permission — and boy was he pissed off ! It suggested to me he did not intend to even try getting your cooperation and just wanted to dig up dirt . [ Ned Polsky ] 20
These awful people implied that they would give me a great review if I collaborated with them . [ John Richardson ] 21
Of course no professional biographer would behave as Polsky reported , and Richardson , Picasso ' s biographer , knew better than to suppose that such a promise could be kept , let alone offered .
Of all the commentary on our book , we thought only one piece actually probed the issues we were trying to raise . Carlin Romano , a reviewer for the Philadelphia Inquirer who had interviewed Sontag several times , did not endorse our viewpoint and did not express an opinion on our book per se , but he did recognize its significance . In “ Public Intellectuals ’ Private Lives : Who ’ s In or Who ’ s Out ?” ( June 16 , 2000 ), a piece on publishing that appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education , he compared our biography to Saul Bellow ’ s novel Ravelstein , which is based on the life of academic Allan Bloom . Romano recapitulated the harsh criticism both books had received for exposing the lives of thinkers , noting in particular that Sontag had challenged our qualifications , and that Bellow had been attacked for hiding behind the mask of fiction even when his descriptions of Bloom 20
November 22 , 1997 , UCLA archive . 21 July 9 , 1998 , UCLA archive .
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