Which Books Have Been Unfairly Maligned?

Each week in Bookends, two writers take on questions about the world of books. This week, Benjamin Moser and Charles McGrath discuss books with undeserved bad reputations.

By Benjamin Moser - The New York Times

In her often unloved fiction, Susan Sontag turned insecurity into a virtue.

Benjamin Moser Credit Illustration by R. Kikuo Johnson

To write a biography of Susan Sontag is to see how the image of a person can trounce the human behind it — and to learn that, even for someone as heavily mythologized as she was, some myths are more resilient than others. Two of the most persistent myths about Sontag could profitably be discarded. The first is that Sontag was that archetypal creature, the “strong woman.” The second is that Sontag, an essayist of genius, wrote rubbishy fiction.  MORE