sites of identification

Being Sontag-whore, I purchased Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, a selection of journal and notebook entries by Susan Sontag edited by her son, David Rieff. Naturally, this sparked off a series of comparisons in which I trawled the pages for glimpses of myself in the person of Sontag. I am taking the cultural phenomenon of fan-boying to creepier and more shameless levels. 

Susan, age 15:

... And what is it to be young in years and suddenly wakened to the anguish, the urgency of life?

It is then to be blind to the faults of the rebellious, to yearn painfully, wholly, after all opposites of childhood's existence. It is impetuousness, wild enthusiasm, immediately submerged in a flood of self-deprecation. It is the cruel awareness of one's own presumption...

Me, age 15:

I look at my report book as if it was a bad smell. I type and get more frustrated because language is such a limiting way of expressing oneself, despite the supposed vastness of vocabulary and diction available. As if we pick up stock words and phrases from a supermarket shelf and arrange them nicely in the cart. I am infuriated when caught in the whole pretence of cultural constructs and expectations, and the roles, and the expectations, and the responsibilities, and the expectations.

(Well sure, she obviously articulates teenage angst with greater elegance than I do.)

Susan, age 15:

Wasted the evening with Nat [Nathan Sontag, SS's stepfather]. He gave me a driving lesson and then I accompanied him and pretended to enjoy a Technicolor blood-and-thunder movie.

After writing this last sentence, I read it again and consider[ed] erasing it. I should let it stand, though.—It is useless for me to record only the satisfying parts of my existence—(There are too few of them anyway!) Let me note all the sickening waste of today, that I shall not be easy with myself and compromise my tomorrows.

Me, age 15:

And my father is complaining about the teachers who have started to call in sick already. (Before I had to fix the "My Gmail's all in Hebrew!" problem.) I asked Esther where the postcard box was, and she said Isn't it that G&H thing? and I said No I think we've changed it now, so she got up and found the old biscotti box that we transferred the postcards to and I said Oh I remember now! And we were happy. [...]

Am I so bored? Do I have to resort to mentioning such insignificant bits of information henceforth? I'm just tired of learning things that I don't feel much for. 

(Hey! We had share the same experience of futility and embarrassment in our writing and recording of our lives! We could have been besties. Intellectual Besties, of course.)

Susan, age 16:

I was very moved by Goethe, although I think I'm far from understanding it—the Marlowe is just about mine though — for I put in a good deal of time into it, re-reading it several time, and declaiming many of the passages aloud again and again. 

Me, age 16:

I've just returned home from watching wall-e with elizabeth! It is exponentially more appealing than the clone wars. Ha. 

On a sliding scale of Pixar movies, it's in the same league as The Incredibles, and better than last year's Ratatouille. At least, I've never gone misty-eyed as a result of watching robots holding hands to tunes that seem to come from a crackly old transistor radio (in actuality, it was a grimy iPod nano. I guess in years to come, that could translate to a kind of romanticism for people like us).

(I am not exceedingly insightful when comparing works of art, am I? Still, I don't say things like the Harper Lee is just about mine though, etc.)

Susan, age 16:

I HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED TO CHICAGO WITH A SCHOLARSHIP OF $765

Me, age 16:

I've returned home, and I noticed that I had an email from Them.

It redirected me to the ISP where I was informed by an electronically-generated message that I did not get in. But it came with best wishes! I am so deeply touched. 

Shall invest my time somewhere more worthwhile then.

(Clearly, you can see the juxtaposition between our various fates. Well here I am, and I haven't looked back since.)