From the Publisher
A landmark biography, the first major reintroduction of an incomparable literary heavyweight to the public since her death.” — The New York Times
“Utterly riveting and consistently insightful . . . The book takes this larger-than-life intellectual powerhouse—formidable, intimidating, often stubbornly impersonal in her work—and makes her life-size again . . . fascinating.” — Leslie Jamison, The New Republic
“Fascinating . . . Moser’s biography of Sontag is an education in Sontag, but also in what Sontag wanted and why, as well as an education in the worlds that inspired her and fought her.” — Los Angeles Times
“A skilled, lively, prodigiously researched book that, in the main, neither whitewashes nor rebukes its subject: It works hard to make the reader see Sontag as the severely complex person she was. [Moser] writes vividly of a woman of parts determined to leave a mark on her time; and makes us feel viscerally how large those parts were — the arrogance, the anxiety, the reach! No mean achievement.”
— Vivian Gornick, The New York Times Book Review
“Moser’s epic portrait of the iconic writer and critic winds through American history, entwining its subject to pivotal points in our culture and reshaping her legacy in the process.” — Entertainment Weekly, “20 New Books to Read in September”
“There can be no doubting the brilliance – the sheer explanatory vigour – of Moser’s biography . . . a triumph of the virtues of seriousness and truth-telling that Susan Sontag espoused again and again but was conspicuously and often quite consciously unable to force herself to live by.” — The New Statesman
“Persuasive and illuminating . . . does what a biography ought to do: it enriches our understanding of its subject.” — Los Angeles Review of Books
“Enlightening and finely tuned . . . because his tone is so reserved, so disinterested in passing judgement, none of what he writes about comes off as dishy or inappropriate. More to the point, his critical distance from his subject makes him an echo of Sontag herself.” — Mark Athitakis, On the Seawall
“A towering figure like Susan Sontag deserves a towering tome, and Moser’s 700-plus-page biography of the iconic cultural critic delivers . . . this blockbuster à la Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra is both granular and grand—an opus fit for the writer-philosopher who ‘created the mold, and then she broke it.’” — O Magazine, “18 Must-Read Books of Fall 2019”
“Moser is a tenacious biographer, keeping a tight hold on his narrative and reaching firm conclusions. He is very tough-minded, as Sontag herself was at her best, and his mind is like Sontag’s in that he can make very sharp turns and land decisive blows.” — Nylon Magazine
“Monumental and stylish.” — The Atlantic
[Sontag] was avid, ardent, driven, generous, narcissistic, Olympian, obtuse, maddening, sometimes loveable but not very likeable. Moser has had the confidence and erudition to bring all these contradictory aspects together in a biography fully commensurate with the scale of his subject. He is also a gifted, compassionate writer. — Elaine Showalter, The Times Literary Supplement
Beautifully written and moving . . .[a] monumental achievement . . . This brilliant book matches Sontag’s own brilliance and finally gives her the biography she deserves. — BookPage
“Brilliant . . . We need [Sontag] now, more than ever, and this biography keeps her defiantly alive: argumentative, willful, often right, always interesting, encouraging us to up our game as we watch her at the top of hers.” — The Guardian
“Deft and sometimes dishy . . . If Moser’s Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector was indispensable in greatly expanding the Brazilian writer’s profile and readership, especially in the US, then Sontag accomplishes something just as valuable: It deepens our understanding of a world-renowned eminence.” — BookForum
“Moser has managed the near-impossible feat of capturing Sontag in all of her dark brilliance and pointed contradictions.” — Interview
“Succeeds as it does—magnificently, humanely—by displaying the same intellectual purchase, curiosity, and moral capaciousness to which [Sontag] laid so inspiring and noble a claim over a lifetime. . . . graceful, tactful, scrupulous, unerringly insightful . . . Moser’s biography is a stunningly generous gift—to readers, obviously, but also to his subject. He is patient with her, truthful yet tender, recognizing both what was thrilling and what was cursed about her.” — ArtForum
“A landmark achievement—astonishing in its scope, brilliant in its perceptiveness, and a joy to read. It deserves to be counted among the best nonfiction books of 2019.” — Jewish Book Council
“Moser ably chronicles Sontag’s childhood, her youthful brilliance and glamour, her shaping of the public conversation—with essays and books like ‘Notes on ‘Camp’ and ‘Regarding the Pain of Others’—and her heroic efforts on behalf of the people of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war.” — Seattle Times
“Through it all, Moser tends to strike an effective balance between the kind of immersive detail Sontag specialists will eagerly expect and the kind of broader narrative momentum that ordinary readers will appreciate (and that might turn a few of them into Sontag specialists, always a pleasant side effect).” — Christian Science Monitor
“Engagingly written . . . With its personal details and gossip about New York literary parties, Moser’s biography both entertains and scandalizes.” — Mosaic
“Glorious . . . an epiphany of research and storytelling, the definitive life of a writer both more and less than the myth she fastidiously crafted. [A] luminous achievement.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Remarkably perceptive and penetrating.” — National Review
“Don’t be fooled by the length. This book is compulsive reading: moving, maddening, ridiculous and beautiful scenes from the life of Susan Sontag, and the epochs she traversed. Moser has a true and deep love for his subject, a love unafraid to be truthful, and it shows.” — Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers
“If it’s already difficult to imagine American culture without Susan Sontag’s contributions to it, it may soon become difficult to imagine her life without Benjamin Moser’s account of it. A significant life like Sontag’s demands a significant biography. That demand has now been incisively, extravagantly met.” — Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours
“Moser’s accomplishment here is breathtaking: it includes an extraordinary knowledge of the subject, her milieu, her writings, her ideas, and her friends and family, beautiful prose, extraordinary insights, a capacity to understand her driven emotional life and her stellar intellectual life.” — Rebecca Solnit, author of Call Them By Their True Names and Men Explain Things to Me
“An astonishing page-turner, the last word on Susan Sontag. I can’t imagine the necessity of another book about her life.” — Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend
“Sontag’s influence on aesthetics, writing and the wider culture is almost impossible to overstate and Moser’s monumental biography reveals the surprisingly tender, insecure, and intellectually dedicated story of one the most remarkable literary figures of twentieth century America. She stands reclaimed for our century in this definitive, fiercely intelligent work.” — Stephen Fry, author of The Ode Less Travelled
“Sontag made and broke the mold of American twentieth century public intellectual. In this long-awaited, brilliant biography, Moser shows us how to read Sontag—and, by extension, her times—and reveals the extents and limits of her genius. His psychologically nuanced critical study is written with sang-froid and compassion.” — Chris Kraus, author of After Kathy Acker and I Love Dick
“Moser brings his iconic subject to life in this gripping, insightful and supremely stylish biography… revealing at every turn the vital, complicated, imperfect human being behind the formidable public intellectual.” — Edmund Gordon, author of The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography
“A comprehensive, intimate—and surely definitive—biography of writer, provocateur, and celebrity intellectual Susan Sontag . . . Sympathetic and sharply astute . . . A nuanced, authoritative portrait of a legendary artist.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Who better than distinguished critic Moser, National Book Critics Circle finalist for Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, to write a biography of Susan Sontag?” — Library Journal (starred review)
|Los Angeles Times
Fascinating . . . Moser’s biography of Sontag is an education in Sontag, but also in what Sontag wanted and why, as well as an education in the worlds that inspired her and fought her.
Vivian Gornick
A skilled, lively, prodigiously researched book that, in the main, neither whitewashes nor rebukes its subject: It works hard to make the reader see Sontag as the severely complex person she was. [Moser] writes vividly of a woman of parts determined to leave a mark on her time; and makes us feel viscerally how large those parts were — the arrogance, the anxiety, the reach! No mean achievement.”
O Magazine
A towering figure like Susan Sontag deserves a towering tome, and Moser’s 700-plus-page biography of the iconic cultural critic delivers . . . this blockbuster à la Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra is both granular and grand—an opus fit for the writer-philosopher who ‘created the mold, and then she broke it.’
Los Angeles Review of Books
Persuasive and illuminating . . . does what a biography ought to do: it enriches our understanding of its subject.
Mark Athitakis
Enlightening and finely tuned . . . because his tone is so reserved, so disinterested in passing judgement, none of what he writes about comes off as dishy or inappropriate. More to the point, his critical distance from his subject makes him an echo of Sontag herself.
Leslie Jamison
Utterly riveting and consistently insightful . . . The book takes this larger-than-life intellectual powerhouse—formidable, intimidating, often stubbornly impersonal in her work—and makes her life-size again . . . fascinating.
Nylon Magazine
Moser is a tenacious biographer, keeping a tight hold on his narrative and reaching firm conclusions. He is very tough-minded, as Sontag herself was at her best, and his mind is like Sontag’s in that he can make very sharp turns and land decisive blows.
Entertainment Weekly
Moser’s epic portrait of the iconic writer and critic winds through American history, entwining its subject to pivotal points in our culture and reshaping her legacy in the process.
The New Statesman
There can be no doubting the brilliance – the sheer explanatory vigour – of Moser’s biography . . . a triumph of the virtues of seriousness and truth-telling that Susan Sontag espoused again and again but was conspicuously and often quite consciously unable to force herself to live by.
The New York Times
A landmark biography, the first major reintroduction of an incomparable literary heavyweight to the public since her death.
National Review
"Remarkably perceptive and penetrating.
The Guardian
Brilliant . . . We need [Sontag] now, more than ever, and this biography keeps her defiantly alive: argumentative, willful, often right, always interesting, encouraging us to up our game as we watch her at the top of hers.
Seattle Times
Moser ably chronicles Sontag’s childhood, her youthful brilliance and glamour, her shaping of the public conversation—with essays and books like ‘Notes on ‘Camp’ and ‘Regarding the Pain of Others’—and her heroic efforts on behalf of the people of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war.
Mosaic
Engagingly written . . . With its personal details and gossip about New York literary parties, Moser’s biography both entertains and scandalizes.
Elaine Showalter
[Sontag] was avid, ardent, driven, generous, narcissistic, Olympian, obtuse, maddening, sometimes loveable but not very likeable. Moser has had the confidence and erudition to bring all these contradictory aspects together in a biography fully commensurate with the scale of his subject. He is also a gifted, compassionate writer.
Interview
Moser has managed the near-impossible feat of capturing Sontag in all of her dark brilliance and pointed contradictions.
BookPage
Beautifully written and moving . . .[a] monumental achievement . . . This brilliant book matches Sontag’s own brilliance and finally gives her the biography she deserves.
ArtForum
Succeeds as it does—magnificently, humanely—by displaying the same intellectual purchase, curiosity, and moral capaciousness to which [Sontag] laid so inspiring and noble a claim over a lifetime. . . . graceful, tactful, scrupulous, unerringly insightful . . . Moser’s biography is a stunningly generous gift—to readers, obviously, but also to his subject. He is patient with her, truthful yet tender, recognizing both what was thrilling and what was cursed about her.
The Atlantic
Monumental and stylish.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Glorious . . . an epiphany of research and storytelling, the definitive life of a writer both more and less than the myth she fastidiously crafted. [A] luminous achievement.
Christian Science Monitor
Through it all, Moser tends to strike an effective balance between the kind of immersive detail Sontag specialists will eagerly expect and the kind of broader narrative momentum that ordinary readers will appreciate (and that might turn a few of them into Sontag specialists, always a pleasant side effect).
Chris Kraus
Sontag made and broke the mold of American twentieth century public intellectual. In this long-awaited, brilliant biography, Moser shows us how to read Sontag—and, by extension, her times—and reveals the extents and limits of her genius. His psychologically nuanced critical study is written with sang-froid and compassion.
Michael Cunningham
If it’s already difficult to imagine American culture without Susan Sontag’s contributions to it, it may soon become difficult to imagine her life without Benjamin Moser’s account of it. A significant life like Sontag’s demands a significant biography. That demand has now been incisively, extravagantly met.
Rebecca Solnit
Moser’s accomplishment here is breathtaking: it includes an extraordinary knowledge of the subject, her milieu, her writings, her ideas, and her friends and family, beautiful prose, extraordinary insights, a capacity to understand her driven emotional life and her stellar intellectual life.
Sigrid Nunez
An astonishing page-turner, the last word on Susan Sontag. I can’t imagine the necessity of another book about her life.
Rachel Kushner
Don’t be fooled by the length. This book is compulsive reading: moving, maddening, ridiculous and beautiful scenes from the life of Susan Sontag, and the epochs she traversed. Moser has a true and deep love for his subject, a love unafraid to be truthful, and it shows.
Jewish Book Council
A landmark achievement—astonishing in its scope, brilliant in its perceptiveness, and a joy to read. It deserves to be counted among the best nonfiction books of 2019.
Stephen Fry
Sontag’s influence on aesthetics, writing and the wider culture is almost impossible to overstate and Moser’s monumental biography reveals the surprisingly tender, insecure, and intellectually dedicated story of one the most remarkable literary figures of twentieth century America. She stands reclaimed for our century in this definitive, fiercely intelligent work.
Edmund Gordon
Moser brings his iconic subject to life in this gripping, insightful and supremely stylish biography… revealing at every turn the vital, complicated, imperfect human being behind the formidable public intellectual.
BookForum
Deft and sometimes dishy . . . If Moser’s Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector was indispensable in greatly expanding the Brazilian writer’s profile and readership, especially in the US, then Sontag accomplishes something just as valuable: It deepens our understanding of a world-renowned eminence.
National Review
"Remarkably perceptive and penetrating.
The New York Times
A landmark biography, the first major reintroduction of an incomparable literary heavyweight to the public since her death.
Los Angeles Times
Fascinating . . . Moser’s biography of Sontag is an education in Sontag, but also in what Sontag wanted and why, as well as an education in the worlds that inspired her and fought her.
Christian Science Monitor
Through it all, Moser tends to strike an effective balance between the kind of immersive detail Sontag specialists will eagerly expect and the kind of broader narrative momentum that ordinary readers will appreciate (and that might turn a few of them into Sontag specialists, always a pleasant side effect).
Los Angeles Review of Books
Persuasive and illuminating . . . does what a biography ought to do: it enriches our understanding of its subject.
Los Angeles Times
Fascinating . . . Moser’s biography of Sontag is an education in Sontag, but also in what Sontag wanted and why, as well as an education in the worlds that inspired her and fought her.
The Atlantic
Monumental and stylish.
The New Statesman
There can be no doubting the brilliance – the sheer explanatory vigour – of Moser’s biography . . . a triumph of the virtues of seriousness and truth-telling that Susan Sontag espoused again and again but was conspicuously and often quite consciously unable to force herself to live by.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Glorious . . . an epiphany of research and storytelling, the definitive life of a writer both more and less than the myth she fastidiously crafted. [A] luminous achievement.
Interview
Moser has managed the near-impossible feat of capturing Sontag in all of her dark brilliance and pointed contradictions.
National Review
"Remarkably perceptive and penetrating.
ArtForum
Succeeds as it does—magnificently, humanely—by displaying the same intellectual purchase, curiosity, and moral capaciousness to which [Sontag] laid so inspiring and noble a claim over a lifetime. . . . graceful, tactful, scrupulous, unerringly insightful . . . Moser’s biography is a stunningly generous gift—to readers, obviously, but also to his subject. He is patient with her, truthful yet tender, recognizing both what was thrilling and what was cursed about her.
Entertainment Weekly
Moser’s epic portrait of the iconic writer and critic winds through American history, entwining its subject to pivotal points in our culture and reshaping her legacy in the process.
Jewish Book Council
A landmark achievement—astonishing in its scope, brilliant in its perceptiveness, and a joy to read. It deserves to be counted among the best nonfiction books of 2019.
The New York Times
A landmark biography, the first major reintroduction of an incomparable literary heavyweight to the public since her death.
BookForum
Deft and sometimes dishy . . . If Moser’s Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector was indispensable in greatly expanding the Brazilian writer’s profile and readership, especially in the US, then Sontag accomplishes something just as valuable: It deepens our understanding of a world-renowned eminence.”
Seattle Times
Moser ably chronicles Sontag’s childhood, her youthful brilliance and glamour, her shaping of the public conversation—with essays and books like ‘Notes on ‘Camp’ and ‘Regarding the Pain of Others’—and her heroic efforts on behalf of the people of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war.
Nylon Magazine
Moser is a tenacious biographer, keeping a tight hold on his narrative and reaching firm conclusions. He is very tough-minded, as Sontag herself was at her best, and his mind is like Sontag’s in that he can make very sharp turns and land decisive blows.
Mosaic
Engagingly written . . . With its personal details and gossip about New York literary parties, Moser’s biography both entertains and scandalizes.
The Guardian
Brilliant . . . We need [Sontag] now, more than ever, and this biography keeps her defiantly alive: argumentative, willful, often right, always interesting, encouraging us to up our game as we watch her at the top of hers.
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2019-06-11
A sweeping biography reveals personal, political, and cultural turbulence.
Drawing on some 300 interviews, a rich, newly available archive of personal papers, and abundant published sources, biographer, essayist, and translator Moser (Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, 2009) offers a comprehensive, intimate—and surely definitive—biography of writer, provocateur, and celebrity intellectual Susan Sontag (1933-2004). Sympathetic and sharply astute, Moser recounts the astonishing evolution of Susan Rosenblatt, an impressively bright and inquisitive child of the Jewish middle class, into an internationally acclaimed, controversial, and often combative cultural figure. Even as a child, Sontag—she changed her name after her mother's second marriage—saw herself as exceptional: smarter than her classmates, so widely read and articulate that she astonished her professors. Nevertheless, although certain that she was destined for greatness, she was tormented by an abiding fear of inadequacy. Moser recounts Sontag's education, friendships, and sexual encounters; her realization that she was bisexual; and her wide-ranging interests in psychoanalysis, politics, and, most enduringly, aesthetics. He offers judicious readings of all of Sontag's works, from her 1965 "Notes on ‘Camp,' " which, according to Nora Ephron, transformed her from a "highbrow critic" to "a midcult commodity"; to the late novels of which she was proudest. Her private life was stormy. At 17, she married her sociology professor, Philip Rieff, after they had known each other for 10 days, and within two years, she was a mother. Neither marriage nor motherhood suited her. Devoid of maternal instinct, she was unable to care about anyone, said Jamaica Kincaid, "unless they were in a book." Instead, among her many lovers—Richard Goodwin, Warren Beatty, Joseph Brodsky, Lucinda Childs, Annie Leibowitz, to name a few—she sought those who would care for her: publisher Roger Straus, who sustained her "professionally, financially, and sometimes physically"; and women who kept her fed, housed, and clean. Difficulties with basic hygiene, Moser notes, "suggest more than carelessness" but rather a persistent sense of alienation from her body—and exaltation of her mind.
A nuanced, authoritative portrait of a legendary artist.
