On writing, narcissism, and being gay

Explore yourself along with Susan Sontag and my unsolicited commentary.

From arthurhidden

Much of life is indulgence. And a lot of that is indulgence not just for the self but of the self.

Writing & the Self: Having a Big Ego

One major indulgence is, ironically enough, writing.

Susan Sontag had a complicated relationship with “the self” and “writing.”

On December 31, 1957, she asked in a personal journal,

Why is writing important? Mainly, out of egotism, I suppose. Because I want to be that persona, a writer, and not because there is something I must say. Yet why not that, too? With a little ego-building — such as the fait accompli this journal provides — I shall win through to the confidence that I (I) have something to say, that should be said.

My ‘I’ is puny, cautious, too sane. Good writers are roaring egotists, even to the point of fatuity. Sane me, critics, correct them — but their sanity is parasitic on the creative faculty of genius.

(For those unfamiliar, as I was, a fait accompli is something already established or past that just has to be accepted.)

So, I guess I’m a roaring egotist — if I’m good, anyway.

But isn’t that true, in a way? Doesn’t it have to be true? Especially today, it takes a certain confidence to even hope that someone will read what you think and actually enjoy it.

Earlier that same year, Sontag noted,

Being self-conscious. Treating one’s self as an other. Supervising oneself.

Two years later, Sontag hits a similar chord.

Result of self-consciousness: audience and actor are the same. I live my life as a spectacle for myself, for my own edification. I live my life but I don’t live in it.

As we write — as we’re self-conscious as much as we are egotistic — we’re opening ourselves up as much as we limit ourselves. We write to be our true selves, but there’s always a loss with the knowledge that others will read what we bare our souls to write.

August 13, 1961:

To write you have to allow yourself to be the person you don’t want to be (of all the people you are)…

It’s an interesting perspective when considered as a whole. It’s just as likely that Sontag was just exploring and evolving and this isn’t necessarily one narrative, ut there’s something to be said for compiling and considering the thoughts a person has over time, however conflicting.

And what the self is, who the fuck knows.

Attraction, Narcissism, & Being Gay

Which can really affect how you date.

When you’re dating someone that looks like you — when I date a woman, for example — it’s easy to be self conscious but also feel…vain.

Sontag wrote on December 28, 1959,

Til now I have felt that the only persons I could know in depth, or really love, were duplicates or versions of my own wretched self….

Or, simply questioned in September 1949,

“How much of homosexuality is narcissism?”

I feel this sometimes. I’m a confident person; I find myself attractive. Wouldn’t I want someone that makes me feel the same way? But then — wouldn’t I get just as jealous of them as I get self-conscious?

Sontag observed on December 30, 1957,

“…physical beauty is enormously, almost morbidly, important to me.”

On Reading the Journals of a Woman Passed On

I’ve been exploring Sontag’s journals and how they’ve affected me much more than usual recently. Do I feel bad about delving into and analyzing some of her “private” thoughts?

Absolutely not.

Sontag herself wrote on December 31, 1957,

The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefor (alas) is does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather — in many cases — offers an alternative to it….I am thinking now of what I read today…in Harriet’s journal about me….Do I feel guilty about reading what was not intended for my eyes? No. One of the main (Social) functions of a journal or diary is precisely to be read furtively by other people, the people (like parents + lovers) about whom one has been cruelly honest only in the journal.

Check out these quotes and more in *Reborn: Journals and Notebooks 1947–1963 *by Susan Sontag, edited by David Rieff