My Favorite Writer

Sigrid Nunez, my favorite writer, spent years in the company of Susan Sontag. From these years, Nunez learned:

*Sontag always insisted on sitting close to the movie screen (which is a good policy).

*Sontag had no interest--or almost no interest--in nature and in animals.

*Sontag generally did not prepare for lectures, speaking engagements, classes.

*Sontag had very little patience for contemporary American literary fiction. She thought Updike and Roth were fine stylists--and that's all. Sontag's literary interests were W.G. Sebald, Juan Rulfo, and Joseph Brodsky.

*Sontag's response to the challenges of parenting: Drag your child to Film Forum, and have him sleep through whatever double header you've selected. Enjoy!

*Sontag was impossible with waiters. She treated them like cattle. One of her favorite moves was to request that the waiter produce a bizarre dish with no clear link to (not even a family resemblance with) any dish actually offered on the menu. When the waiter would calmly, inevitably say, "No, we don't serve that," Sontag would wave her hands and roll her eyes. "All right! All right!" she'd say, scornfully. "Don't get EXCITED. I was just ASKING." (Nunez wonders how a woman so intelligent could fail to grasp that, night after night, irritated waiters were covertly spitting in her soup.)

*In her First Act, Sontag seemed derisive toward medication and therapy. But, in her fifties, as she felt the world constricting, she did an "attitudinal 180." Mental health was now worth talking about.

As Sigrid Nunez prepares for her Big Season (she has inspired the newest Almodovar film), I may write more about her. I'm not sure. I'm grateful for her work.

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