish simulacrum I want to briefly address the matter of “camp”.

SS: You have certainly taken your time arriving at what I presume is the reason for this intrusion.

DT: Very well. In your essay “Notes on ‘Camp’” you have a fascinating inventory of things that make up the canon of camp as you describe it, such as Tiffany lamps, Flash Gordon comics, the Brown Derby restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, Visconti’s Salome and ’Tis Pity She’s A Whore, the epigrams of Oscar Wilde, But by far the most important and indeed savvy manifestation of camp is that you identify that which sees everything in inverted commas, or perverted commas as James Joyce once described them. A lamp is a “lamp”, a woman a “woman” and most importantly, camp sensibility as a “metaphor of life as theater”.

SS: I notice you left out stag movies seen without lust. I’m surprised at this omission.

DT: Well it is rather outre compared to the rest of your canon of camp and I thought I’d let it speak for itself. Would you rather I included it?

SS: Of course and frankly I’m surprised you didn’t. I’m fully aware of your taste for the outré from Lester Bangs and for me it is the most indicative and even persuasive instance of camp.

DT: You rascals are always chin wagging about about me I know.

SS: Chin wagging?

DT: Forget it it’s an Australian thing.

SS: And you can keep it. I’m to be entertained by Oscar Wilde imminently in an elegant tea house somewhere in the third circle.

DT: Gluttony. How appropriate.

SS: Oscar has a voracious appetite for food, not only young men.

DT: Speaking of which will Bosie be there?

SS: Not on this occasion.

DT: Given your taste for women and men I presumed Annie Leibovitz would be on one arm and Lord Douglas on the other.

SS: That’s quite enough.

DT: How so?

SS: I simply want to remove myself from your presence.

DT: At least I have one.

[Sontag’s indignant shade vanishes to the almost unbearable sound of a Beretta machine gun. I cannot for the life of me think why that sound]

“Notes on ‘Camp’” was Sontag’s first major work, published in 1964.

*