Sontag, Benjamin Moser
Sontag, Benjamin Moser
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Sontag
Her Life and Work

Author: Benjamin Moser

Narrator: Tavia Gilbert

Unabridged: 22 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 09/17/2019


Synopsis

The definitive portrait of one of the American Century’s most towering intellectuals: her writing and her radical thought, her public activism and her hidden private face.No writer is as emblematic of the American twentieth century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture. She was there when the Cuban Revolution began, and when the Berlin Wall came down; in Vietnam under American bombardment, in wartime Israel, in besieged Sarajevo. She was in New York when artists tried to resist the tug of money—and when many gave in. No writer negotiated as many worlds; no serious writer had as many glamorous lovers. Sontag tells these stories and examines the work upon which her reputation was based. It explores the agonizing insecurity behind the formidable public face: the broken relationships, the struggles with her sexuality, that animated—and undermined—her writing. And it shows her attempts to respond to the cruelties and absurdities of a country that had lost its way, and her conviction that fidelity to high culture was an activism of its own. Utilizing hundreds of interviews conducted from Maui to Stockholm and from London to Sarajevo—Sontag is the first book based on the writer’s restricted archives, and on access to many people who have never before spoken about Sontag, including Annie Leibovitz. It is a definitive portrait—a great American novel in the form of a biography.

About Benjamin Moser

Benjamin Moser was born in Houston. He is the author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, a finalist for the National Book Critics' Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book. For his work bringing Clarice Lispector to international prominence, he received Brazil’s first State Prize for Cultural Diplomacy. He has published translations from French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch. A former books columnist for Harper's Magazine and The New York Times Book Review, he has also written for The New Yorker, Conde Nast Traveler, and The New York Review of Books. 


Reviews

Goodreads review by William2 on November 25, 2023

As a Sontag admirer, I’m saddened to learn one of my favorite writers was such an asshole. There are reasons for it, but they don’t excuse her. Well, Sarajevo, may in part excuse her — maybe… “When, after her death, extracts from Sontag’s‘s diaries were published, many who knew her were surprised by......more

Goodreads review by Loring on July 13, 2019

I found it a little bit odd that some reviewers of the ARC of this book complained that they did not want to waste 700 pages reading about such a difficult person. I tend to think of gushing hagiographies of historical figures as being almost as creepy as biographies of high-profile villains like Hi......more

Goodreads review by Khush on December 27, 2020

A wonderful book. Moser shows patience, love, intelligence and goodwill toward his subject, Susan Sontag. Most books I read on Sontag are by people who knew her personally, and their books read more like a revenge on her. While reading Moser's book, I never thought about the biographer. He kept hims......more

Goodreads review by Sebastian on October 18, 2022

I have to admit my knowledge about Susan Sontag before listening to this biography was very very scant. But I loved getting to know her better, her life in different shapes and forms, the beautiful ones and the ugly ones. What I admired the most in this account of her life is its realness and its ra......more