Sontag: Her Life and Work, written by Benjamin Moser and published byYilin Publishing House, this 868-page, Pulitzer Prize-winning work with nearly100 illustrations is translated by Yao Junwei. As a symbol of American culturein the 20th century, Susan Sontag is known as “the public conscience of theAmerican” and her life is closely related to the history of culturaldevelopment in the United States and the world. In order to learn more aboutSontag and the publication of this work, Bookdao interviewed Yao Junwei.

Sontag: Her Life and Work

Yao translatedSontag-related works for nearly 20 years, of which 10 have been published, andnow also keeps in touch with Sontag's son, David Rieff. In the process oftranslating the most authoritative and in-depth biography of Sontag to date,Yao kept in close contact with the author, Benjamin Moser, who, he reveals,responded to more than 200 questions and content to be confirmed by him. Intheir combined effort, i.e. checked the text, discussed the questions, andrevised it repeatedly, a translated Sontag: Her Life and Work is presented inits best light in the Chinese world.

Yao Junwei, translator of Sontag：Her Life and Work

Bookdao: Yourtranslations and studies include both Pearl S. Buck and Susan Sontag, and ofcourse others such as W. Somerset Maugham and Sigrid Nunez. But judging fromthe titles and editions published, it is clear that the first two women make upa huge part of the list. Why did you pay special attention to these twoAmerican female writers?

Yao: Over the years,my research has been relatively focused on the American writers Pearl S. Buckand Susan Sontag, both of whom have a connection with China. Pearl S. Buck wasbrought to China in infancy by her missionary parents, lived there for manyyears, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature for her novels set in China.Sontag's parents were in the fur business in Tianjin, China, and Sontag herselfonce “bragged” that she was conceived in China, that China was a place she haddreamed of, and that her mother was nostalgic about her early life in China.The Chinese elements in Pearl S. Buck and Sontag make me feel an inexplicableaffinity for them.

Bookdao: You have translatedand independently published 10 books and biographies of Susan Sontag, how didyou get started at first, and how have you continued to do so for 20 years?What are the characteristics that fascinate you most about her works?

Yao:Sontag's TheBenefactor is the third book I have translated. When I had just finishedtranslating Joyce's Collected Essays on Literature and Politics, a friend atYilin Publishing House asked me if I wanted to translate another book, and Iwas given Sontag's The Benefactor. I liked the prose style of this novel butwas not expecting that I would later have more connections with its author.

During the translationof The Benefactor, I had many email contacts with Sontag for translationmatters, checking and confirming the problems in the book. At that time, Ifound her to be a very strict and serious person, not very approachable. AfterI finished translating The Benefactor, I went to the University of Pennsylvaniafor a study tour. Philadelphia is very close to New York, and Sontag invited meto lunch with her and her assistant and secretary in her house. when shelearned that I had no computer and had to go to the university library everyday for emails, she immediately asked her assistant to bring her own laptop forme to take back. We talked a lot that day, from her books to my life inPhiladelphia, etc. She also warmly invited my wife and children to her home.This showed me a completely different side of Sontag: hospitable, warm, andgenerous. She thanked me for my translations, saying that it had made her booksmore accessible, and she wanted me to continue translating her books. And Iagreed.

Shortly afterreturning to Philadelphia, I received a phone call from a publisher in Chinasaying that Sontag had recommended me to translate the long preface she hadwritten for Summer in Baden-Baden. It was then that I realized that her requestfor me to continue translating her work was not a joke. Thus began the work oftranslating Sontag's works one after another.

When I was inPennsylvania, I read Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon written by Mr. and Mrs. Carl Rollyson, and translated it into Chinesewhen I returned to China. It was the first Sontag biography, but it only goesup to 1999. When I contacted the authors during the translation, I asked ifthey could add Sontag's last five years into the next update. The couple agreedand spent several years completing the revision, which I translated and namethe Chinese edition to The Complete Biography of Susan Sontag.

Bookdao: Many versions ofSontag's biography have been published in China, such as Susan Sontag: Critical Lives by Jerome Boyd Maunsell, Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon by CarlRollyson and Lisa Paddock, and Susan Sontag byBeatrice Mousli. What is the key feature of Sontag: Her Life and Work that isdifferent from other biographies?

Yao: It is not surprising that a writer ofSontag's wide international influence has “multiple biographies”. Of course,different authors have their own approaches to writing, entry points, andnarrative focus. Sontag herself has a strong personality, and those who loveher love her personality, while those who dislike her dislike for the samereason. So, readers also have their own preferences.

Speaking of Moser'sSontag: Her Life and Work, I have outlined in my “Afterword” itscharacteristics, which distinguishes it from several other biographies. Beingthe only authorized biography of Sontag to date, it is also distinguished byits length and the largest number of interviewees. In addition, this biographyalso illustrates Sontag's distinction between “surface” and “essence”, and theexpanded relationship between “name” and “substance”. Her work is alsoparticularly concerned with “names” and “substances”, as in her critique of themetaphor of illness in Illness as Metaphor, her articulation of the reality andfalsity in photography in On Photography, and her insights into different livesand lifestyles. Even if I had talked to Sontag for half a day, I'm afraid Iwouldn't have been able to cover the topics in such depth. In other words, inthis biography of Sontag, Moser shows us both the “surface” of Sontag and the“interior” of Sontag.

Bookdao: Researchers andcritics at home and abroad hold different opinions on Sontag, and some of themsee many “contradictions” in her writing and life. What do you make of it? Doyou agree with the word “contradictions”?

Yao: In fact, allpeople have multiple sides, but Sontag is more distinct. No one is flat and canbe seen at a glance. There are contradictions and conflicts, and only thenthere is vitality and meaning. This is true for work and even more so forpeople.

Bookdao: During thetranslation of the book, you kept in close contact with the author, BenjaminMoser. What was the most rewarding part of this process for you?

Yao: In fact, we havebeen in close contact both during the period when Moser was writing thisbiography and during the period when I was translating it, which lasted forseveral years. In August 2014, Yilin Publishing House sent Moser's plan for thisbiography to me, I was very optimistic at that time. After I startedtranslating it in May 2019, Moser have been helping me, and we checked the textand discussed issues, and I have gained a lot from this. Talking with Moser hasshown me the spirit and guidelines of his biography writing. Moser wrote thisbiography with seriousness and professionalism, saying that the principle hefollowed in writing this biography was “No to laugh, not to lament, not todetest, but to understand”. This principle is fully reflected in the book, andhe does not hail Sontag just because it is an authorized biography, and heunderstands some of her practices, but also has reservations.

Bookdao: In your opinion,what new information does the publication of Sontag: Her Life and Works providefor researchers? What are your plans for your research and translation?

Yao: The publicationof this book in China will open up new ideas for Sontag researchers tounderstand more about her personality and her books. As for myself, if there issuitable work by or about Sontag, I will be duty-bound to continue translatingit. I will also do some Pearl S. Buck translations after more than 30 years ofresearch about her. After all, translation and research go hand in hand andsupport each other.