A book a day: Susan Sontag: Declaration. Tales gathered

Original language: English
Original title: Debriefing: Collected Stories..
Translation: several
Year of publication: 2018
Valuation: recommendable.

It is logical that after the stimulating reading of his biography he chose, with some urgency, to read, I would almost say that hot, some of the texts that Moser’s exhaustive text was breaking down and quoting. Curious, equally, that despite her influence on Western culture, Sontag was recovered by this blog in one of those thematic weeks, that of forgotten authors. And she would not say that a certain intellectuality deeply rooted in that global obsession with NY and the US may have had a certain snowball effect. Even with his colossal figure very present, this compilation of his short work (that is, neither novels nor essays) has seemed quite irregular to me and, to my confusion, contains some stories that I have had a hard time finishing and even assimilating in their context.

Let’s attribute this to the temporal scope of their publication dates, at first. Although we could also speculate that the strange progression of the New York writer’s short narrative seems to be a reflection of her complex personality and the personal vicissitudes that marked her, from her precocity to her difficult acceptance of her sexuality, passing through her problems. of health.

This is a collection, its title says, of short stories. But it includes chronicles, almost theatrical dalliances, some texts that seem like mere notes, whether they are about larger projects or almost experiments in style. And it is curious, one of those that leaves the greatest mark on the reader is the first, an almost youthful text full of naivety in which he tells how, together with a companion, they decide to contact Thomas Mann (at that time living in the United States). ) to interview him. The entire process, from the timid telephone contact to the pure interview, is a delight in that we already perceive that the future writer was not a person who was content with the surface of things, and that her curiosity pushed her to search for a way, we would see in the future, as determined as it is insatiable. The one that gives its title to the collection is a story that seems important in Sontag’s work. A convulsive, speculative internal dialogue that combines naked sincerity with a kind of spell of references that would include her firm social commitment and her untidy life, always with the interposition of cryptic references that seem alter egos of herself and her inner circle. On the other hand, stories like Dr Jekill They are hard, almost impenetrable games of metaphors that disorient and confuse. Of course, always after a measured and elegant prose, scrupulous in its forms and forceful in its background. With some detail that would link it to post-modernism (in North American spirits) or even with palpable influences such as Salinger or Capote, always perceiving enormous respect for language and narrative structure. And although the set turns out – let us remember that it is a posthumous compilation and we do not know if the author would have approved the sequence – somewhat irregular and disjointed, the peaks of quality present justify a firm and decisive recommendation.