This is Michael Silverblatt. This week, Benjamin Moser was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Susan Sontag, Sontag, her life and work.

In light of that, today we are rebroadcasting the conversation I had with Benjamin Moser last October.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd. It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt. This is Bookworm.

And today I'm very pleased to have as my guest the very brilliant Benjamin Moser,

who is the author of two biographies of women writers.

The first was a biography of Karese Lyspector, which did a good deal of bringing Lyspector,

a writer who spent a good majority of her life in Brazil to the attention of American readers.

And the second is a biography of Susan Sontag, her life and work, which has been a controversial book,

as if a biography could be controversial. But nevertheless, this is the way it seems. Now,

what do you think of the controversy that seems to have surrounded this book?

Well, I think a book about Susan Sontag that wasn't controversial would not be a book about

Susan Sontag. I think she's somebody who elicited very heavy, very visceral and sometimes

violent opinions all through her life. And I don't really see it as

controversial. This book, I see it more as just, I hope, is something starting a conversation

about an author that I think is more essential than ever. I mean, Sontag was always associated

with fashion. She was associated with photography. She was associated with being on the cover of Vanity Fair and the only

possible American intellectual who could have been on the cover of Vanity Fair. I think the

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