Where the Stress Falls (2001)
I'd just gotten this book last week, started it, and had every intention of reading it, despite the fact that I've never been able to finish any of Susan Sontag's other books, and despite the fact that she plagiarized her last novel, In America. Then I read this essay by Ms Sontag in The New Yorker :
The disconnect between last Tuesday's monstrous dose
of reality and the self-righteous drivel and
outright deceptions being peddled by public figures
and TV commentators is startling, depressing.
The voices licensed to follow the event seem to
have joined together in a campaign to infantilize
the public. Where is the acknowledgment that
this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or
"liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world" but
an attack on the world's self-proclaimed
superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific
American alliances and actions? How many
citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing
of Iraq? And if the word "cowardly" is to be
used, it might be more aptly applied to those who
kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in
the sky, than to those willing to die themselves
in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a
morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of
the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were
not cowards.
Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything
is O.K. America is not afraid. Our spirit is
unbroken, although this was a day that will live
in infamy and America is now at war. But
everything is not O.K. And this was not Pearl Harbor.
We have a robotic President who assures us
that America still stands tall. A wide spectrum
of public figures, in and out of office, who are
strongly opposed to the policies being pursued abroad
by this Administration apparently feel free to
say nothing more than that they stand united behind
President Bush. A lot of thinking needs to be
done, and perhaps is being done in Washington and
elsewhere, about the ineptitude of American
intelligence and counter-intelligence, about options
available to American foreign policy,
particularly in the Middle East, and about what
constitutes a smart program of military defense.
But the public is not being asked to bear much of
the burden of reality. The unanimously
applauded, self-congratulatory bromides of a Soviet
Party Congress seemed contemptible. The
unanimity of the sanctimonious, reality-concealing
rhetoric spouted by American officials and
media commentators in recent days seems, well, unworthy
of a mature democracy.
Those in public office have let us know that they
consider their task to be a manipulative one:
confidence-building and grief management. Politics,
the politics of a democracyówhich entails
disagreement, which promotes candoróhas been replaced
by psychotherapy. Let's by all means
grieve together. But let's not be stupid together.
A few shreds of historical awareness might help us
understand what has just happened, and what may
continue to happen. "Our country is strong," we
are told again and again. I for one don't find this
entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is
strong? But that's not all America has to
be.
Of course the policy that she's saying needs to be rethought is American support for Israel and opposition to Saddam Hussein and radical Islamic fundamentalist terrorism. All well and good, such is her right as an American. It seems hardly necessary to point out though the delicious irony that, as a bisexual Jew, Ms Sontag would be put to death rather quickly were she to open her big yap in one of the countries she's apparently decided to side with against America and Israel.
And lest you think her self-loathing ends with her own gender and religion, try this quote, from her days supporting North Vietnam (Partisan Review, Winter 1967) :
The truth is that Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra,
Shakespeare, parliamentary government,
baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women,
Kant, Marx, Balanchine ballet et al.,
don't redeem what this particular civilization has
wrought upon the world. The white race is the
cancer of human history. It is the white race and
it alone--its ideologies and inventions--- which
eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it
spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of
the planet, which now threatens the very existence
of life itself.
What can we possibly learn, that is of any value, from an author who completely rejects Western Civilization ? As David Horowitz has noted, after getting cancer herself, Ms Sontag (who was only saved because of the medical advances that the culture she despises made possible) apologized : to cancer patients, for comparing the disease to Western Civilization, or "facism" as she called it.
So, I'll not be reading this book after all. But I have found
an appropriate use for it. Some of you will recall the old Sears
catalogue and the most common use to which it was put (for those of you
who are too young to recall, let me just say that it was kept in the outhouse,
back when it was hard to get ahold of paper products). The book now
resides in the john and I'm woofing down chili, baked beans, and corn on
the cob & washing it all down with Genesee Cream Ale.
(Reviewed:20-Sep-01)
Grade: (T (for toilet paper))
