In this part, the third of four, Sontag tells the story of how she came to direct a production of Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot” in 1990s war-torn Sarajevo, a project that was lauded by some as brilliant and brave, but also excoriated by others as decadent and pretentious. Throughout the discussion with Evan Solomon, Sontag resists the urge to make her work about her own personal experiences or personality and continues to show the thoughtful and deliberate reasoning that underpins much of her writing.
Writers Off the Page is a biweekly podcast series produced by Toronto Public Library that presents the best of 40 years from the archives of the Toronto International Festival of Authors (formerly known as IFOA: International Festival of Authors). Between 10-20 minutes long, episodes feature interviews, readings and discussions with some of the 20th century's best-known writers.
Works by Susan Sontag
“Godot Comes to Sarajevo” (New York Review of Books article)
Books about Susan Sontag
Swimming in a Sea of Death: a Son’s Memoir by David Rieff
Sempre Susan: a Memoir of Susan Sontag by Sigrid Nunez
Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser
Other Related Books or Materials
Waiting for Godot: Tragicomedy in Two Acts by Samuel Beckett
Ubu Roi: Drama in Five Acts by Alfred Jarry
Regarding Susan Sontag: a 2015 documentary
About the Host
Novelist Randy Boyagoda is a professor of English at the University of Toronto and principal of St. Michael’s College, where he holds the Basilian Chair in Christianity, Arts, and Letters. He is the author of three novels: Original Prin, Beggar's Feast, and Governor of the Northern Province. His fiction has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize (2006) and IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize (2012), and named a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice Selection (2012 and 2019) and Globe and Mail Best Book (2018). He contributes essays, reviews, and opinions to publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, First Things, Commonweal, Harper’s, Financial Times (UK), Guardian, New Statesman, Globe and Mail, and National Post, in addition to appearing frequently on CBC Radio. He served as President of PEN Canada from 2015-2017.
Music is by Yuka
From the Archives
Writers Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA is the first series associated with the Toronto Public Library’s multi-year digital initiative, From the Archives, which presents curated and digitized audio, video and other content from some of Canada’s biggest cultural institutions and organizations.
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Thanks to the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) for allowing TPL access to their archives to feature some of the best-known writers in the world from moments in the past. Thanks as well to Library and Archives Canada for generously allowing TPL access to these archives.
[OPENING MUSIC SEGMENT FADE-IN)]
RANDY: Welcome to Writers Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA. This podcast series is a part of a multi-year digital initiative from the Toronto Public Library, From the Archives, which presents curated and recently digitized audio, video and other content from the archives of some of Canada’s most important institutions and organizations. I'm Randy Boyagoda.
RANDY: Today's episode of Writers Off the Page features the third of four parts with American writer and thinker Susan Sontag. If you haven’t heard the previous parts of this series with Susan Sontag, not to worry. The four episodes that make up this interview can be listened to in any order, but to get the full sense of the scope and scale of this conversation - as well as Sontag’s fire and spark that comes out in the conversation, be sure and bookmark the entire four episode cycle so that you don’t miss any of them.
TEASER: In Berlin in early 1945, when the city was being razed to the ground by British and American aircraft and 90% of Berlin was destroyed, the Berlin Philharmonic was still playing and people were still going to concerts. So this is not something that vanishes, this is in fact something people want, and they feel very offended when you patronize them and say, "Oh, well you need medical care and you need food and you need shelter". And "Why do you need art? You don't need that, that's for peace time". No, they want it more than ever, they want it more than ever.
RANDY: Who goes to a war zone to spend more time with her child? Follow-up question: what’s worse, the intellectual who does nothing, or the intellectual who tries to do something? The occupational hazard of being someone who thinks about the world and thinks things should be different, never mind better, is that the very nature of your work opens you up to the charge that the most you do is, well, think, and talk, and write, often enough at the expense of your relationships to your loved ones. Meanwhile, others actually go, and risk, and rescue, and defend, and fight. Susan Sontag once said her greatest dream was to write for Partisan Review and have 5000 readers. She had that, and achieved far more than that, not least because she was willing to go into the hard loud world and try to do something other than think and talk and write.
In this part of her conversation with Evan Solomon, Sontag talks about her experience of spending time in 1990s Sarajevo during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, and reflects on why she went, what she wanted to do, what she ended up doing and, most importantly, why she did what she did. This was travel that was inspired in part by her son David’s going there earlier to write about the situation and then encouraging his mother to join him. And just as Sontag was criticized and even attacked for what she wrote about the Vietnam War after visiting North Vietnam, and likewise for what she had to say about radicalized Islamic terrorists immediately, and I mean immediately after the 9/11 attacks, in the pages of The New Yorker, she was certainly open to charges of irrelevance, myopia, and even decadence, for what she ended up doing in bombed out Sarajevo: directing a production of Waiting for Godot. Sontag’s account of why she did this — which involves unexpected offerings of world history, personal humility, and even a very warm and unexpected connection to someone in the audience — is worth hearing directly because it gives you a little reminder of the difficult pleasure of reading her work.
At her best, on the stage and even more so on the page, she can take your own preconceptions and presumptions and in a first-person way that holds herself up for critique as well, elegantly, surgically destroy them. In turn, she invites you take a more complex view of a situation like, for instance, what it means, what it really means, to make art in a time and place of war.
This interview was recorded live at the International Festival of Authors (now called TIFA) in October of 2000, when Sontag came to town upon the occasion of the publication of her novel, In America.
ES: I'm thinking about that, art being useful. It's nice to say here, and we tend to come to easy agreement. But when you went to Bosnia, you directed a production of Waiting for Godot. And I think next to what was happening, that the harsh realities of what was going on there, where the needs were a lot more factual in the sense there was shelter needs and food needs and clean water needs and safety needs. How did you decide that one of those crucial needs was a production of Waiting for Godot? What else could that add to that situation?
SS: Well, this is a very misunderstood project of my life. And it's very funny to be telling you about it right now because in this audience, is my closest friend from Sarajevo, who is now a Canadian citizen and who was my assistant. Who was then a resident of Sarajevo, a translator and became a good friend, was my assistant on the Godot production. And had subsequently moved with her family to Canada and is Canadian. So although I can't see her because the lights are blinding, it's very amusing to me to be telling you this in her presence. First of all, I went to Bosnia because I was horrified and appalled by what I understood to be happening there. My son is a well-known journalist, had been there, had started to write about it for newspapers and said, "You really should see this." And of course, he was risking his life, I was risking my life entering the city under siege. A very difficult thing to do in full battle dress and a UN troop plane, etcetera. I came with an official of a humanitarian organization and I came to see what I could see, also to share the danger, 'cause my heart was in my mouth when my son had been there earlier in '93. And in some way, I wanted to bond with him and share that risk and just to see what I could see and maybe to write something also or maybe to see if I could be useful.
SS: I spent a couple of weeks there. I met this friend, Amelisa, and she's in the audience this evening. I met a lot of other people, and I decided to come back and stay in the city and I said, "What can I do?" And they said... I said, "I wanna come back and do something." Well and said, "What can you do?" And I said, "Well I could be a paramedic. I have some medical skills. I can type, I can teach, especially small children. I could... " Because the schools were closed of course. "I could make a movie, I know how to make films, but as I could direct in the theater." They said, "Direct in the theater." They chose it. I didn't choose it. And I said, "What do you want me to do that for?" "Well, we're not animals, you know. We're not people who just wanna cringe in cellars and stand on breadlines and be shot at." I said, "You want me to direct in the theater?" "Oh, we've got a lot of actors here. They don't have anything to do. We need culture, it's part of our dignity." You see, and so many people... First of all, I would never dream of going some place and saying, "I'm going to direct a play in war time."
[laughter]
SS: I'm insane. I was as surprised as you are imagining it. But the fact is, people want their dignity and the arts are part of human dignity. And they were astonished that I was astonished. They said precisely... In a way the opposite of what you're saying, they say, "it's not just that we're starving it's not just that we don't have electricity, we don't have running water, there's no glass in our windows we're freezing. It's colder indoors than it is outdoors." As I can testify 'cause I went back many, many times to Sarajevo, during the whole period of the siege. "But we, we don't have television, we don't... There's no theater there's no opera there's no ballet, there's no... The art galleries are shattered. We miss... There's no movies. We miss all this. We're people with a certain dignity." And even then, I wanna tell you all the times I was, in I think 11 times in Sarajevo for stays minimum of two weeks often as much as two months during the three years of siege, even I with all my experience of the place and I got to know it street by street, building by building, shell by shell, and sometimes 3000 shells would fall in the city in a single day.
SS: I would be surprised at the ordinariness of life in this horror. I remember I became friends with a woman whose a boyfriend was a lawyer, and finally I met the lawyer, boyfriend and I said, "Well I guess you don't have much to do now", and he said, "What are you talking about? Of course I have lots to do now. People are divorcing, suing each other for custody, suing for fraud, there are burglaries". He said, "I am very busy". And I said, "Really?" And he looked at me as if I was crazy. Well you think life stops just because people are being killed every day, just because people are being blown to bits and their apartments are being shattered and half the city is burning? Everything normal is going on. And that's a great lesson to learn, that's a great lesson to learn. There's no luxury in these matters.
SS: And as I say, even I made the same mistake not about theater because I was instructed when I was asked and the same for Godot it wasn't my idea, Godot. I had actually my idea when they said "Come and direct a play, what play would you want to do?" My first idea was Ubu Roi. I thought this would be great to do a farce of Ubu Roi with the King Ubu as Milosevic and the Queen Ubu as Markovic's wife. And I was gonna do this farce and then I said "Well, or of course I could do Waiting for Godot" and they said "Yes, Waiting for Godot, 'cause that's our situation, that's our situation". It was entirely their idea, but more important than that let's take the counter example, the horror, the horror, the horror.
SS: In Berlin in early 1945, when the city was being razed to the ground by British and American aircraft and 90% of Berlin was destroyed, the Berlin Philharmonic was still playing and people were still going to concerts. So this is not something that vanishes, this is in fact something people want, and they feel very offended when you patronize them and say, "Oh, well you need medical care and you need food and you need shelter". And "Why do you need art? You don't need that, that's for peace time". No, they want it more than ever, they want it more than ever.
ES: I'm thinking of that scene in In America, because there is this view that people... And there's prejudiced view of Eastern Europe and of I think sometimes Europe especially of immigrants where there's a scene where Maryna comes and she performs in the theater and she's going to become famous and someone says "now you're going to become fame and celebrity". And she looks at him and I can't quote the exact where she says "I know about fame and celebrity. We had it in Poland in the [unint.]. As if to say she actually looked down on America, as parochial place, and the Americans were shocked, that these immigrants had such thing as culture. You think that view is in a sense, still pervasive?
SS: Oh, well, I don't think that's true. I don't think that's what I said, but anyway, maybe that's... First of all I didn't say that because in fact the America of the 19th century was incredibly insecure about its culture and thought that everything good came from abroad. So...
ES: So that scene didn't happen?
SS: No, it didn't, but that's not what happened. No it's what she says is the opposite, "I know about commerce", it's just the opposite. He says, the manager, this is the impresario who interviews her is trying to explain to her that there is such a thing as star worship here and, and she says, "We know about stars." Not about culture, it's just the opposite, it's actually the reverse, of what you remember. He is under the impression that there's nothing but culture back in Europe and here in America, there is only commerce, stardom and celebrity worship. And she says, "Believe me, Mr. Warnock. We know about stardom in Europe too." It's about stardom. It's not about culture.
SS: Now, on the contrary, North America, I think it must have been true of Canada too, was incredibly insecure culturally in the 19th century, very colonial minded absolutely thought that everything good... All high culture was European. No, what they didn't understand was the all kinds of commercial motives back there as well. It was really the reverse. But the novel is about... I wanted to explore some of the... Well I wanted to explore. Now, the truth is, I didn't wanna do anything. I wanna tell a good story. In the telling of the story, I discovered that I could dramatize a lot of the paradoxes and cliches that surrounded this immigration experience. And it was quite interesting to adopt as main characters people who had an idea about the new world, these Polish people who come to America, they read Tocqueville, they know about America. America was already very, very famous in Europe, in the 19th century.
SS: And there were not only people who came in steerage like my ancestors, and a lot of other people of European origin in the United States, but there were people who came first class to America. There were educated people who chose to come to the United States. And I don't know enough about Canadian history, but I'm sure that there were people who came here, who really were looking for the new world, who wanted to reinvent themselves, to use your phrase. And a part of the interest I developed when I was telling the story of the Polish actress and her friends and husband and child, who come to America, is I could have two stories, to take up your word reinvention or self-invention. I could have the immigration story where you reinvent yourself. And then I could have the theater story because an actor is somebody who's reinventing himself or herself, becoming someone else. I am kind of attracted by that idea, and of people who take a journey. These are both journey novels, they're novels about, both The Volcano Lover, the one that takes place in the late 18th century, the one I published seven years ago, and this one, In America. They're both stories of foreigners who go some place else, and that's a very intense experience. But, English people in Italy, Polish people in America.
[END OF PART THREE]
[FADE IN OUTRO MUSIC]
RANDY: Susan Sontag was born in 1933, to parents of Jewish, Lithuanian, and Polish descent. She grew up in Los Angeles, studied in California, Chicago, Cambridge, MA, Paris and Oxford, and lived and wrote for the majority of her life in New York, where she died in 2004. She was survived by her long-time companion, the photographer Annie Liebowitz, and also by the writer David Rieff, her son from her marriage to the sociologist Philip Rieff.
Stay tuned for the final part of this four-part series.
RANDY: Writers Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA is a year-long podcast series that celebrates 40 years of the Toronto International Festival of Authors. It's produced by the Toronto Public Library. The Executive Producer is Gregory McCormick, and this episode was produced by Danielle McNally and me, Randy Boyagoda, with technical support from George Panayotou, Michelle De Marco, marketing support from Tanya Oleksuik, and research support from Marcella van Run.
Thanks to the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) for allowing TPL access to their archives to feature some of the best-known writers in the world from moments in the past. Thanks as well to Library and Archives Canada for generously allowing TPL access to these archives.
Writers Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA is the first part of a multi-year digital initiative called From the Archives, which features recently digitized audio, video and other content from some of Canada’s most important institutions and organizations.
For more about Writers Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA, visit tpl.ca/podcasts where you will find links to the books mentioned in each episode and links to other relevant materials in TPL’s collections.
Music is by YUKA.
I'm Randy Boyagoda and we'll be back soon with another episode of Writers Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA.