Benjamin Moser’s huge new biography of the writer Susan Sontag is a book that demands to be judged by its cover, arriving on shelves without a jot of identifying text on its jacket front. It features only a black-and-white photograph of its subject, shot by Richard Avedon for a 1978 Vogue profile that heralded Sontag as “the most interesting American woman of her generation.”
The Avedon photo shows Sontag in her mid-40s, during one of the many high points of her celebrity. Posing in front of a hazy urban streetscape, she’s sheathed in black leather, and the dramatic features of her face are composed into a quizzical mask. This was the “majestic and terrifying” Sontag, Mr. Moser writes, “whose raised eyebrow made and broke careers . . . who knew everyone and everything.”
