Sempre Susan is novelist Sigrid Nunez’s brief, stinging memoir of her life tucked under the wing of Susan Sontag, who was her mentor, great influence, tormentor, and boyfriend’s mother.
At the age of 25, Nunez, a recent Columbia grad, came to work alongside Sontag as her secretary. Within weeks she had started dating Sontag’s son, David Rieff, and within months she had joined the two in their apartment on the Upper West Side. A very unconventional arrangement— but as Sontag told Nunez, “Who says we have to live like everyone else?”
Sontag always a step ahead of Nunez, constantly delivering nuggets of sometimes brilliant, sometimes questionable advice about everything from sushi to film to correct writing habits. In describing her life with Sontag and Rieff, Nunez creates a portrait of bohemian life in 1970s New York. With precise, simple but devastating clarity, she shows how an intense influence can be as deforming as it is enlightening. For Nunez, who went on to become an acclaimed author and teacher, Sontag’s personal and intellectual influence lasted much longer than their friendship: “She traveled so much that everywhere I go, she has been there before me.”
Sigrid Nunez has published six novels: A Feather on the Breath of God, Naked Sleeper, Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury, For Rouenna, The Last of Her Kind, and Salvation City.
"She could not have cared less if a person came from a “good” or a “bad” family; she knew the distinction was specious. Wherever you were from, what really mattered to her was how smart you were—for, needless to say, she was an elitist. And if you had taste and were intellectually curious, you didn’t even have to be that smart. And if you were gorgeous, you didn’t have to be smart at all. "
-Sigrid Nunez, Sempre Susan
