In a review of Susan Sontag's Journal Deborah Eisenberg writes,
Early in September 1957, she leaves for Oxford to continue her studies, effectively ending her marriage--as we understand sooner than she does. In Europe, where she continues to travel and study, she has several protracted and generally unhappy love affairs with women, and in 1959 she returns to New York. By the summer of 1963, when this volume leaves off, Sontag is trying to sort through another difficult love affair or two, is working on fiction, and, as always, is devouring great quantities of philosophy, social theory, music, theater, and, above all, literature. . . .
[Snip]
"Pain" is a word Rieff uses in his introduction, and it is the right one--there is so much pain here! And the dream of disclosure and revenge that is pain's index. We have been dared to read. Sontag did not destroy her journals nor did she restrict them. The wounds feel fresh, though the author--still amply capable of inflicting pain, herself--is beyond comfort.
Which put me in mind of a letter of condolence Einstein wrote, in the last year of his life, to the widow of his friend Michele Besso:
The gift of leading a harmonious life is rarely joined to such a keen intelligence, especially to the degree one found in him. But what I admired most about Michele was the fact that he was able to live so many years with one woman, not only in peace but also in constant unity, something I have lamentably failed at twice.
The largest share of misery comes from life at home, and the Sontags and Einsteins among us are not exempt. The objects of adulation and envy, their names virtually synonymous with "genius," yet unhappy on account of an inability to form satisfactory human attachments--laid low by the prevailing weather, a cold gray drizzle of domestic regret.
Wouldn't be surprised if Einstein was idealizing the Bessos' life together. When the whole story is known, what everyone deserves is pity.
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