From the Sontag archives

an interview with the late Eva Kollisch

Dear friends,

I was nervous—pathetically so, given all that other people are going through—to publish my essay on Israel and Palestine. I felt I should say something—but what—and how—and is it worth all the hate?

To my surprise, the responses were overwhelmingly positive. Opinion is shifting, though it is of course too little and too late for the thousands already killed. In any event, thanks to all who responded. To all those who subscribed in the last few days, welcome.

I am keeping this newsletter free. I don’t want to find myself pumping out “content,” and I am not trying to save the nation twice a week—but I do like doing this, and if you like reading it and would like to support my work, I would appreciate your taking out a paid subscription.

Or you can buy my new book: I’ve gotta ask!

---

Today I wanted to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, which is start publishing some of the massive archives accumulated in my years of work on Susan Sontag. If you thought that book was long, let me assure you: It could have been longer. In meeting with hundreds of people from every walk of cultural life, in dozens of countries all around the world, I gathered a real history of the twentieth century. It seems a shame to let it gather dust on my computer.

I thought about publishing a bit of it a few weeks ago, when Susan’s onetime girlfriend Eva Kollisch died in New York. I met Eva in her modest apartment on the Upper West Side about ten years ago. I was impressed by her. She was quite old. Her hearing was not great. There were a lot of pauses. I remember having to work hard to keep the conversation going.

But I also remember that, though she clearly was trying to be generous to Susan, her feelings were strikingly unmellowed by the sixty years that had passed since their relationship.

This was something I would encounter a lot in the course of interviewing Susan’s friends. People wanted to like her. Many fell in love with her; and when it was over, they were careful to give her credit where they thought it was due. But they remained puzzled by her.

When Eva died, her obituary in The New York Times touched on many of the aspects that we touched on in this interview.

But two words, “Susan Sontag,” aren’t mentioned. I am sure this was deliberate.

When my book came out, I got in some trouble with certain reviewers who thought I talked too much about sexuality or addiction. People don’t like to “reduce” great figures to such common human material.

But when I read this, I think of another way I could have gotten in trouble—something else that I didn’t think of then—something relatively new in our discourse. Like so many words, the word is overused and misused.

The word is: “spectrum.”

When Eva says: “There was something very wrong with Susan,” could it have been a form of autism?

I am not a psychologist, but one thing that always struck me is how many people tried to figure her out. Her behavior haunted people. She was constantly saying and doing things that normal people just don’t say and do. She hurt lots of people, and Eva was one of those people.

You’ll see in this interview that we did what I did with hundreds of others. We tried to figure Susan out. We tried to understand why she was the way she was. Maybe that missing word would have helped us.

---

Benjamin Moser: I think there's two different wills in which you are named. She left all her estate to you. You don't know this? In the 1960s.

Eva Kollisch: She left everything to me?

Benjamin Moser: Yeah. Well, to David and if David was dead, it would all go to you?

Eva Kollisch: When was that will made?

Benjamin Moser: 1965, 1966.

Eva Kollisch: That's possible. That was nice.

Benjamin Moser: Nice to know, yeah. Oh you didn't know that?

Eva Kollisch: No.

Benjamin Moser: Really?

Eva Kollisch: How would I know unless she told me?

Benjamin Moser: Well, I thought she would tell you.

Eva Kollisch: We had a very complicated relationship, but not—I don't know what to say.

Benjamin Moser: You were clearly very close then.

Eva Kollisch: Well, we were lovers and we were friends, on and off lovers and friends, but I was never the important lover. I was never the high up intellectual circles friend. I was a college teacher.

Benjamin Moser: Yeah, yeah. At Sarah Lawrence?

Eva Kollisch: Mmhmm (affirmative).

Benjamin Moser: Is that where you met her, at Sarah Lawrence?

Eva Kollisch: No. I'm trying to remember how I met her. It was the years when I was separating from my husband, then-husband, a German Jewish refugee and had my little boy. Lived very marginally in the Village, and hung out a little bit at some Bohemian clubs in the Village. I was good friends with Joe Chaikin.

Benjamin Moser: Oh really?

Eva Kollisch: Yeah. A wonderful man. Susan, she was very interested in Joe. All I know is that Joe and I would talk about Susan.

Benjamin Moser: He wouldn't talk about her?

Eva Kollisch: No, he would. We talk and talk, and he would tell me about someone, a lover who he is trying to leave. I said, "Well, that's what I'm trying to with Susan, leave." I said, "Well, let's call each other, report to each other whether we've left yet." It became more like a game, but it was serious.

Benjamin Moser: Yeah, I understand.

Eva Kollisch: I met Susan about 1961 or 1962. She was teaching in Columbia. She was on and off with other women. I found her very interesting, sort of wonderful and awful.

Benjamin Moser: Wonderful and awful?

Eva Kollisch: Yeah.

Benjamin Moser: Everybody says that. Yeah, yeah. In equal measure.

Eva Kollisch: Pardon me?

Benjamin Moser: Almost in equal measure. What was so wonderful about her?

Eva Kollisch: She was so alive, so alive and intellectually of course, all together engaged. Always burning and very quick to respond, very good in dialog. Sometimes funny. Some humor, some laughing, but she had a burning ambition, always. I was not attracted to that. It was a sort of road map for herself.

Benjamin Moser: Even then.

Eva Kollisch: Oh yes. I think from girlhood, from childhood.

Benjamin Moser: Yes, I think so too.

Eva Kollisch: I even respected it because it made her work very hard.

Benjamin Moser: Yes. It did.

Eva Kollisch: It took away some of the joy to be with someone if they’re always thinking of their epitaph.

Benjamin Moser: That's a good way of putting it. Were you a student at Columbia or were you teaching?

Eva Kollisch: I was doing a Master's in German, but I had no dealings with Columbia. She was teaching religion at that time.

Benjamin Moser: With Jacob Taubes?

Eva Kollisch: Well, he was an important influence. She was teaching the Old Testament. Very scholarly approach, but that didn't last long. She had taught at Sarah Lawrence quite shortly before I taught there so I knew about Sarah Lawrence and her.

Benjamin Moser: Oh really?

Eva Kollisch: Well, she was of course already a star of some sort. A young woman of such ego and such presence, but then she made everybody upset. You have to write a report at the end of the term, showing progress or showing problems, but she never wanted to turn them in. The office kept calling her. We can't graduate these students, we must know your report, and Susan wouldn't do it. She just wouldn't do it. Isn't that strange?

Benjamin Moser: Do you know why?

Eva Kollisch: I have no idea. I mean I think it's a lot of work and she was already maybe doing other things. She just wouldn't do it and I am angry at her for that too because I loved those girls and I know how important it is to help students look at their imperfections.

Benjamin Moser: Well, you were talking about Joe Chaikin and your involvement, so when did your sexual or personal involvement begin?

Eva Kollisch: 1962.

Benjamin Moser: Was she finished with Irene? Sort of?

Eva Kollisch: How to say ... I don't think so because I know she was with me for a while and then there was a crisis and then she had to go back to Irene. I was never the serious lover for her, nor she for me.

Benjamin Moser: You had somebody else because you were still married?

Eva Kollisch: I didn't have anybody else.

Benjamin Moser: But you knew it wasn't ...

Eva Kollisch: ... I couldn't, I would say I couldn't trust her enough to ever make a serious relationship.

Benjamin Moser: Why did you think that or why did you know that?

Eva Kollisch: I saw enough evidence of it, and in her relationship with me— not paying attention—or not using me, but something that I didn't fully understand. I didn’t know what I meant to her. I was quite beautiful then, but so was she. I was actually a novice, we did work on what you can do, but it wasn't ...

Benjamin Moser: ... I'll first ask and then I'll explain why I'm asking. What was she like sexually?

Eva Kollisch: Hungry.

Benjamin Moser: Hungry.

Eva Kollisch: Why are you asking?

Benjamin Moser: I'll tell you because a lot of people, she had many lovers I'm sure you know that.

Eva Kollisch: Yeah.

Benjamin Moser: A lot of people said that she was very uncomfortable sexually.

Eva Kollisch: Yeah, she was.

Benjamin Moser: There's this thing in her work, the real reason I'm interested, she writes quite a lot about this division between mind and body and her sexuality is very, it's very problematic in a way it wouldn't have been for a less cerebral person.

Eva Kollisch: A less cerebral person?

Benjamin Moser: Yeah, I mean she's always thinking about it and talking about it, but not in the way ... some people are just very sexual in a natural way and she had a lot of sex, but it seems forced. It seems difficult. It's anguish. She writes this in her journal, so that's why I wonder. It's a very central thing in her work.

Eva Kollisch: Sensuality?

Benjamin Moser: No, the lack of sensuality.

Eva Kollisch: The lack of sensuality. It's very hard for me to say. She was not my first lesbian lover, but almost. I mean I had a little someone who had initiated me on and off was there, but Susan was my first love affair with a woman. I can't give her a grade as a lover. She was simply quite avid. I don't know. There was very little freedom in Susan.

Benjamin Moser: That's what I mean.

Eva Kollisch: Playfulness?

Benjamin Moser: No.

Eva Kollisch: A serious lover. She had humor, but only in a very limited way. I don't know. I'm babbling, I really don't know what to say about that. I felt that intellectually it was a good relationship. I learned a lot. I gave something, it was fun.

Benjamin Moser: How long did that last? Throughout the 1960s?

Eva Kollisch: No.

Benjamin Moser: No.

Eva Kollisch: I would say that probably 1967 it was over and she was in Europe more. Then we would see each other and get all excited, but we didn't really continue. Then by 1970 something she introduced me to Lilly Engler.

Benjamin Moser: To who?

Eva Kollisch: Lilly.

Benjamin Moser: I don't know her.

Eva Kollisch: She was not my lover anymore and she says I think you should have a new lover and I know who. I had already heard about her. She was a psychoanalyst and very musical. Susan was by then going after Carlotta and having something with I forgot who else. She said, “It's like eating something very rich and delicious.”

Benjamin Moser: [Laughs]

Eva Kollisch: “Of course she's stupid, but who cares.” I was shocked that she said that.

Benjamin Moser: Did you and Lilly in fact ...

Eva Kollisch: ... A long relationship, a very bad one, for maybe 10 years.

Benjamin Moser: Why was it bad?

Eva Kollisch: Lilly was not an honest person. She couldn't be honest with herself and in some deep way one could never know her. You never knew where she was. She was quite charming, but very Austrian.

Benjamin Moser: Yeah, yeah.

Eva Kollisch: [Foreign language 00:15:46 to 00:15:50].

Benjamin Moser: Yeah, yeah.

Eva Kollisch: She was in the music world and that interested me. I didn't know anything about the opera world, but she was not a truth teller. Her stories always had an element of non-truth. Susan was not a teller of truth either. She really didn't tell you very much about herself, about her parents, her sister. I can't say it was a lie, but it was unsatisfying.

Benjamin Moser: Yeah.

Eva Kollisch: Lilly had too many secrets. It was very painful to me, very personal. I was quite in love with her for a few years. Anyway, Susan was the link.

Benjamin Moser: Between Lilly and you?

Eva Kollisch: When she brought us together, the matchmaking.

Benjamin Moser: Oh, I thought you said [foreign language 00:16:49]. No, like [foreign language 00:16:54].

Eva Kollisch: [Foreign language 00:16:59].

Benjamin Moser: Yeah, yeah. Did you stay friends with Susan after that? Was your relationship mainly in the 1960s?

Eva Kollisch: Yeah. Well, in the 1970s I was with Lilly. By the 1980s I was with Naomi, the woman I love now.

Benjamin Moser: You're still with her?

Eva Kollisch: Yeah.

Benjamin Moser: Oh, good. Okay.

Eva Kollisch: For life.

Benjamin Moser: Yeah, yeah.

Eva Kollisch: She lives in the building. She might come up for a minute.

Benjamin Moser: Oh sure. I'd love to see her. Do you consider yourself a lesbian?

Eva Kollisch: I would consider myself a lover of women.

Benjamin Moser: Yeah.

Eva Kollisch: I have slept men quite satisfactorily. I was quite in love with my ex-husband.

Benjamin Moser: Yeah.

Eva Kollisch: You're not supposed to be bisexual, but I feel I actually was.

Benjamin Moser: Well Susan was too it seems, but I wonder if you ever talked to her about that question.

Eva Kollisch: No, never.

Benjamin Moser: Never? How interesting.

Eva Kollisch: Pardon me?

Benjamin Moser: That's interesting. It seemed to trouble her that she felt like she was neither one nor the other.

Eva Kollisch: Yeah.

Benjamin Moser: That she wasn't really gay and she wasn't really straight.

Eva Kollisch: Why would she say she wasn't really gay?

Benjamin Moser: She often said that because she had had affairs with men.

Eva Kollisch: Yeah.

Benjamin Moser: She had loved men, so in that sense.

Eva Kollisch: Well maybe those affairs weren’t what she made them out to be.

Benjamin Moser: Well I don't think they are, but with her it was ... she acted strangely about it. Well anyway, I just wondered if you ever discussed it with her. When you talked about her ambition when she was young, how did you see that? How did that manifest itself?

Eva Kollisch: In a way it was quite sweet; it was a kind of hero worship, you know? But I didn’t trust it. She was capable of making a model, creating any kind of model of ethics, of moral behavior and would stand there and explain to some other people what this is really all about. I mean, Susan was very interested in being morally pure, but at the same time, she was one of the most immoral people I know. Pathologically so. Treacherous.

Benjamin Moser: Really?

Eva Kollisch: Yes, yes. She couldn't help herself. I have never understood quite ... I don't even quite know what I mean by that. For example, to be more concrete: she wanted to be exemplary. In her politics in the Middle East, when she made Godot, where was that?

Benjamin Moser: Bosnia.

Eva Kollisch: Bosnia, yes. Let me gather my thoughts. First of all, when we were younger, I was a Trotskyist. I had been a Trotskyist in my youth, but what I kept from that was a very strong aversion to anything Stalin or anything Stalinist. I kept a little sentimentality about comradeship and still wished to have a revolution that would change capitalism and injustice. That was my morality, but it was full of hopelessness. I saw this wasn't going anywhere. Now, Susan was so confused politically. I had to feel sorry for her because she loved Castro. She didn't understand what was really going on in Russia, and she didn't want to. So many people don't, you know. We used to spend hours arguing about it. It was immoral of her not to want to know the truth.

Benjamin Moser: Even about Stalin?

Eva Kollisch: She knew he was a monster, but she was sentimental about Communism at a time when Communism was torturing and killing. But then one day she bit the bullet. That was with Norman Mailer and Carnegie Hall?

Benjamin Moser: Town Hall.

Eva Kollisch: Town Hall.

Benjamin Moser: That was many years later.

Eva Kollisch: That was many years later. When was that?

Benjamin Moser: That was '82 or something. '81, '82. You're talking about when you were young. The '60's.

Eva Kollisch: I'm skipping over. This wasn't continuous. I didn't see her all the time. I didn't check up on her larger politics. This earlier aberration of Communism and Soviet Union was like a very naive person, and wanting so much to believe this I felt sorry for her. Later on, when she became very engaged in Bosnia and these places, I admired her for doing what she did, but I can't help it, I felt there was an element of being on the stage, giving a model of what brave and heroic behavior really is. I've seen Susan in so many situations in which she could be really unkind to a person sitting right there and at the same time spouting very lofty ideals. I've never understood Susan's self-image. Who is she? She was addressing herself all the time, "Am I living up to this? Will I?" But who was she trying to live up to?

Benjamin Moser: Yes.

Eva Kollisch: But I too admire what she did. You can admire that, you don't have to be like that. She was an interesting woman, Susan, no question about it.

Benjamin Moser: You used the word "pathological" about her and morality. What are you referring to?

Eva Kollisch: Betrayal. A very concrete example, but it really pains me. When I was young, I didn't have a PhD. I did advanced courses at NYU in comparative literature. I didn't have to have a PhD, I didn't give a shit, but my mother wanted me to, and that's important. I was teaching English. I had a child and I made little money, and I had taken all my graduate courses at NYU at that point. I had to write a dissertation. I even came up with a topic. The topic was the city in the 19th century European novels. It was the '60s and the city was very interesting. So I had my topic. Susan says, "I'm going to get you a scholarship from the American Association of University Women. All I have to do is write them. They adore me and you will have it." She never did it. She was in Russia. I wrote her, "You'll have to send that right away if you're going to send it at all." She said she had already sent the letter, but she never did. How do I know that? Because an academic colleague of mine either looked himself or had someone else look through the files and there was no letter from Susan in the file. Why would it have gotten lost from Russia? Maybe it is possible.

Benjamin Moser: I didn't know she was in Russia. What year is this?

Eva Kollisch: In the '70's. She was in Russia. I don't know what she was doing there. She wasn't there that long, maybe a couple of months. But I felt betrayed, seriously betrayed.

Benjamin Moser: Because she lied about it.

Eva Kollisch: She does lie.

Benjamin Moser: Yes.

Eva Kollisch: Maybe she actually sent it and it got lost. Anything is possible, but it fit in so well with making large promises and then doing nothing or praising someone very much and then diminishing that person. There was something very wrong with Susan. I don't know what it is. All the time I saw her, I never thought I would be or could be like Susan, but I admired her energy and passion, how much she could do.

Once she said something very nice to me, very generous. She stood in back of me and looked ....I was writing fiction at that time, nothing to talk about, but she looked over my shoulder and said, "Eva, you are the real writer. I have to work very hard to come up with sentences like that." Which made me very grateful. I don't think she was ill-willed toward me, but not writing a letter which would allow me to go for the PhD which would allow me, if I wanted to, to teach somewhere else. That was not nice.

Otherwise, she was very judgmental. Very judgmental of me because I didn't eat, I didn't really like seafood very much .

Benjamin Moser: Because of your Jewish background or just taste?

Eva Kollisch: I don't have a religious Jewish background. I just hadn't been exposed to it enough, and actually now I like it much more. She’d say things like that. "You're so fussy, you're so squeamish." Everything I say about her is ambivalent, isn't it?

Benjamin Moser: Everything everyone says about her is ambivalent.

Eva Kollisch: It is.

Benjamin Moser: It's hard for me, also, because my last biography-

Eva Kollisch: Who was it of?

Benjamin Moser: Clarice Lispector.

Eva Kollisch: You wrote a book before?

Benjamin Moser: Yes, a biography. Clarice was very eccentric, but absolutely everyone loved her. They really loved her.

Eva Kollisch: Susan?

Benjamin Moser: No, no. Clarice. So it was easy in a way-

Eva Kollisch: I don't know who you're talking about now.

Benjamin Moser: She's a Brazilian novelist.

Eva Kollisch: You spoke about her before.

Benjamin Moser: Yes, my previous book. With Susan, it's very difficult because there's so much ambiguity. For every good thing, there's a bad thing. But for every bad thing, there's a good thing. It's hard to know. I feel I'm missing something in the story. I'm missing some ... You said there was something wrong with her.

Eva Kollisch: Well that's what I mean, I think.

Benjamin Moser: There was, but I don't know what it is.

Eva Kollisch: Maybe it doesn't have a name. Ambivalence is well known, but she was so split.

Benjamin Moser: It's like two different people. That's what I mean. When you say "pathological", I understand what you mean. Everybody is eccentric or sometimes they do bad stuff. But with her, it is so extreme. The good she did was so extreme. And the bad she did was also very extreme. As a biographer, you have to make one story about one person, but with Susan it is almost not one person. It is like two different people. I don't have an answer. Do you have an answer?

Eva Kollisch: I wish I did. I don't. The only thing that comes to my mind is that she had certain models in her mind and having to be exemplary. But then not having the capital or energy for that, she would quickly short-change somebody else. Her relation with David, for example, I thought was awful. She thought she was the world's greatest mother.

Benjamin Moser: Did she?

Eva Kollisch: The older David. The intelligent David. I think she short-changed him of a lot of love and affection and not pressuring. He was a very precious child and he had to adapt himself to whatever space she would give him. A space with no baby. He had to be there at the ready to keep up an intellectual discussion with her, which must have been strange sometimes.

Benjamin Moser: How did you see the relationship in the early '60's when you first met? He was quite young.

Eva Kollisch: I saw it as inadequate. She was not enough there for him and then she made demands on him pedagogically. Always more, more.

Benjamin Moser: In school in terms of grades or in terms of-

Eva Kollisch: Intellectual stature so he could be a companion to her. I'm not sure how she was about grades. I doubt that she made a big fuss and I'm sure he was an okay student.

Benjamin Moser: He's very smart.

Eva Kollisch: Very smart, yes. He was a very unhappy child.

Benjamin Moser: How can you see the unhappiness?

Eva Kollisch: It was not hard to see. My boy was quite a few years younger. So mine was like a little boy, and David was teen-aged. He was very mean to Uri, my son. Very sadistic in games. I loved David. I actually did for a while, I loved him. I thought he was a very tender-hearted person. He would not recognize himself in that description. I would say he hadn't been fed enough of simple love, if that doesn't sound too sentimental. Embrace, playing, scolding him, anything but direct ... But she gave him an interesting life. I don't whether he liked his life.

Benjamin Moser: I don't think David has an easy life. That's my impression.

Eva Kollisch: Why?

Benjamin Moser: You’re not the only person who has told me that that he is sadistic.

Eva Kollisch: That he what?

Benjamin Moser: That he is sadistic. Not to me. He's nice to me, but I have heard hundreds of stories about him. I think he's also very ... he carries around this mother.

Eva Kollisch: Well, she thought she was a great mother.

Benjamin Moser: She did?

Eva Kollisch: I never met her own mother.

Benjamin Moser: It’s very strange. I know a lot about her.

Eva Kollisch: Yeah.

Benjamin Moser: But I don't know her. I just know what people tell me.

Eva Kollisch: Is there still interest in Susan and the world?

Benjamin Moser: Huge. Huge interest. Yeah.

Eva Kollisch: You know about this film?

Benjamin Moser: Yeah, I am going on Friday. Did you see it?

Eva Kollisch: Yes. I am in it.

Benjamin Moser: You are in it?

Eva Kollisch: Yes.

Benjamin Moser: You talked to Nancy?

Eva Kollisch: Yeah.

Benjamin Moser: Oh good. Oh yeah. How was the film?

Eva Kollisch: I think it's interesting.

Benjamin Moser: Really?

Eva Kollisch: Yeah. I thought it was interesting. My hearing problem is so bad, but when I was interviewed, I said, "Blah, blah, blah." I couldn't hear a word that I had said, but Naomi said she understood me, and she has a hearing problem. Everybody else understood me and they came up to me, "Oh, you are great. You are wonderful." I couldn't hear a word, so I have no idea what I said. I think it's a serious film and it's special.

Benjamin Moser: Nancy is a serious person. I met her in Hawaii actually. We went to see Judith.

Eva Kollisch: You what?

Benjamin Moser: We went to see Judith, her sister.

Eva Kollisch: Wait a minute, you went ...

Benjamin Moser: I went to Hawaii in February to see Judith, Susan’s sister.

Eva Kollisch: Her older sister Judith.

Benjamin Moser: Younger sister. Did you know Judith?

Eva Kollisch: No.

Benjamin Moser: Very nice.

Eva Kollisch: Is she nice?

Benjamin Moser: Yes, she's a very normal person.

Eva Kollisch: She's in the film as a very normal person.

Benjamin Moser: She is. Well you know what she said to me, which I thought was so funny, she said Susan could never get over the fact that she was from a normal American family.

Eva Kollisch: That's like funny.

Benjamin Moser: She loves Susan. She knows a lot of the ... She knows the bad stuff.

Eva Kollisch: This is her younger sister.

Benjamin Moser: She is younger. She is 78. Susan would be 82, 81. Susan would be 81. Do you think about her very much?

Eva Kollisch: No. I used to. How long is she dead now, 10 years?

Benjamin Moser: Ten years.

Eva Kollisch: I thought about her a lot when she was still alive. One of the last times, she gave ... I don't know what the event was, a public event, and she did talking maybe about one of the things she had written. I went with Naomi and a couple of people I knew were there in the audience, and Susan looked around the audience and she said, "I see that one of my very best friends is in the audience." I was so touched. I didn't believe her, because she didn't act like a friend in so many ways, but it was something.

Then I went once to her house in London Terrace and she talked to be about David a little. There was a pregnancy. Wasn't there a girlfriend of David's who was pregnant?

Benjamin Moser: When?

Eva Kollisch: This would have been a few years before her death.

Benjamin Moser: I don't know.

Eva Kollisch: Is David the father?

Benjamin Moser: Yes.

Eva Kollisch: Who is his wife?

Benjamin Moser: Well, he wasn’t married, but he had a child with a Scottish woman who lives in Paris. This was after Susan died. They never lived together, so presumably this was an abortion or this didn't end well. Did Susan ever talk about her abortions with you? No? Phillip?

Eva Kollisch: Phillip?

Benjamin Moser: Did she talk about Phillip at all?

Eva Kollisch: A little bit, yeah. I don't remember if she talks about her abortions. If she did, it was very casually. She talks about Phillip a little bit, and what impressed me most was that they were so busy talking that they wouldn't let each other go to the bathroom alone. She would follow, and read, had a book there.

Benjamin Moser: She seems to have loved him, at least for a while.

Eva Kollisch: Did she?

Benjamin Moser: You don’t think so?

Eva Kollisch: When she talked about him, I always felt that she had to give him the intellectual energy, and that these are really her ideas Phillip spoke about for The Moralist.

Benjamin Moser: The Mind of The Moralist.

Eva Kollisch: The Mind of The Moralist?

Benjamin Moser: Yeah.

Eva Kollisch: I haven't read it.

Benjamin Moser: It's interesting. If you are interested in Freud and are interested in Susan, it's very clear that a lot of the ideas come from her. Very clear.

Eva Kollisch: I believe this.

Benjamin Moser: Absolutely.

Eva Kollisch: I believe this, because she said, she took my ideas and made a book out of it.

Benjamin Moser: I think that's true. I even think she wrote a lot of it. She said that.

Eva Kollisch: She did. She says that.

Benjamin Moser: It's an admirable book. I just was in Philadelphia last week. People told me he was a monster.

Eva Kollisch: Really? How?

Benjamin Moser: I heard these stories. I went to visit some people who knew him there. He was much older than she was, so a lot of these people are no longer alive.

Eva Kollisch: He was much older than she was?

Benjamin Moser: Well, he was 11 years older, so he would be 92. That's getting up to the point where his real colleagues, very few of them are alive. Some of them are, and some of his students are alive. He sounds like he was a horrible person. He was very insulting, calculated. He hated gay people, he hated women, he did a lot of things that really are anti-semitic.

Eva Kollisch: Really what?

Benjamin Moser: Anti-semitic.

Eva Kollisch: Was he Jewish?

Benjamin Moser: Yes. Of course.

Eva Kollisch: What's his name? I forgot.

Benjamin Moser: Rieff.

Eva Kollisch: Of course, it was Rieff.

Benjamin Moser: For example, inviting a conservative rabbi for lunch and serving shrimp. It's very aggressive.

Eva Kollisch: He served shrimp to-

Benjamin Moser: To the rabbi.

Eva Kollisch: What did the rabbi do?

Benjamin Moser: The rabbi just sat there and didn't know what to do of course. He didn't eat it, but a rabbi is not going to eat shrimp.

Eva Kollisch: He did that on purpose?

Benjamin Moser: He seems to have been very calculating. People said that he liked to make people uncomfortable and to insult them, really.

Eva Kollisch: Susan, what did she do about that?

Benjamin Moser: This was later after she was ... Was Susan cruel to you at all?

Eva Kollisch: True?

Benjamin Moser: Cruel.

Eva Kollisch: Was Susan cruel?

Benjamin Moser: Yes, to you.

Eva Kollisch: Whenever she was mad at me or whenever her mind was on some completely other things.

Benjamin Moser: Sorry?

Eva Kollisch: I didn’t say anything. I’m just looking at you.

Benjamin Moser: I heard that you sold the books that she gave you.

Eva Kollisch: I sold a few of her books.

Benjamin Moser: Yeah.

Eva Kollisch: How do you know that?

Benjamin Moser: A Mexican friend of mine bought them.

Eva Kollisch: needed money and I was not interested in anyone having Susan sentimentals. I am sentimental, but not ... I would never reread her books. Essays maybe. How did you know that? That's embarrassing.

Benjamin Moser: It's not embarrassing. I completely understand. Sometimes you need to get rid of books, and sometimes you need money. It's totally understandable. It wasn't a gesture of purification or anger?

Eva Kollisch: No.

Benjamin Moser: Just that. Another thing I was wondering: when you knew her as an unfamous person, in 1961, did you notice a change in her when she became famous?

Eva Kollisch: No. She became more so ... No. Why?

Benjamin Moser: Because you were right of the time 1961, 1962, she's still sort of a grad student, but by the time she publishes Notes on Camp, and Against Interpretation.

Eva Kollisch: Those things made her famous.

Benjamin Moser: Yeah.

Eva Kollisch: I first novel did not make her famous at all.

Benjamin Moser: But it was that couple of years that she went from a girl really, to this very famous person. In the archives, it almost seems like a day, like Tuesday she was unanimous, and Wednesday she was in Time Magazine. It's an explosion.

Eva Kollisch: Yeah, I was aware that she suddenly gained a sense of power.

Benjamin Moser: Intellectually or socially?

Eva Kollisch: Intellectually. Socially too. She knew all these very famous people. She knew them, and she was courted by them.

Benjamin Moser: Yeah, it's an interesting moment. It's very fast, and she became ... It's almost impossible to imagine now, somebody becoming that famous. It seems like a real 60s phenomenon. I can't imagine somebody writing an essay in the New York Review of Books and becoming as famous as she became.

Eva Kollisch: I agree. Against Interpretation caused an explosion in people's minds.

Benjamin Moser: Yeah. Including yours?

Eva Kollisch: No, I don't think so, but I think it's a very good piece, very interesting. No it didn't. Is it to you?

Benjamin Moser: No. In the book, Against Interpretation, of the whole book, I think Notes on Camp is fantastic. I think that a few of the essays are very interesting. It's well done. It's intelligent of course, but it's also ... I can't imagine the path from there to Time Magazine. I can't imagine that moment. I can't imagine that that was of interest to people who weren't literary intellectuals. It's interesting for literal intellectuals, but is it interesting for people in Wisconsin?

Eva Kollisch: At least there's something going on that's equivalent. I don't know.

Benjamin Moser: I can't imagine, I can't imagine. Of course there's always new writers and people. I don't know.

Eva Kollisch: She caught something. She brilliantly caught the moment and turn it into something. I am proud of her.

Benjamin Moser: You are?

Eva Kollisch: Yeah.

Benjamin Moser: Are your memories basically good or basically bad of her? Or is that too simple?

Eva Kollisch: They are split. I am not split about the things that I think were good. I am not split about what I think were bad, but they were good and bad. I am glad I knew her. I am glad I had her as a lover, which is more I can say about Lilly Engler. That was a waste.

Benjamin Moser: A waste of your life?

Eva Kollisch: A waste of my time.

Benjamin Moser: Ten years too.

Eva Kollisch: Well let's say the first three maybe I was in love or wanted to be in love, but after that I was like a captive.

Benjamin Moser: How did you get out of it?

Eva Kollisch: Get out of it?

Benjamin Moser: After 10 years?

Eva Kollisch: Just strong willed and luckily I had saved my apartment. I could go back to my apartment. I was doing well. I was a very admired teacher, colleagues, and friends, and I was in the anti-war movement, I knew a lot of people. I had a life and I was tremendously liberated when I left her. She was jealous of everything, everyone.

Benjamin Moser: It happens. Did you know Susan in the anti-war movement?

Eva Kollisch: No.

Eva Kollisch: It was too early.

Benjamin Moser: During “Trip to Hanoi” and all that. Did you, how did you look at Susan’s political writings in the '60's? Like the Cuba, I mean were you interested in Fidel Castro?

Eva Kollisch: No.

Benjamin Moser: No.

Eva Kollisch: No.

Benjamin Moser: So it wasn't everybody.

Eva Kollisch: It wasn't everybody.

Benjamin Moser: Well, I mean of course, now nobody falls for Fidel Castro. But in 1960?

Eva Kollisch: No, I didn't.

Benjamin Moser: No.

Eva Kollisch: I was very skeptical of any revolutionary leader, or so-called revolutionary leader. But I did think that anything was better than Soviet Union.

Benjamin Moser: Yeah.

Eva Kollisch: And I know some things were better than the U.S. Maybe this country is for the birds too.

Benjamin Moser: Yeah. Well listen, thank you so much for talking to me. And if you have any anecdotes or anything that you remember, you have my email.

Eva Kollisch: Yeah.

Benjamin Moser: I'm here for another 6 weeks, so If you want to talk more if you have any other memories. Sometimes people remember stuff afterwards and they call me. I'd love to hear it.

Eva Kollisch: Who else are you seeing that I know?

Benjamin Moser: That you know? I don't know who you know. I'm seeing a lot of people.

Eva Kollisch: I don't know most, I hardly know anybody but... her first lover I know, the woman.

Benjamin Moser: Harriet.

Eva Kollisch: Harriet.

Benjamin Moser: Oh yeah, she's funny. I saw her a couple of weeks ago. Did you see her at the movie? She's in the movie.

Eva Kollisch: Yeah, she's in the movie. She was there but we didn't, we just...

Benjamin Moser: Do you know Edward Field?

Eva Kollisch: Yeah.

Benjamin Moser: I saw him. I need to see him again. I've been so busy, I haven't called him. I don't know who you know.

Eva Kollisch: No, I don't know. I don't know many people. Joe is dead.

Benjamin Moser: He was ambiguous about Susan, you said.

Eva Kollisch: Joe?

Benjamin Moser: Yeah. Because she dedicated the book to him.

Eva Kollisch: Which one?

Benjamin Moser: "Styles of Radical Will" maybe or ...

Eva Kollisch: Is that a book or is that an essay?

Benjamin Moser: No, it's an essay - it's a book of essays.

Eva Kollisch: No, I really don't know. That's a very ... you know, there's so many worlds.

Benjamin Moser: She was a part of so many worlds.

Eva Kollisch: Pardon me?

Benjamin Moser: She was a part of so many worlds.

Eva Kollisch: Yeah.

Benjamin Moser: It's both fascinating and very daunting for me; there's so many people in so many places.

Eva Kollisch: What about her French lover?

Benjamin Moser: Nicole? She's dead. She died a long time ago.

Eva Kollisch: I think I heard that, but I didn't take it in. Why did she die, or what did she die of?

Benjamin Moser: She was blind ... I don't know the actual cause. She was older than Susan, I think.

Eva Kollisch: Yeah, she was.

Benjamin Moser: She was probably born in 1920, I would guess.

Eva Kollisch: I think she was closer to my age.

Benjamin Moser: I don't know. How old are you, if I may ask?

Eva Kollisch: I was born in '25. I'm 88.

Benjamin Moser: I think Susan was about the same. I mean, I think Nicole was about the same, because Nicole was in the war. She was in the Resistance. She also fled France and then she came back as a soldier. But she was very sick for a long time and she was bankrupt also. You know she was a Rothschild, so that's very sad to be a poor Rothschild.

Eva Kollisch: Oh, she was a Rothschild, yes.

Benjamin Moser: Yeah. Susan supported her financially.

Eva Kollisch: Did she?

Benjamin Moser: At the end of her life. She was very poor. She was at Susan's funeral and then I think she died not long after.

Eva Kollisch: I'm glad she did have Susan. She’s so hard to understand.

Benjamin Moser: I've never known anybody like it. She's completely good and she's completely bad. It's very -

Eva Kollisch: That's a book, you know.

Benjamin Moser: I know, but I have to write about it as one person and it often feels like two. As a narrative, it's confused. It's a very compartmentalized life; that might be the better word.

---