The Man Who Would Marry Susan Sontag

And Other Intimate Literary Portraits of the Bohemian Era

Edward Field author David Bergman editor Joan Larkin editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:University of Wisconsin Press

Published:30th Jan '07

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Man Who Would Marry Susan Sontag cover

Long before Stonewall, young Air Force veteran Edward Field, fresh from combat in WWII, threw himself into New York's literary bohemia, searching for fulfillment as a gay man and poet. In this vivid account of his avant-garde years in Greenwich Village and the bohemian outposts of Paris' Left Bank and Tangier - where you could write poetry, be radical, and be openly gay - Field's intimate portraits of literary contemporaries such as Susan Sontag, Alfred Chester, May Swenson, and Frank O'Hara bring back the sadness, bawdiness, humor, and romanticism of the nigh-forgotten postwar bohemian subculture.

The book is entertaining, offering gossipy anecdotes about a range of colorful gay writers, including Alfred Chester (who never really wanted to marry Susan Sontag), Robert Friend, May Swenson, and Arthur Gregor. These disparate recountings hang together because Field's sensibility - candid, perceptive, self-deprecatory - unifies them. This is a fun book that recalls an important era of American literary history. - G. Grieve-Carlson, Choice ""Of serious interest to anyone intrigued by New York literary life of the 1950s and '60s."" - Publishers Weekly

ISBN: 9780299213244

Dimensions: 228mm x 153mm x 17mm

Weight: 407g

302 pages