The Scandal of Susan Sontag

This volume of essays by a dozen contributors (most notably Wayne Koestenbaum) examines a number of key works and aspects of Sontag's career—nearly five decades worth of gender-bending and upsetting the social applecart. Like its subject, this assessment comes with the baggage of ultra-self-consciousness and a dash of self-importance. Why shouldn't it? It is an attempt at interpreting the author who, with much provocative fanfare, came to disown interpretation. Overall, this appreciation—edited by two associate professors of English (Ching at the University of Memphis, Wagner-Lawlor at Penn State)—yields new insights on a most complex sensibility. The contributors accomplish this with sophisticated admiration, usually with originality and, with the requisite doses of wit to deconstruct the chronicler of camp. Sontag's work and reputation are looked at from all angles: in popular culture (a cameo in Zelig ), as a filmmaker herself, as playwright and director, as novelist, as mental and literal world traveler. What predominates amid the academic-speak is Sontag's understanding of the politics of experience. 9 photos. (Nov.)