Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated
This first biography of Susan Sontag (1933–2004) is now fully revised and updated, providing an even more intimate portrayal of the influential writer's life and career. The authors base this revision on Sontag's newly released private correspondence—including emails—and the letters and memoirs of those who knew her best. The authors reveal as never before her early years in Tucson and Los Angeles, her conflicted relationship with her mother, her longing for her absent father, and her precocious achievements at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago. Papers, diaries, and lecture notes, many accessible for the first time, spark a passionate fire in this biography.

The authors follow Sontag as she abruptly ends an early first marriage, establishes herself in Paris, and embraces the open lifestyle she began as a teenager in Berkeley. As a single mother she struggled with teaching at Columbia University and other colleges while aiming for a career as a novelist and essayist. Eventually she made her own way in New York City after acquiring her one and only publisher, Farrar, Straus&Giroux.

In her later years Sontag became a world figure, a tastemaker, dramatist, and political activist who risked her life in besieged Sarajevo. Love affairs with men and women troubled her. Diagnosed with cancer, she responded with determination, and her experience with illness inspired some of her best writing. This biography shows Sontag always craving “more life” at whatever cost and depicts her harrowing final decline even as she resisted terminal cancer. Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated presents in candid and stark relief a new assessment of a heroic and controversial figure.
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Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated
This first biography of Susan Sontag (1933–2004) is now fully revised and updated, providing an even more intimate portrayal of the influential writer's life and career. The authors base this revision on Sontag's newly released private correspondence—including emails—and the letters and memoirs of those who knew her best. The authors reveal as never before her early years in Tucson and Los Angeles, her conflicted relationship with her mother, her longing for her absent father, and her precocious achievements at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago. Papers, diaries, and lecture notes, many accessible for the first time, spark a passionate fire in this biography.

The authors follow Sontag as she abruptly ends an early first marriage, establishes herself in Paris, and embraces the open lifestyle she began as a teenager in Berkeley. As a single mother she struggled with teaching at Columbia University and other colleges while aiming for a career as a novelist and essayist. Eventually she made her own way in New York City after acquiring her one and only publisher, Farrar, Straus&Giroux.

In her later years Sontag became a world figure, a tastemaker, dramatist, and political activist who risked her life in besieged Sarajevo. Love affairs with men and women troubled her. Diagnosed with cancer, she responded with determination, and her experience with illness inspired some of her best writing. This biography shows Sontag always craving “more life” at whatever cost and depicts her harrowing final decline even as she resisted terminal cancer. Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated presents in candid and stark relief a new assessment of a heroic and controversial figure.
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Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated

Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated

Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated

Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated

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Overview

This first biography of Susan Sontag (1933–2004) is now fully revised and updated, providing an even more intimate portrayal of the influential writer's life and career. The authors base this revision on Sontag's newly released private correspondence—including emails—and the letters and memoirs of those who knew her best. The authors reveal as never before her early years in Tucson and Los Angeles, her conflicted relationship with her mother, her longing for her absent father, and her precocious achievements at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago. Papers, diaries, and lecture notes, many accessible for the first time, spark a passionate fire in this biography.

The authors follow Sontag as she abruptly ends an early first marriage, establishes herself in Paris, and embraces the open lifestyle she began as a teenager in Berkeley. As a single mother she struggled with teaching at Columbia University and other colleges while aiming for a career as a novelist and essayist. Eventually she made her own way in New York City after acquiring her one and only publisher, Farrar, Straus&Giroux.

In her later years Sontag became a world figure, a tastemaker, dramatist, and political activist who risked her life in besieged Sarajevo. Love affairs with men and women troubled her. Diagnosed with cancer, she responded with determination, and her experience with illness inspired some of her best writing. This biography shows Sontag always craving “more life” at whatever cost and depicts her harrowing final decline even as she resisted terminal cancer. Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated presents in candid and stark relief a new assessment of a heroic and controversial figure.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781496808462
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Publication date: 08/25/2016
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 368
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

Carl Rollyson is professor emeritus of journalism at Baruch College, CUNY. He is author of many biographies, including Sylvia Plath Day by Day, Volumes 1&2; William Faulkner Day by Day; The Last Days of Sylvia Plath; A Real American Character: The Life of Walter Brennan; Hollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews; and Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress, Revised and Updated. His reviews of biographies have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New Criterion. He also writes a column on biography twice a week for the New York Sun. Lisa Paddock is a freelance writer and editor.
Carl Rollyson is professor emeritus of journalism at Baruch College, CUNY. He is author of many biographies, including Sylvia Plath Day by Day, Volumes 1&2; William Faulkner Day by Day; The Last Days of Sylvia Plath; A Real American Character: The Life of Walter Brennan; Hollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews; and Marilyn Monroe: A Life of the Actress, Revised and Updated. He is also coauthor (with Lisa Paddock) of Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated. His reviews of biographies have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and New Criterion. He also writes a column on biography twice a week for the New York Sun.
Lisa Paddock is a freelance writer and editor. She is also coauthor (with Carl Rollyson) of Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, Revised and Updated, published by University Press of Mississippi.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Chapter 1 My Desert Childhood (1933-45) 3

Chapter 2 A World Elsewhere (1945-48) 16

Chapter 3 Towards a Better Life (1949-53) 26

Chapter 4 The Life and the Project (1953-57) 43

Chapter 5 Quest (1957-58) 52

Chapter 6 Making It (1958-62) 63

Chapter 7 Made (1962-63) 73

Chapter 8 Supremacy (1963-64) 86

Chapter 9 Fame (1965-66) 95

Chapter 10 Peter and Paul (1965-67) 111

Chapter 11 Neo-Radicalism (1967-69) 126

Chapter 12 Styles of Radical Will (1968-71) 137

Chapter 13 Ms. Sontag (1971-73) 153

Chapter 14 Promised Lands (1973-74) 164

Chapter 15 "Old Complaints Revisited" (1975) 170

Chapter 16 Becoming a Little Posthumous (1975-77) 176

Chapter 17 Recovery (1976-77) 181

Chapter 18 The Salonistes (1977-85) 189

Chapter 19 I, etcetera (1978-79) 210

Chapter 20 A "Wandering Jew (1980) 217

Chapter 21 Susan the Apostate (1982) 223

Chapter 22 Retrospection and Retaliation (1982-83) 230

Chapter 23 President Sontag (1984-89) 236

Chapter 24 Pitching Susan Sontag (1986-89) 254

Chapter 25 "The Way We Live Now" (1987-92) 261

Chapter 26 Vie Volcano Lover (1990-92) 271

Chapter 27 Sarajevo (1993-95) 279

Chapter 28 The End and the Beginning (1991-99) 288

Chapter 29 Recovery and Rejection (1999-2003) 300

Chapter 30 Finis (2004) 310

Coda 314

Acknowledgments 316

Notes and Comments 319

Works Cited 343

Index 353

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