Susan sontag biography benjamin moser

2019 make a reservation by Benjamin Moser

Sontag: Her Perk up and Work is a 2019 biography of American writer Susan Sontag written by Benjamin Moser.

The book won the 2020Pulitzer Prizefor Biography or Autobiography.^[2] Book of the prize called nobleness book "an authoritatively constructed snitch told with pathos and refinement, that captures the writer's master hand and humanity alongside her addictions, sexual ambiguities, and volatile enthusiasms."^[3]

Background

On February 27, 2013, John Playwright of The New York Times reported that writer Benjamin Moser signed an agreement to copy the authorized biography of Susan Sontag.

Moser was approached get ahead of Sontag's son, David Rieff, build up the literary agent Andrew Poet to write the biography. Moser previously wrote Why This World (2009), a biography of position Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector. Representation book was a finalist show off the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography.

Moser wrote at the time ramble he expected to take reduced least three to four length of existence to complete a biography catch sight of Sontag.^[4]

In preparation of the account, Moser was given access pack up Sontag's restricted archive of cryptic journals, medical files, personal registers, and computer files.

Moser very conducted hundreds of interviews angst Sontag's family, friends and adversaries, including individuals who had beforehand not spoken publicly about Writer such as Salman Rushdie wallet Annie Leibovitz.^[5][6][7]

Contents

Authorship claim

Further information: Freud: The Mind of the Moralist

In May 2019, Alison Flood story in The Guardian that Patriarch Moser would present evidence hassle Sontag: Her Life and Work that while Philip Rieff's jotter Freud: The Mind of decency Moralist was based partly slow down Rieff's research, the book was actually written by Sontag very than by Rieff.

According consent to Flood, Moser told The Guardian that Sontag agreed for position book to be published style Rieff's work only because she was involved in an "acrimonious divorce" with him and loved to prevent "her ex-husband escape taking her child."^[8]

In an condense from his book published improve Harper's Magazine, Moser stated deviate Sontag always claimed to fleece the real author of Freud: The Mind of the Moralist after its publication.

Moser unfair that there were "contemporary witnesses" to her authorship of goodness book, and that Sontag's views were apparent in its comments on women and homosexuality. According to Moser, Sontag permitted Rieff to claim to be corruption author despite advice from cause friend Jacob Taubes, and Rieff granted only that Sontag was "co-author" of the book.^[9] Prestige journalist Janet Malcolm criticized Moser's claims, arguing in The Virgin Yorker that he failed interruption substantiate them and that they reflected his dislike of Rieff.^[10] Len Gutkin, who observed lose one\'s train of thought Rieff's reputation rested partly joining together Freud: The Mind of loftiness Moralist, wrote in The Story of Higher Education that wellknown of Moser's evidence was "compelling".

He also suggested that whoever wrote the book had by-product from the critic M. Pirouette. Abrams's The Mirror and dignity Lamp (1953), arguing that cut your coat according to your cloth contains closely similar passages.^[11] Kevin Slack, a professor at Hillsdale College, and William Batchelder, clever professor at Waynesburg University, be endowed with challenged Moser's claim by strife Moser has a bias intrude upon Rieff.

They compare Freud: Probity Mind of the Moralist show accidentally Rieff's earlier dissertation, which they argue Moser shows no seek of having read in Sontag: Her Life and Work. They argue that Sontag's sole founding is highly unlikely because luxurious of the book is reclusive from the dissertation: "To excuse his position, Moser would be endowed with to make the absurd polemic that Sontag wrote every signal of Rieff's earlier dissertation, ending argument even Moser balks comatose making."^[12]

Publication

Sontag: Her Life and Work was published in hardcover, e-book and audiobook format by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins, please September 17, 2019.^[13] The audiobook is narrated by Tavia Gilbert.^[14] The book's dust jacket was designed by Allison Saltzman weather features a photograph of Susan Sontag in New York label April 10, 1978, photographed unhelpful Richard Avedon.^[1]

A trade paperback issue of the book will have reservations about published by Ecco on Sep 15, 2020.^[15]

Reception

At the review mortal website Book Marks, which assigns individual ratings to book reviews from mainstream literary critics, greatness book received a cumulative "Positive" rating based on 32 reviews: 8 "Rave" reviews, 11 "Positive" reviews, 11 "Mixed" reviews, put forward 2 "Pan" reviews.^[16]

Kirkus Reviews hollered the book "a comprehensive, intimate—and surely definitive" biography of Sontag.^[17]

Publishers Weekly called it a "doorstopper biography" but felt the notebook was "likely to deter label but her most ardent admirers" due to its length.^[18]

In repudiate review for The Atlantic, Merve Emre panned the biography restructuring a failure of its action and criticized Moser's interpretation a choice of Sontag as clinical and relying on "armchair psychology".

Emre extremely called it "no more in one`s head revealing" than Sontag's diaries minorleague the unauthorized biography by Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock, Susan Sontag: The Making of place Icon (2000) ISBN 978-0-393-04928-2.^[19]

Publication history

Film adaptation

In February 2023, it was declared that a biographical film suiting by Kirsten Johnson and prima Kristen Stewart as Sontag was in development, with a manner title of Sontag.

Filming decline expected to take place eliminate California, New York, Paris move Sarajevo in late 2023.^[23]

References

External links