Shabbat Reading: Robert Boyers's Maestros & Monsters

#whatireadovershabbat Rober Boyers's Maestros & Monsters: Days and Nights with Susan Sontag and George Steiner (Mandel Vilar, 2023)

I’m a sucker for literary gossip. Boyers’s memoir of his friendship with two temperamental titans of modern letters, Susan Sontag and George Steiner, would seem to promise a lot of juicy, even gory details. There are indeed plenty of delicious anecdotes, but Maestros & Monsters goes beyond gossip. Boyers explores the purpose of criticism, the attraction of genius, how taste exposes both the subjectivity and iron authority of aesthetic experience. Above all, this loving tribute is a reminder to keep reading Sontag and Steiner, and by extension, to remain in the fray of words, ideas, and difficult people.