Benjamin Moser: ‘Many countries opposed Nazism. Who is opposing Netanyahu? Only Pedro Sánchez’

Benjamin Moser, 49, lives in a house near the caves of Lascaux that is quite literally lost in France’s Périgord region. For the past 20 years, he and his partner have spent months there, surrounded by wisteria, olive trees, pines, oleanders, a swimming pool and the Ravel-like song of the cicadas.

Moser, who completed high school in France, speaks four languages. “It prevents dementia,” he jokes. When he speaks Spanish, he sounds Venezuelan. He lived there when he was 18.

“Venezuela is like if Dubai suddenly came to a standstill and you returned 30 years later. Americans believe in the idea of historical progress, unlike the rest of the world, which knows history is cyclical. That’s why what’s happening will devastate us.”

Question. You began writing The Upside-Down World: Meetings with the Dutch Masters when you moved to the Netherlands. What turned your world upside down?

Answer. Meeting my partner. I was 23 and working for a publishing house in New York. My boss didn’t know what to talk about with an author and asked me to join them for lunch… The basis of my career is that: I know how to talk to people. The night before I met Arthur, I read his novel The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi. Books reflect who we are. I was fascinated.

Q. You were 23, and he was 43.

A. I thought: he’s an old man and… why not?

Q. Is he passionate about everything?

A. You can’t write without passion. You can write without conveying anything — that’s what artificial intelligence does. But the purpose of art is to communicate. You want readers to see what you see. He was my kind of person.

Q. What attracts us to someone?

A. A quality of the soul. That’s what The Upside-Down World is about: what a painter reveals of himself in his painting.

Q. Your book brings closer to — and questions — the great painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

A. Questioning things has to do with my U.S. background. I grew up surrounded by ideas that seem settled until you learn not to take anything for granted. While writing it, I learned, for example, who the first painter was to depict human feelings on a face. Until Aristides of Thebes did it in 340 BC, nobody had drawn a person smiling, that is, showing their feelings!

Q. It took you 20 years to write The Upside-Down World.

A. I felt I didn’t know enough.

Q. In that time, you wrote biographies of Clarice Lispector and Susan Sontag. Why them?

A. At university, I tried to learn Chinese. People said, rightly, that it was the language of the future. I failed. I thought that knowing Spanish and French would make Portuguese easier. I read Lispector’s The Hour of the Star; it was the best thing I’d ever read. I became obsessed, went to Brazil, and wanted to make her famous.

Q. Do you want to save people?

A. It’s a character trait that leads to depression when you can’t do more. With her, I succeeded. I devoted five years to the book. I was paid €8,000 [$9,300]. If that’s not passion…

Q. How did you make a living?

A. By translating or writing about a restaurant for $1,000…

Q. Lispector knew she wanted to be a writer when she was seven. Was it the same for you?

A. It took me longer. Then, Clarice gave me a career. Because of her, at 25, I was commissioned to write Sontag’s biography.

Q. Lispector was also Jewish. In Recife, where she grew up, people confused Jews with Judas.

A. They didn’t know what they were. Brazil is a very nationalistic country. It’s not that they want to invade Uruguay; it’s that, as happens with large countries — the U.S. or Russia — they can’t see beyond themselves: they’re not interested in difference. Americans like foreign origins. Everyone has one, more or less invented. There are people whose families have been there 300 years who tell you they’re Irish. Fine. Can you locate Ireland on a map?

Q. Lispector was born in Ukraine.

A. She wrote in Portuguese in a way no Brazilian would dare. It wasn’t about being foreign, but about what she sought with words, the almost violent way she broke clichés.

Q. She wrote about longing not to have been born an animal.

A. For her, her dog Ulisses was the purest person. Animals are always pure.

Q. She feared not loving more than not being loved.

A. She was right. She was always right. But everything affected her too much. She suffered from having a good soul. Real life mattered more to her than academic life.

Q. Is the same true of you?

A. Yes. I appreciate research that provides data, but the most interesting thing about art is what touches you emotionally. Lispector didn’t read philosophy, but she was a philosopher because, like all original people, she thought for herself.

Q. When writing biographies, how do you decide what to include and what not to?

A. In portraying someone, you also create a portrait of what matters to you. You’ll do the same with this interview: you’ll pick what seems most interesting to you. One problem in journalism is not being honest about the point of view. If someone writes about Israel, being Jewish or Palestinian is considered disqualifying. It should be the opposite. It’s more honest to say where you’re speaking from. We all have a perspective. Many biographers think telling a life means gathering facts. “On Thursday he ate eggs…”. That kills a biography. A life is not data.

Q. You’ve written that Lispector and Sontag had charisma.

A. Charisma is a mix of vitality, truth, charm, kindness, passion, mystery and beauty. But it’s politically incorrect to write about a writer’s beauty. For me, beauty is an obsession. It’s always more. I’ve met people who are attractive from five meters away and completely boring once they start talking. And the opposite is true as well. When people speak, their intelligence, talent and kindness come through.

Q. What’s the hardest quality to find?

A. Kindness is unattainable because controlling wickedness requires patience, self-knowledge and a sense of humor. Clarice used to say: “I have several faces, one is almost pretty. Another almost ugly.” Our face changes with years and from one moment to the next.

Q. After the Lispector biography, you were commissioned to write Sontag’s.

A. Sontag was an electric person: you touched her and she gave you a jolt. But… I knew it was my chance to write about my own culture.

Q. You won the Pulitzer.

A. I was the authorized biographer. I had access to documents and family. But the biography was not authorized. The distinction matters: we spent a year negotiating the contract. Everyone wants, and I would want it too if someone were writing Arthur’s biography, to read it and be able to correct mistakes.

Q. Mistakes?

A. Exactly. Nobody objects to changing a fact. But… what do you think offends people?

Q. Not seeming honest?

A. Sex and money. That is, French literature, Balzac.

Q. Who you slept with?

A. Who and on which side… You can’t predict what will offend people, but you must know, when writing a biography, that people will surely be offended.

Q. You wrote that Freud: The Mind of the Moralist was written by Sontag, not co-written with her then-husband, Philip Rieff...

A. That’s an example of something you can’t predict will offend people. It wasn’t a secret. Susan told anyone who would listen for 50 years. Her husband acknowledged her as a co-author at the end of his life.

Q. Why didn’t she set the record straight?

A. Because when they divorced, he threatened to take away her son. She traded a book for her son. Lies always point to a deeper truth. And... people always lie.

Q. What do you lie about?

A. My grandmother used to say everyone lies about their age in the wrong way. She’d add seven years. “That way I’m much better.”

Q. Lispector lied about her age.

A. She was brutally honest, but I think she tried to rewrite her mother’s tragic story [who died when the writer was nine from syphilis contracted after being raped by Russian soldiers]. She wrote that it was easier to be a saint than a person. She was never wrong.

Q. Wasn’t Sontag ever wrong either?

A. She made mistakes. But Sontag is always interesting. She never stops thinking. Studying her, you could watch a mind making its way through life.

Q. Was she hard on people?

A. She was very generous. But when people abused her — which happens, especially with success — she shut down. When you care deeply about people, as she did and I do, people disappoint you. And you disappoint them too.

Q. What do you think she lied about?

A. About her sexuality. Obviously. And when you lie about that…

Q. Was she bisexual?

A. No. She was gay. When you lie about that, you not only deceive yourself; you’re dishonest with your partners. Sontag moved through history, reflecting whatever was happening at each moment. She was an alpha lesbian, a powerful symbol. Behind her struggle were thousands of people. But for her it was a source of pain.

Q. Why is it important to talk about her sexuality?

A. Because many of the people who have shaped the way we think were gay. They have the perspective of outsiders. What makes you who you are is what you live through.

Q. Did you have problems with your sexuality?

A. The year I finished high school, 1994, I lived through the miracle of AIDS treatment. I felt fortunate. I didn’t have problems because for my family it wasn’t a problem. And… I’m tall: bullies don’t pick on tall people.

Q. What was Sontag’s great contribution?

A. She symbolized the counterculture. I’d like people to read her. Studying her, I realized few have. Every sentence is an idea.

Q. Why do we need art?

A. It’s what makes life bearable. Imagine a life without music, books, dance or theater… it’s depressing. For some, art is frivolous, irrelevant. It can be frightening if you don’t want to dig deeper.

Q. Must art be original?

A. That’s how we think about it now. But it wasn’t always the case. In the Renaissance, the ambition was to seem classical. Today young artists want to be original without knowing the origins, and originality doesn’t come from ignorance. It would be like driving to the end of a marathon and considering yourself the winner.

Q. In the 19th century, in the Netherlands, if a canvas was good, it was attributed to Rembrandt. Has that been corrected?

A. In recent generations of art historians, there’s a more democratic, inclusive air. But there’s little interest in correcting some issues. Rembrandt has a very large oeuvre, about 600 paintings. We know there are hundreds he did paint. But around that certainty, there are gray areas.

Q. He painted 80 self-portraits.

A. Some of those are also questioned. He was very famous during his life. And people copied him. There’s little appetite to clarify false attributions because selling a Rembrandt fetches more money than selling a painting from the Rembrandt school.

Q. You write: “In Rembrandt, evil is more important than darkness.”

A. It’s like Shakespeare. You enter a museum and see portraits, martyrdoms and, suddenly, a criminal whose entrails a group of scientists is cutting out. You don’t realize how strange it is that someone would paint that until you stop to think that no one else portrays so many dead people, murderers, rapists…

Q. Why do we like Rembrandt so much?

A. For a reason similar to why we like Sontag: we don’t fall in love with saints. Rembrandt holds all human possibilities, from saint to monster. He’s like Goya. The Black Paintings from his Quinta del Sordo [estate outside Madrid] … is that what you want surrounding you? There’s someone willing to face his fears and emotions there.

Q. When you look at a painting, what changes if you know too much or too little about it?

A. If you know little, you can be fascinated. I recently traveled to Egypt. I knew one god had a cat’s head. Little else. But the art was fabulous. There’s something fascinating about discovering that you like something you don’t understand. Knowledge can make enchantment disappear, but it’s also what opens the door to depth.

Q. When we look at a painting, do we see the artwork or the artist behind it?

A. You think you’re looking at scenes, styles and so on, but what you’re really looking for is the person. Many scholars argue that a person’s life and their work are two separate things. I believe the opposite: what we do is who we are. If you’re not present in what you do, you won’t get very far. When you fully commit yourself to your work, you do. And the people looking at it want to know who you are.

Q. That’s what The Upside-Down World is about. Even about talent turning against itself.

A. When you’re young, you’re drawn to authors you try to imitate. That’s dangerous. [British writer V.S.] Naipaul warns: you can’t become who you are when you’re so good you can be anyone. Many of the most talented fail to learn discipline. Or self-criticism.

Q. Johannes Vermeer had to live with his mother-in-law because he didn’t have enough money.

A. And Jan Steen had to open a tavern. And devote himself to painting comic scenes, which is the most serious thing there is. We see it in Shakespeare: nothing is harder than making people laugh because comedy, when well done, is profound. One characteristic of the best art is that it hides its difficulty. Think of dance. The lightness they achieve by defying gravity…

Q. Fabritius has a place in art history because of a goldfinch.

A. How do you get people to talk about you 400 years later for painting a bird? That’s charisma. It’s like beauty. You can’t buy it. You can pay for makeup, surgeries… but not beauty.

Q. In your latest book, Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History, you write about Jewish thinkers who opposed Zionism. Is that your position as well?

A. I grew up blind to it, like many people. Not only Jews: Americans grow up convinced that their country does good in the world. But they’re not interested in the world. My partner, Arthur, is Dutch. In a small country, you learn your neighbors’ language. That’s seeing from another point of view. In North America, getting to know the other isn’t part of the culture. Remaining ignorant is. Insecurity is a great gift. If you accept it, you can go far. If you hide it, you become arrogant. The same goes for ignorance. It’s an opportunity. I didn’t know anything about Dutch art…

Q. Have you questioned your American identity as well as your Zionism?

A. I’m still American. I’m no longer a Zionist.

Q. Supporters of Zionism argue that giving up the State of Israel means having nowhere in the world to belong.

A. Don’t Jews in Spain have somewhere to live if they can afford a house? What about Jews in Paris? Are we talking about today or the 15th century? You can’t make the victimhood of people who lived five centuries ago your own. Jews in France have full rights and are protected by the rule of law. They may be afraid, but so are Muslims, and Black people and immigrants. And women. No one has a monopoly on victimhood. Using victimhood as a path to power stems from Zionism because, without the Holocaust, Jews could not have claimed a homeland by presenting themselves as the greatest victims among victims. I think it’s time to grow up. Many countries opposed Nazism. Who is opposing [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu? Only [Spanish Prime Minister] Pedro Sánchez. What is the rest of this supposedly civilized world doing?

Q. Osama bin Laden believed that only the United States had the power to destroy the United States.

A. The same can be said of Israel. It’s so obvious that it’s hard to see. It’s a principle of jiu-jitsu: letting your opponent use his own strength against himself

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