Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon

Rating:
Summary: A Star Is Born
Review: Always an admirer of Ms. Sontag's work, but admitting all the time I probably didn't know half of what she talked about, this book made me realize I bought into the Role, the Persona of Sontag. My admiration of her was a guilty pleasure, an enjoyment of the image. What she did do however was make me pursue the writers, the works of art she mentioned and gave those people and objects a validity that insured me of their importance even if I didn't understand what that importance was. I cannot image how these two writers managed to write this book. Their research material must be overwhelming. It is a rivieting mesmerizing account I am greatly enjoying. One major omission: no mention of her siblings. What happened there?

Rating:
Summary: A Star Is Born
Review: Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock have done an admirable job. It's hard to imagine a more delicious account of how a bright, imaginative girl from North Hollywood High manufactured and marketed herself as an international literary icon. To get at the truth, the authors have stripped off the gilt and the result is a startling portrait that is sure to generate controversy. This is a biography that is hard to put down.

Rating:
Summary: A Bad Book
Review: This is a bad book. The two authors, who between them have about 1/100th of Sontag's intelligence, integrity, and imagination, written in the most pedestrian prose possible, set about to undo her reputation.

Each time they credit her with something, within the next sentence or two they somehow take it back, or cast doubt on it. Only her battles with cancer are described with anything like sympathy.

Apparently it is beyond them that a woman, and a beautiful woman at that, could produce some of the most important essays of our time. That she has changed her position on some issues is treated as some sort of betrayal, hypocracy, or attempts to jump on a particular bandwagon. Perhaps, like the intelligent woman she is, she re-thought some of her earlier positions.

Why they wrote this book is beyond me.

Rating:
Summary: A Bad Book
Review: This is a book equal to its subject. Few intellectuals are as interesting as Susan Sontag, and the authors are fair and balanced in their presentation of the facts and controversies that make up the life of Sontag. The authors point to many facts that can only engender admiration of Sontag. For example, her fierce independence-- forsaking the safety of academic appointments to enhance her freedom to write on her own terms. Sontag's refusal to be labelled a "woman writer" or "lesbian writer" is a rejection of the simplistic logic of the "identity" crowd now so dominant in the academy. There is much to criticise in the life of Sontag (e.g., her fatuous embrace of the North Vietnamese) but far more to admire and emulate. Both authors and subject are better off for this book.

Rating:
Summary: A Biography as Provocative as Its Subject
Review: This is a book equal to its subject. Few intellectuals are as interesting as Susan Sontag, and the authors are fair and balanced in their presentation of the facts and controversies that make up the life of Sontag. The authors point to many facts that can only engender admiration of Sontag. For example, her fierce independence-- forsaking the safety of academic appointments to enhance her freedom to write on her own terms. Sontag's refusal to be labelled a "woman writer" or "lesbian writer" is a rejection of the simplistic logic of the "identity" crowd now so dominant in the academy. There is much to criticise in the life of Sontag (e.g., her fatuous enbrace of Hanoi) but far more to admire and emulate. Both authors and subject are better off for this book.