Maestros and Monsters: Days and Nights with Susan Sontag and George Steiner
Robert Boyers
Dryad Press, 2023
“Robert Boyers still doesn’t get it,” Susan Sontag declares from the podium, high above the enraptured spectators. At this moment in her lecture, her hostility is being directed towards those she believed haven’t given her efforts in fiction writing and drama their proper due. Her evaluators had acclaimed Against Interpretation but their dismissal of The Volcano Lover or Alice in Bed must be addressed. “After many years of doing this,” Sontag reiterates, irritated that Professor Boyers had referred to her as a “major essayist, thinker, and intellectual,” in his introductory remarks. “He doesn’t get it.”
Why has she chosen Robert Boyers as her public objective? Professor Boyers is a primary contributor to the intellectual, collegiate cultural milieu that has brought Sontag to this talk. He has taught her essays to his students and written fair, tough reviews in response. As her friend and publisher, he has organized her travel, and hotel stay. His colleagues are in the audience. Having introduced her, he is standing nearby, eager for her lecture. He will likely help her down the aisle after the talk is over, and later take her out to an expensive restaurant on his dime. Of all the people in the world that merit Sontag’s civility, Professor Boyers would be first in line. And now, not only has Professor Boyers been publicly embarrassed, but he must further wrestle with Sontag’s indifference to this nasty jab, her aversion towards either justification or apology.
Such outbursts frequent Maestros & Monsters: Days and Nights with Susan Sontag and George Steiner, Professor Boyers’ memoir of his colleagueship with Sontag and Steiner, two rock star intellects that dominated the latter half of the twentieth century. At first glance, the book appears to be a gossipy, wince-inducing recollection of two petulant and insecure scholars desperate to prove their genius. Detonations of condescension, anger and humiliation mark what is otherwise a romantic chronicle of life as a literature professor at Skidmore College, and the founder and editor of the quarterly “little magazine,” Salmagundi.
Yes, much of this narrative isn’t pleasant. No matter her celebrity and intelligence, Sontag is often a bully, and ostentatiously proud of her work. She takes special affront at Professor Boyers’ insistence that he thinks of her as simply,” one of America’s greatest essayists.” Any little alleged slight or inconvenience sets her off, including a bizarre episode when she harangues Professor Boyers for publicly referring to her as, “Susan.” Or another, when she bitches a New York City cab driver to such an extent that the entire car is thrown out. George Steiner is somewhat more agreeable, though smug about his knowledge, close-minded towards his critics, and a little too well-read for his own good – No, most are probably not aware that, “Keats’s equation of truth and beauty could not be demonstrated in the sphere of music,” as Steiner mockingly presumes. Professor Boyers appears tickled, towards the end of the narrative, when he exhibits how Steiner’s mind was often a bit too quick for his pen, and of the times when a textual reference didn’t wholly align with the argument.
The petulant behavior of these two shouldn’t be of any real surprise in our idol-obsessed world. Academia is a small pond. During their time, both were deities of public-intellectualism, independent and unconventional, relishing the spotlight at conferences, lectures, and debates. Like many who have scaled a greasy pole in an underappreciated, low-paying industry, they’re selfish upon reaching the top, and combative against potential climbers. Looking back over the years, Professor Boyers must’ve been shaking his head at all the tantrums he oversaw and petty conflicts he defused. At times, Sontag’s meanness is almost comically abusive. Her portrait is riffed with derisive haranguing at the trivial of probes, and full-fledged opinions on books she hadn’t read. Many scenes feature a hysterical Sontag played-off a rather calm and mature Professor Boyers, waiting like an understanding parent for it to pass. As for Steiner, the mindboggling vastness of his erudition gave him perceived right to demean and deconstruct anyone who wasn’t as uniquely gifted as he. One singular anecdote finds Professor Boyers as a young academic, applying for a position at New York University’s Graduate Seminar. He is ridiculed by Steiner for his unproficiency in the German language – no matter that the class would be working off translation. Thankfully, he’s rescued by Connor Cruise O’Brien.
It's the portrayals of thinkers and writers like O’Brien, Nadine Gordimer, James Wood, and Edward Said, that further explain the purpose behind such a book, more so than Professor Boyers’ reflections on the title figures. Much of this memoir is set at various dinners, conferences, and symposiums where arguments are volleyed and feelings are hurt. The atmosphere is taut with argument. Although Professor Boyers is politely dismissive of his own accomplishments, he has a lengthy bibliography of articles and books that stands up against any other. Salmagundi might not have the sales and outreach of The New Yorker, but its archive is packed with a who’s who of liberated, dissenting shooting-stars of Western intelligentsia. That Gordimer would send him a packet of her new stories for his editors to choose from before she sent the remnants to “big magazines” is a statement to the respect those have for his publication. Although the characters are showy, there isn’t anything superficial about their beliefs. Yes, Professor Boyers must play diplomat. Though when looking back upon the text, there is little resentment to be found. This is a world of letters and their writers. Tantrums can be forgiven.
For a book so stuffed with the love of intellectuals and their ideas, Professor Boyers’ wastes little time explaining exactly it was that each argued for. The book is mostly pastoral and anecdotal, and any true, gritty intellectualism would’ve been a distracting sidebar. Professor Boyers is perhaps hinting at the decline in intellectual merit. In a general sense, it doesn’t matter what they’d fought for. The old and beloved books are lost and forgotten. Sontag has some relevance – Steiner was a little too heady to make much impact and is rarely read outside of classrooms. Both represent a utopic period of American letters, where intellectuals battled to the death over the smallest of disagreements. In a way, even their paper-thin sensitivity is admirable. Steiner’s refusal to shake Edward Said’s hand after the latter gave a hostile review to George Steiner: A Reader seems obnoxious until one rationalizes the seriousness of academic work. Arguing over a book or an idea until both parties become enraged might seem foreign, but it’s refreshing in our stale and superficial world that such people ever existed. “The critic” and their “work” are one in the same, so that any misperceived comment is taken personally. In the end, it’s the strong, thick culture of ideas and argument that Professor Boyers is celebrating in this memoir, more than any nasty chinwag at his old friend’s successes or failures.
Having reached old age himself, Professor Boyers must be aware of how much has changed since he was a young scholar, that the academy is much too plagued by groupthink to produce the sort of bold scholarship that rocked the previous generations, that academics are too stale, worried, and cautious to produce dissent, that the students attending college are there for degrees and professions, and not intellectual development. There’s no sense that students will remember a Sontag essay a year after they write their response. The undertowing theme to this recollection is a ‘so long, goodbye’ to his world of profound people and their bookish ideas. As his old friends and colleagues have passed on and have been replaced by the banal 21st-century philosopher-follower producing copy-cat books, Professor Boyers’ nostalgias for independent thought should be seen as the prologue for our bright future, not the useless fragments of the cobwebbed past. Upon further reflection, one is brought back to that unfortunate moment when Sontag perorated him upon that stage. As hurtful as it might have been at the time, there’d been something admirable about belief in art – belief ingrained deep and sharp that even public derision is necessary.