ABSTRACT
Moser's now Pulitzer-winning biography (awarded after this review was written) elicited considerable dismay from reviewers who admire Susan Sontag, or who loved her. Looking to revisit her intellectual energy and its inspirations, they found simplistic psychological explanations for her achievements and abusive commentary from Sontag's own diaries and the many persons Moser interviewed. Too often Moser reports how Sontag made people feel without telling us what she did or said to make them feel that way. The method expresses the interviewee without revealing Sontag. Especially hostile to Sontag's reticence about her sexuality, Moser has no clue as to why a writer might prefer not to parade her sexuality. Those reservations aside, Moser has written the biography from which anyone wanting to do better by Sontag will begin, quarrying sources, disputing interpretations, sharpening insights, to serve a contrarian writer justly celebrated in, of all unnoticed places, Gremlins 2.
