Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon

Carl Edmund Rollyson, Lisa Olson Paddock

W. W. Norton & Company, 2000 - Biography & Autobiography - 370 pages

The first--and unauthorized--biography of the so-called dark lady of American letters. Ever since she took American culture by storm with the publication of her Notes on Camp in 1964, Susan Sontag has been a star. Her austere glamour has been a critical factor in her success, making her a role model for intellectual women, a sex symbol for brainy men. She has never ceased to fascinate the public: as brilliant wunderkind, bringing the latest in French thought to America; as sophisticated analyst of her own experience with cancer in Illness as Metaphor; as champion of free speech in the Rushdie Affair; as theater director in besieged Sarajevo; and, with the publication of The Volcano Lover, as best-selling historical novelist. Yet she has both courted that fascination and insisted on holding it at a distance, demanding control over her public image. This first--and most definitely unauthorized--biography delves beneath the surface to examine the forces that made Susan Sontag an international icon. Carl Rollyson and Lisa Paddock explore her public persona and private passions, including the strategies behind her meteoric rise to fame and her political moves and missteps. Above all, they show how the life of Susan Sontag reveals to us the way we live now.

Contents

• My Desert Childhood 19331945: 3
• A World Elsewhere 19451948: 15
• Towards a Better Life 19491953: 25
• The Life and the Project 19521957: 37
• Quest 19571958: 43
• Making It 19591961: 51
• Made 19621963: 63
• Supremacy 19631964: 78
• Fame 19651966: 88
• Peter and Paul 19651967: 105
• Neoradicalism 19671969: 119
• Styles of Radical Will 19691971: 130
• Ms Sontag 19711973: 146
• Promised Lands 19711974: 158
• Old Complaints Revisited 1975: 164
• Becoming a Little Posthumous 19751978: 169
• Recovery 19761977: 175
• The Salonistes 19771985: 180
• I etcetera 1979: 200
• A Wandering Jew 1980: 208
• Susan the Apostate 1982: 216
• Retrospection 19821983: 226
• President Sontag 19861989: 234
• Pitching Susan Sontag 19861989: 254
• The Way We Live Now 19861995: 262
• The Volcano Lover 19901992: 277
• Sarajevo 19931995: 285
• The End and the Beginning 19911999: 295
• A Brief Anthology of Quotations Homage to SS: 303
• Notes and Comments: 308
• Acknowledgments: 342
• Index: 345

About the author

Carl Rollyson is a professor of English at Baruch College, The City University of New York. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He has written several biographies of prominent writers and has contributed essays to numerous reference works. He lives in Cape May, NJ. Lisa Paddock holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Toronto. She has written scholarly articles on literature for several journals and reference books. She lives in Cape May, NJ.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon
• Authors: Carl Edmund Rollyson, Lisa Olson Paddock
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000
• ISBN: 0393049280, 9780393049282
• Length: 370 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / General; Biography & Autobiography / Literary Figures; Biography & Autobiography / Rich & Famous; Biography & Autobiography / Women; History / General; Literary Criticism / General