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Chapter-5

IN AMERICA- An Exhilarating journey into the Past

The past itself, as historical change continues to accelerate,

has become the most surreal of subjects - making it

possible... to see a new beauty in what is vanishing.

Susan Sontag.

Sontag’s last novel In America is rated as the most successful book written by

her. Like her previous novel, The Volcano Lover, In America is again a historical

novel. The novel also won the National Book Award for fiction in 2000. As far as

the plot of the novel is concerned, the novel introduces a straightforward story with

the protagonist Maryna caught in a love triangle between her husband and lover.

This, however, is not the only central theme of the novel since In America is clearly a

case of historiographic metafiction. As I have already discussed in the introduction of

this project that historiographic metafiction, the label coined by Linda Hutcheon

shares a critical attitude towards representational strategies. As a lot of postmodern

literature, and especially historiographic metafiction, is conscious of the fact that

what we are reading is not the neutral and objective view of things that really

happened in the past. At the same time, it is also true that such texts are sometimes

the only possibility to know what happened in the past. Hutcheon also acknowledges,

“Past events existed empirically; but in epistemological terms we can only know them

today through texts. Past events are given meaning not existence by their

representation in history” (Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism 81).

The novelists of postmodern era have returned to history but with a new

sensibility. In relation to existing popular genres the novels written in 1960s onwards,

can be understood as a new postmodernist form of historical novel. These types of

novels demand a new critical approach. My study does not aim to argue that not all

contemporary novels, which deal with history, are postmodern historical novels but

these novels might be understood as constituting one of the many categories of

“historiographic metafcition” defined by Linda Hutcheon in A Poetics of

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Postmodernism. Historiographic metafiction includes postmodern realism,

postmodernist fantasy, postmodernist detective novel, postmodernist historical novel,

etc. The postmodern historical novel contradicts the public record of ‘official

history’, flaunts anachronisms, and integrates history and the fantastic – all disallowed

by traditional historical novel depending on the definition. Relying on this I would

classify In America the last novel written by Susan Sontag as a fine example of

historiographic metafiction. To prove my point I aim to analyze and argue that the

novel records history by telling about a famous Polish actress Helena Modjeska who

led a retinue of Poles to the United States in 1876.

The novelist interrogates the historical record, decenters formal narrative, and

challenges as well the generic assumptions of the genre of historical novel. The novel

In America redefines history as an ‘open work’ and as well ‘spatializes’ history. The

novel challenges the linear model of history implied in traditional historical novels.

By presenting history to her readers as an ‘open-work’, she does not merely indicate

that the official record is false but she implies that the historical record itself is

engaged with readers in a process of movement.

The representation of history depends mainly on the viewpoint and cultural

background of the person who is representing it. If two historians are asked to

describe a historical event, even if they are provided with same material, they will

differ in their depiction of that event. Their will be fictional elements in their

depiction. Thus a novel that deals with history has to have fiction and historiography

in it. This fact has lead to the development of historiographic metafiction in

postmodern literature.

I have chosen this novel In America as it is the fictional recreation of the life

of a historical woman who was an actress. Highly respected in the literary circles, the

novel won a lot of praise. From personal account of Susan Sontag, her interviews, it

appears that her struggle with public and personal identity coincidentally reflects a

similar struggle in the life of a woman, she fictionalizes in her novel. The novel In

America begins with an epigraph from Langston Hughes: “America Will be!” It is

an apt start to the story of a group of artistic and intellectual Poles who travel to

Anaheim, California in 1876 to establish a Utopian Community. The group is led by

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Maryna Zaleska, Poland’s greatest actress, who has forsaken her career in order to

form an idealistic commune.

Maryna is aware of the likelihood of failure as they had attempted it

unsuccessfully earlier also, but the romance of starting again, is too enticing for her

not to pursue again. In the group are her husband, Bogdan Dembowski, seven year old

son Piotr, a writer named Ryszard who is enamored of the actress and others looking

to start a new life in a new country. The members of the group depart from Poland in

waves with Ryszard and Julian, a family friend leaving first to check out a community

in California where the group imagines a life full of freedom that combines shared

financial responsibility with artistic expression and development.

Sontag declares on the copyright page that her novel was inspired by the

career of Helena Modrzejewska, Poland’s renowned actress who immigrated to

America in 1876. Sontag carefully uses the word ‘inspired’ to tell her readers that she

does not follow the historical record too closely. She emphasizes that most of the

characters in the novel are invented, but she also acknowledges the books and articles

written on Modjeska. In the preface of the novel named ‘Zero’, Sontag dramatizes the

creative process that led her to write the novel. In a well-defined metafictional mode,

she emphasizes her effort to create a new story out of the material of history.

The narrator-author speaks directly to the readers to explain how she arrived

at an understanding of her characters, their names and behaviour patterns. This

chapter or non-chapter as we may call also tells who the writer of In America is.

Sontag narrates: she grew up in Arizona and wanted to become a great humanitarian;

her grandparents came from Poland; at eighteen, she read Middlemarch. She has been

to Sarajevo. These all pondering over suggest but only about the author Susan

Sontag. In the first chapter of the novel, the character of Maryna is visualized from

many perspectives: her present and ex-husband’s, the writer Ryszard’s, her stage

dresser Zofia’s, her half brother Stefan’s physician Henryk’s and others. She shares

with Ryszard her past life, about her former husband from whom he adopted the

Polish surname of Zalezowski. Maryna’s mercurial temperament is also revealed.

Maryna is disenchanted with her successful career. She does not want to play

comic roles as she feels comedy is not her strong point. This chapter also emphasizes

that it is very easy for Maryna to assume another role that of avant garde social

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experimenter, in forming a commune in America as well as the ease with which she

later abandons that role and returns to her career in theatre. Moreover, as of now she

is eager and restless to make a fresh start. Maryna flees Warsaw with her husband

Bogdan and her son Piotr to the village of Zakopane in the Tatra Mountains. She

offers many reasons for leaving: such as her desire to be known as more than a Polish

actress, her wish to live in a free country. The members of the group say farewell to

their families, careers, and friends and determine to make the trip to the new world.

Ryszard and Julian embark for America before Maryna, in order to settle

down a place where they can settle. Aboard ship, they meet many Americans who

know nothing about Poland and its partition. The novel in a way also presents, in a

visceral sense, about what it means when different cultures collide. America

represents an unlimited horizon for the immigrants particularly Polish immigrants,

who have suffered at the hands of different war conquerors. Maryna, in a series of

letters to her friend Henryk, describes her journey and adventures in New York. It

becomes clear how she describes herself as “swimming in vacancy”. It also becomes

clear that decision to change itself becomes a change as the entourage has left behind

their old lives in Europe to begin new life in America.

The next part of the novel depicts how America affects the Poles who have

chosen to live there. Each member of the group begins to claim more of his or her

own unique identity, to believe more deeply in unlimited potential and opportunity,

and to put aside the conferring traditions and worldviews of Europe. Within the

structure of the commune, we see individuals becoming independent, adventurous,

and risk taking. Maryna conceives of the Utopian household as a Community and

family, “not a kind of place but a kind of time, those all too brief moments when one

would not wish to be anywhere else”. She conceives of the commune as a farm on

which each member will do his share in producing the food they eat. Moreover, at the

same time she does not miss stage. She continues to attend performances of plays.

After six months of the experience, everyone of the group is changed, some

for the better and some for the worse. The ideals fostered by Polish immigrants

crumble and they face the harsh realities of life of adapting to life in America. A

reluctant Maryna grants permission to her son Piotr to change his name to Peter. She

also agrees to leave the commune for an excursion with Ryzsard. Bodgan, Maryna’s

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husband also notes in his diary about the disintegration of the commune. One

member of the commune, Wanda Solski attempts suicide. Another couple decides to

return to Poland. Maryana leaves her husband and son Peter at the commune and

goes to San Francisco to find work in theater. To improve her pronunciation of

English she takes lessons from Miss Collingridge. She wins over the theatre

impresario, Angus Barton in her auditions. For the first time, Maryna experiences the

rush of freedom, which she had expected to feel upon coming to America:

IT FELT LIKE an escapade; like leaving home; like telling lies-and

she would tell many lies. She was beginning again; she was rejoining

her destiny, which conferred on her the rich sensation that she had

never gone astray (IA, 229).

Maryna’s resumption of her career in theatre also symbolizes the way

Americans are said to be constantly reinventing themselves and assuming new roles.

In this sense, the novelist also points out that America is perfectly suited to people

like Maryna having a narcissistic personality. After her success in New York, she

decides to visit her friends and her mother in Poland. She sends a note to her friend

Henryk in which she writes: “I’m a monster, I have thrown love away. I am a bad

mother. I lie to everybody including myself” (193). As Maryna advances in her

American theatrical career, she leaves more of her old life and becomes more

narcissistic. At the same time, she also realizes how much she loves Bogdan and

probes to see if he still loves her. Maryna is called to perform with Edwin Booth in

New York, they go on tour together. The story ends with a drunken self-absorbed

monologue by the actor Edwin Booth to which Maryna is a witness. Booth in a

drunken state discourses on the nature of an actor:

How can an actor be taken seriously? It’s all hacum, vanity, boasting.

An Actor is always trying to make himself interesting. First, he has to

make himself interesting to himself. Then to other people (In America,

377)

Through this monologue, the reader gets a stark look at the dark underside of

theatre and acting. It is irony for Maryna that she has put in hard work and struggle in

a career and when she reaches the top of her career, she comes to know that the actors

are deranged human beings. She realizes that the focus on herself and her own

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interests has helped her in succeeding in her career. She sees in Edwin Booth, the

glimpse of herself. Like him she was also successful in projecting dramatic characters

from Shakespeare on stage but unsuccessful to find any happiness in her own life.

Edwin Booth asserts to her that he is her husband in art and wants to come to an

understanding with her as they have a long tour ahead.

Thus, the novel tells about the historical figure imbibing various narrative

strategies, intertextuality, and imagery and of course the historical reality. The

narrative strategies are far from being simple or straightforward. In America is

regarded as a compelling piece of historiographic metafiction because it imbibes fact

and fiction. The interweaving of historical and literary sources of nineteenth century

is a characteristic of the novel. This intertextuality reinforces the historical

verisimilitude connection with nineteenth century and simultaneously it materializes

Sontag’s constant conversation with other forms of literature. Since Sontag was

telling about the life of a woman whose story has already been told, she chose not to

write about her in formal mimetic fashion since this would not have been a

convincing form of representation. In fact Sontag used a form of postmodernism to

reinvest the story, which was already embedded in the reader’s consciousness.

Helena Modjeska was a famous Polish stage actress of the late nineteenth

century. Her autobiography Memories and Impressions describes her life from a

famous Polish actress to her journey in America. She became the first actress to have

her own train coach in her tours of the country. The novel In America follows the

same time-structure as the autobiography but its form uses diary, epistle and third

person narration from various characters’ perspectives. It is a fictional creation to

Modjeska’s memories.

The novel begins “IRRESOLUTE, no, shivering, I’d crashed a party in the

private dining room of a hotel” (3). The party is taking place in Warsaw in 1876 but

the grate-crasher already knows about Maria Callas and 1960s New York and the

‘besieged Sarajevo” of the present day. While all this is explained, the reader is

drawn into a kind of guessing game about who the various characters are and what

might happen to them. In this way, the first chapter in fact depends upon the ‘willing

suspension of disbelief’. We are invited for playing an active role in the text as some

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similarities are drawn between the characters in the novel and the characters from

other literary texts such as plays by Chekov and Czeslaw, the poet himself.

The present study aims to explain that the novel is not an attempt to

mimetically recreate the actress’s life but instead it plays with the narrative techniques

to create an account of the actress’s life, to open it up for the present. It uses the

narrative devices; third person, omniscience, diaries, letters, monologues, snatches of

dialogue to present the characters’ perspective in relation to their public image. I will

explain in my analysis how the novel reinvents the historical woman as well as the

period surrounding her. The general events in the life of the historical woman Helena

Modjeska are used as a backdrop upon which Sontag creates the fictional character.

These point to a narrative, which is not mimetic, but a referential self -conscious

form.

The history of colonization, economic dependence on other imperial powers

like United States, influx of immigrants, supremacy of one culture over the other, etc

are told with a newer perspective. The novel is told from the view of Polish

community who has been subject to all this. Further Sontag also points out that the

Poles, often chatted in the language of the “authoritative” i.e. French. While

presenting their sufferings at the hands of Europeans Sontag expresses her sympathy

as she herself has experienced the connivance of the great European powers while she

was in Sarajevo:

I knew that the memory of injustice colored every sentiment among

these people, whose country had disappeared from the map of Europe.

Appalled by the lethal upsurge of nationalist tribal feelings in my own

time, in particular (you can be in only one place at a time) by the fate

of one small European nation, braided together tribally, and, for that,

destroyed with impunity, with the acquiescence or connivance of the

great European powers (I’d spent a good part of three years in besieged

Sarajevo) (10).

The characters in the novel keep on shuttling between America and Poland

either physically or through their letters. This denotes the interchange between

different worlds made possible with magical realism. The country of Poland is one

world from where they have come. This is the real world, but America where they

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want to experience freedom, the country of their dreams, is the magical world. The

narrative takes place at the intersection of these two worlds. They want to leave

Poland and go to America to experience the New World. They want to live in the free

country that represents future for them. This also denotes the human tendency and

desire to experience and live in the magical world.

In America combines the ordinary and the extraordinary events, transgresses

boundary between history and fiction. Maryna’s journey to the new world and the

making of a new community and above all magical realism envision a better world.

The novel also depicts the social and political upheaval witnessed by Poland She feels

the people of Poland, “for all their swank and comforts had not done better than to get

themselves born in a country subjected for decades to the variously inductive decrees

of a triple foreign occupation, so that many an ordinary action, by which I mean what

people in my country would consider an ordinary exercise of freedom” (7).

Sontag wanted to depict the experiences of the immigrants and the best way

was to write from an immigrant’s point of view. Sontag did a lot of research before

writing the novel. Sontag admitted in one of her interviews that the pleasure of

writing In America was investigating, what the past was like? For example the novel

was set in 1877 and Maryna was in the Palace hotel in San Francisco. Sontag knew

that the earliest elevator invented by Mr.Otis had been shown in the exposition in

1876, in Philadelphia. Thus Sontag was curious to know that the Palace Hotel built

afterward had elevator. She squealed with pleasure on becoming aware that it had

elevators. She was surprised to know that in 1880s there were more than 5000 theatres

in America and half of their productions were Shakespeare. Sontag did a lot of

research before writing the novel.

At the same time Sontag has also discussed the supremacy of one culture over

the other. Sontag wanted to depict the experiences of the immigrants and the best way

was to write from an immigrant’s point of view. Sontag did a lot of research before

writing the novel. Sontag admitted in one of her interviews that the pleasure of

writing In America was investigating, what the past was like? For example the novel

was set in 1877 and Maryna was in the Palace hotel in San Francisco. Sontag knew

that the earliest elevator invented by Mr.Otis had been shown in the exposition in

1876, in Philadelphia. Thus Sontag was curious to know that the Palace Hotel built

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afterward had elevator. She squealed with pleasure on becoming aware that it had

elevators. She was surprised to know that in 1880s there were more than 5000 theatres

in America and half of their productions were Shakespeare. Sontag did a lot of

research before writing the novel.

An innovative technique adopted by Sontag in the novel In America is

combining of many genres. Genres are different kind of literary forms that share

different characteristics. Like in magic realist fiction, Sontag has used poems, essays,

historical documents, autobiography, oral storytelling to blur the line between fact and

fiction. Through such combination of history and magical details, magical realism

moves beyond realism or naturalism. Thus magical realist rewriting of history moves

it closer to fiction empowering the historian to view an inaccessible past and hence to

question the existing representation of it. Susan Sontag has exactly done that in the

novel In America.

The novel refers to the life of the famous actress in a postmodern narrative

technique as it adds a new dimension to our understanding of her life. The

representation in the frame of a historical novel deflects the tautological method for

understanding history and invents a way to renegotiate our relation to history as

something that can be reinvented. As already mentioned, Helena Modjeska is a

historical figure about whom very few people are aware. Modjeska’s story is not

embedded in public’s consciousness because her celebrity occurred before the

explosion of mass media such as television. However, Sontag has dealt with this

unfamiliarity in a very successful way. To hold the reader’s attention, Sontag travels

back in history within the narrative to an imagined space of a party in Warsaw in the

very beginning of the novel in Chapter Zero. In a well-turned way of creating

metafiction, she introduces the characters to her readers.

The issue of gender in magical realism is as problematic as it is in modernism

and postmodernism. Although the narrative mode in magical realism belongs to both

genders yet it is possible to locate a female spirit which is active in the narration. Thus

linking Susan Sontag to the minority women writers who have been writing under the

banner of magical realism will not be justified. Moreover Sontag herself has resisted

the label of feminist, but in the novel we do have the echoes of it. That a writer may

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dislike a particular label while using its techniques does not erase its presence from

the text or prevent the inclusion of the text in that particular mode.

In America is about the life of a beautiful and intelligent woman who is

allowed to earn her fame because she is an actress and only acting the part of an

ambitious woman. In fact America has been regarded as a country where women can

experience more freedom. The novel in a way brings to fore the oddities experienced

by women of those times. The intrusive novelist also compares the status and

condition of women in 1877 and the present day. Sontag informs us that Maryna

adopted the profession of an actor as “there was hardly any other enviable career

available to women then” (11). Thus we come to know that the novelist belongs to an

era when a large no of career options are available to women.

Imagery is one of the most powerful ways of expressing oneself in literature. It

is also the most appealing way of conveying a writer's or a poet's feelings. In magical

realism imagery has an elevating effect. Susan Sontag has described with dazzling

detail the peaks and valleys of America. The immigrants are awestruck by the

landscape around them which Sontag describes:

No landscape, not even the swampy jungle of the Isthmus of Panama,

had struck any of them as this awesomely strange. And they were not

borne through it receiving it as a view, but walking in it, on it, for it

was all pale surface, the sky so lofty and the ground so level, and they

had never felt as erect, as vertical their skin brushed by the Santa Anna

wind, their ears lulled by the oddly intrusive sound of their own

footfalls. Pausing they could hear the hiss of skinny desert colored

creatures scurring along the pebbly surface (154).

The narrative voice of the author, heavily inflicted with Sontag’s own voice

creates identification with the space. She tells about her own Polish background and

feels personal relationship with the characters she creates. Her linguistic

identification also blurs physical boundaries. The narrator then renames the already

designated figures by their initial names. She fictionalizes and in the process of

fictionalizing, she talks about the constructs of fiction:

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It seemed to me I’d caught her name, it was either Helena or Maryna –

and supposing it would help me to decipher the story if I could identify

the couple or the trio, what better start to give them names, I decided to

think of her as Maryna (4).

Further Sontag declares:

I know it could have been Helena, but I’d decided that it would be, or

must be Maryna – I resolved to discover her name with or without

auditory clues. What could he, I mean the husband be called?

Adam, Jan Zygmunt (5)

This self-conscious use of fictional process and language establishes

reclamation of historical figures to act as performers of the narrator’s idea. The

narrator knowingly declares that she will be putting her own understanding of these

historical events and figures in the creative process. The narrator’s settling into the

story, choosing a setting and characters, working out the particulars are in fact

dramatizing the process of creating the piece of fiction. Moreover, in creating this

process Sontag has created a well-knit piece of metafiction. The narrator clearly

resembles the novelist. Nevertheless, her descriptions need a clear investigation. As

described by the narrator, these people are not her people, they are Polish aristocrats

and artists and intellectuals. She travels in her mind and we know there is a difference

between a mental journey to a remembered place and same journey to an unimagined

place and still another difference of journey to a place which is both actual and

imagined, both documentable and dreamed. The narrator also comments on the same:

The past is the biggest country of all, and there’s a reason one gives

into the desire to set the stories in past: almost everything good seems

to be located in the past, perhaps that’s an illusion, but I fell nostalgic

for every era before I was born; and one is freer of modern inhibitions,

perhaps because one bears no responsibility for the past, sometimes I

feel simply ashamed of time in which I live. And this past will also be

present, because it was I in the private dining room of the hotel,

scattering seeds of prediction. I did not belong there. I was an alien

presence…but even what I misunderstood would be kind of truth, if

only about the time which I live, rather than the one in which the story

took place (23-24).

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Thus the novelist successfully imagines the event of the past and at the same

time dramatizes the process of writing fiction. While doing so the novelist also

comments self-reflexively on the reading, writing and meaning making processes by

disrupting the story line with intrusive comments, as well as by mirroring and

interpreting through which the metafictional text can indicate different roles that

readers and writers can assume. When a narrator in a novel directly addresses the

readers, he arouses the interest of the readers and demands a more active role from

them thus subverting the dominance of the traditional narrative. A number of studies

by critics like Patricia Waugh, Hutcheon, and MeCaffery note that one of the defining

characteristics of metafictional works is choosing the issues of writing and writers,

reading and readers as their subject matter and including writers and readers and the

talk about books as an integral part of the text. Waugh suggests that by focusing on

characters, who are concerned with reading, writing, and interpreting written words

and written worlds, metafictional texts point to the ways in which fictional systems

are created.

The concern with books, authors, reading and writing and interpreting can

often make the metafictional text, manifest intertextuality as the text and the

characters in it can refer to other texts and other authors. In the present case, we have

Ryszard, the young writer and avid reader who has written two novels. He claims to

have read the works by Sir Walter Scott, Macaulay, Thackeray, Addison, Charles

Lamb, etc. He also declares to have written in his books about things which “most

foreigners don’t know anything about” (119). He is a writer who, “like many writers

did not believe in the present, but only in the past and in the future” (264). He

addresses poems to Maryna:

Hither, unheralded by voice of fame,

Except as a fair foreigner you came.

Light was the welcome that we had prepared—

Even our sympathies you scarcely shared (266).

Ryszard not only writes poems but writes depicting emotion intimacy which

Maryna finds it difficult to read. She starts crying before reading the final couplet of

the poem which asks her not to forget the past:

Keep Polish memories in you heart alone,

America now claims you for her own (266)

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We have other characters like Henryk, Julian and even Bogdan, Maryna’s

husband who are fond of reading books. Not only we have this, but Sontag has

conveyed the theatrical world of the time also. East Lynne the text referred to in the

novel was the most popular play and Sarah Bernhardt ruled in Paris and was a rival to

Helena Modjeska. Henry James, the famous writer also makes a cameo appearance.

In fact, Sontag has done a nice parody of his style. We have references not only to the

literary authors and their texts but to the famous movie, comme les autres directed by

Vincent Gareng. In this way the novel offers its readers a variety of styles and

narrative forms. In an apt metafictional style the novel has narrative forms and as well

the discussion on those narrative forms. Thus the novel not only imbibes

investigations about theory of fiction but criticism of that theory also.

The reader can sense the character’s hunger and love for reading and their

need to talk about books and interpret themselves and the world with the help of

books. Portraying characters engrossed in the act of reading signifies at times

forgetting about the world that surrounds them outside these texts. This shows that the

characters of a fictional world can become engaged in the fictional world of other

fictional works, and it shows how the real life reader might find him or her in a

similar situation. The novel asks the readers to maintain a distance from the text and

draws attention to the artifice of fiction. The novel also focuses on how the texts are

read and their impact on the receivers, thereby linking fiction and criticism which is

the main feature of metafiction.

Sontag makes an innovation in narrative. She employs intertextuality of texts

of nineteenth century, shifts the narrative between the nineteenth and twenty first

century. As argued by Linda Hutcheon, intertextuality lies in the eyes of the beholder,

and it does not entail the communicator’s intentions. Thus, the readers engage

themselves in the verisimilitude accounts of nineteenth century. However, the shift of

viewpoints from nineteenth century to the postmodern era blurs the distinction

between past and present and at the same time causes the destruction of illusion of

historical reality. We are quickly immersed in the nineteenth century Poland, but then

the novelist makes us aware of what we are seeing is presented to us through the lens

of twenty first century. While introducing the characters, the narrator keeps on

reminding us “of the clothes of that time” (4), and to herself as “the child of neon and

halogen” (14). In America is a particular form of novel in which the domains of

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history, theory and literature are all incorporated. The novel is in fact a particular

type of self-conscious writing that is specifically concerned with rendering our

unstable notion of history and our knowability of the past, both in terms of form and

context.

The novel contains stories within stories to which McHale refers as “Chinese-

box worlds” and based on the formula of a “recursive structure” (McHale, 112). A

recursive structure can be said to occur whenever the same operation is repeated

however, “each time operating on the product of the previous operation” (112). In the

novel In America, we have Ryszard who writes a novel. Hence, nested or embedded

narratives characterize a recursive structure and gradually a hierarchical system of

narratives is created and each time we are presented with yet another fictional world.

While telling the story of Maryna, the novel also tells us among other stories, the fate

of thought and culture in America; the old versus the new world, theatricality, etc.

The contrast between the European and American culture is the theme that runs all

through the novel. It is not surprising since this has been the theme Sontag has been

engaged all through her life. She has written many essays about the intersection of

high and low culture. In her speech, “Literature is freedom” delivered upon receiving

"Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels" (Peace prize of the German Book Trade)

on October 28, 2003, Sontag very aptly declared:

“Old" and "new" are the perennial poles of all feeling and sense of

orientation in the world. We cannot do without the old, because in

what is old is invested all our past, our wisdom, our memories, our

sadness, our sense of realism. We cannot do without faith in the new,

because in what is new is invested all our energy, our capacity for

optimism, our blind biological yearning, our ability to forget ---the

healing ability that makes reconciliation possible (Sontag).

Born writer and cultural critic Susan Sontag is best known as theorist and

practitioner of experimental fiction. Her fiction is about the narrator’s or writer’s

dilemma. The narrator is always in a dilemma about how to be creative and how to

find the proper structure for a story. In the present case also, the narrator makes

obvious references to the process of writing fiction. In chapter ‘zero’, she clearly

explains that the process of writing is like, “following and leading, both, and at the

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same time” (17). Thus the self-conscious narrator of the novel constantly refers to her

own writing process and fictionality in order to remind the readers that the novel is a

construct of language. As one of the attempts of historiographic metafiction is to

focus on past events and personages which history chose not to tell, in the same way

Sontag has not only depicted the life of the historical woman but has also given

detailed descriptions about the historical period. Thus, the excluded events and

personages are represented; their stories retold and alternate histories have been

composed by Sontag. As a result of this, multiplicity of histories is also achieved,

which is a dominant feature of historiographic metafiction and postmodernism as

well. In the beginning of the novel, while, the novelist is laying out the structure of

the story she wonders:

I wondered if the flue was drawing as well as it should, knowing that I

could expect nothing better of the gas jets, unevenly fed and therefore

leaking and sputtering as they always did then before the adventure of

natural gas; but however inevitable that I a child of neon and halogen,

would appreciate the look of gas lighting, unlike everyone else in the

room (14).

The representational strategies employed in the novel are far from being

simple or straightforward. Being a case of historiographic metafiction the scope of

the representational critique is widened to include questions such as, how is it possible

to convey a realistic impression of nineteenth century America to a twenty first

century reader? As far as the narrative strategies employed in the novel are concerned

the novelist employs anachronistic writing i.e. she makes an observation about

nineteenth century and compares it with a phenomenon that a twenty first century

reader is more familiar with. An interesting example of this is Sontag’s own

comment:

I don’t know why I’ve put these words in quotes, it’s not just because

they are the words I heard spoken; it must be because in the time in

which I live these words are used much less confidently, even with

apology if you are not a complacent bigot as a lethal avenger, while

much of the fascination of these people, of their time, is that they

knew, or thought they knew, what “right” and “wrong” were (7).

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Sontag makes use of anachronism in order to give a realistic impression to the

reader. The aim of these comments is not only to tell the reader about nineteenth

century America but also to exemplify an attitude of both complicity and critique that

Hutcheon has identified as a constituent feature of postmodern literature. While

giving names to the various characters in chapter ‘Zero’ Sontag writes about

constructing fiction when she says:

I decided that this man must be a stage manager, since he was fretting

about effects. And I christened him Czeslaw, in honor of my favorite

living poet. On then to the rest of the cast, I said to myself with

renewed confidence…The rumpled doctor, since I thought he was a

doctor because he looked like Astrove in UNCLE VANYA I assumed

to be not just unmarried but unmarriable (12).

The reader is thus, faced with a puzzle of clearly fictional, intertextual and real

elements that at the same time both augment and subvert the impression of realism.

The inquisitive historical imagination is at work also. The well-known historical

events of the period are alluded to very discreetly. There is an American financial

panic “of three years ago”; there is the “ignominious defeat for the cavalry and death

of their leader General Custer” (144) early in summer. In addition, there is the

reference to the assassination of President Lincoln “by a deranged actor, as you’ll

recall” (139). This deranged actor is the younger brother of famous actor, Edwin

Booth. In the final chapter of the novel, Booth ruminates about his career, the

theatre, and his brother John in a soliloquy:

If I weep now, will you think these are actor’s tears? They are, you

know. Hath not an actor eyes? If you prick him, doth he not bleed? I

was playing at the Boston Theater when it happened. It was thought, at

first, to be a family conspiracy and Junius, my older brother was

arrested (378).

The novel makes the reader realize two things at a time, one what we are

reading is a fictional text; second, the text we are reading is conveying a realistic

impression of the nineteenth century. When we first meet the narrator, she is out

walking in a winter storm. Shivering from the cold, she passes by a hotel, and notices

a party on the ground floor. She uses twenty first century language to describe the

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situation like ‘crashed a party’ but she also explains that the room was lighted by

stinking gas lanterns and horses power the cabs not the engines. Although she cannot

understand their language but with a little effort, she is able to make out who they are

and to which era they belong. The time is the year 1876 and the place is Russian

occupied Warsaw where we are introduced to the artistic and theatrical circle of

Maryna Zaleska but here we come to know that the narrator herself has made up this

entire scene. The actress really existed and she undertook the travels resembling the

same as the novelist narrates to us. However, everything else described about the

party from the red-faced servant huffing beneath a load of firewood or the Church

bells echoing the city are the creation of the narrator’s mind. Sontag confesses that

she had planned to write about a different gathering in the same era but in Sarajevo.

We know that Sontag is known to have visited Sarajevo in the early 1990s when

Sarajevo was being bombed. Nevertheless, her imagination flew to this party in

Warsaw. The opening scene describing the party introduces the novelist as a

postmodernist commentator on the story when she starts giving the characters their

names.

As historiographic metafiction challenges the concept of linear history in the

name of pluralities and difference, feminist writers of historiographic metafiction use

it as a tool to challenge the patriarchal version of history. In the novel In America

Sontag has written history with feminist concerns. There is emphasis on gender issues

and the feminist awareness has opened the scope of inclusion of the history of

marginalized.

The relationship between art and life is a recurring theme in metafiction and a

very important one in the novel In America. The novel as a whole addresses the

question of how life reflects art and art reflects life. Her descriptions of the theatre are

superb. In the beginning of the novel we encounter Maryna, who is disenchanted with

her successful career and sees herself as a prisoner of fame and perception of her

character by public. She is wary of playing comic roles and she declares:

I've always needed to identify myself with each of the tragic heroines I

play. I suffer with them, I weep real tears, which often can’t stop after

the curtain goes down, and have to lie motionless in my dressing room

until my strength returns (51).

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Maryna abandons her career in order to create a farming commune in

America. She is well aware of the possibilities of failure, but still she accepts the

challenge. Although Maryna has abdicated her throne yet she is surrounded by the

people “who knew her on the throne” (210). Maryna, who did not want to retrace her

steps to Poland, decides to return to the stage. She declares to probe “what she can do

before the American public”, and dares to do away with all the obstacles that lie

between her and stardom in America”(228). Further Sontag dramatizes the auditions

for “bilious” theater impresario Angus Barton. She gives us fine glimpses from the

life of the actors. We are told, “Acting is misrepresentation. The art of the actor

consists in exploiting an author’s drama to show off his ability to allure and to

counterfeit. An actor is like a forger” (322). Such a reference between art and life can

be attributed as giving clues in interpreting the text. And self-reflection is of course,

the essential feature of metafiction.

The present study aims to explain that the novelist does not mimetically

recreate the actress’s life. In fact she plays with narrative techniques like diary,

letters, monologues, dialogues, and soliloquy to present the characters’ perspective in

relation to their public image. The forms used in the novel emphasize ideas about

reality. The narrative clearly shows a distinction from the traditional understanding of

the novel. The novelist through the use of various novelistic techniques such as

magical realism, metafiction, parody, intertextuality, etc has given an alternate view

of history. Moreover these devices were useful tools for American writers of the

1960s in their approach to novel. Thus the forms used in the novel are more of a

postmodernist style. However, even postmodernism is a term that has been

interpreted differently by different critics. For example, Fredric Jameson’s

perspective of postmodernism focuses on use of postmodernist techniques such as

pastiche, and Patricia Waugh focuses on use of parody along with other popular

genres.

As far as Hutcheon’s analysis of postmodernism is concerned, we can say that

the intellectual elements in In America constitute a case both of complicity and of

critique. These intertextual elements help to get a coherent or realistic impression and

they highlight the fictional nature of the other parts of the text. As such the use of

intertextual exemplifies the epistemological problem that is characteristic of all

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historiographic metafiction – and which is itself an instance of both complicity and

critique – “past events existed empirically, but in epistemological terms we can only

know them today through texts” (Hutcheon, 81).

At the same time, Sontag also uses diachronic narrative strategies. While

employing this strategy, Sontag incites the readers to leave their postmodern

perspective in order to adopt an attitude that enables them to develop a realistic

picture of past century. Sontag also does this by addressing the reader directly. She

compares the ways in which the readers of twenty first century and contemporaries

might perceive the same phenomenon. For example in the chapter ‘zero’, the novelist

clarifies:

I couldn’t rewrite history: I had to acknowledge that a woman of her

time and country who was known to and admired by a large public

would most likely have been on the stage. For then-- only eight years

after the birth of supreme heroine of my earliest childhood, Maria

Sklodowska, the future Madame Curie---there was hardly any other

enviable career open to a woman (11).

Sontag feels the necessity to translate nineteenth century concepts to

contemporary ones. We can again identify a position of both complicity and critique.

At the same time, the intrusive manner of Sontag as an author, also points out that

somebody other than a person, belonging to nineteenth century is narrating the facts to

us. Sontag is also aware of the fact that there might be some readers who might take

the author’s word at face value. To overcome this she also uses the technique of

diachronic narration in a way to blur the distinction between the fictional time and the

‘real time’ which is the time of the writing of the novel In America.

Sontag is a highly intrusive author who likes to comment not only on her

characters but also on themes that might be considered as outside the novel. The

novel includes many comments about the nature of writing, its aims and procedures.

Sontag defies the traditions, clear-cut distinctions between an author and character.

The readers are in fact invited to identify the character of Maryna with Sontag herself.

Sontag dramatizes in ‘Zero’ the creative process that led her to write her the novel. It

explains who the writer of In America is. Sontag rehearses a good deal from the

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interviews, she has given over the previous thirty years. We come to know that she

grew up in Arizona and California wanting to be like Marie Curie, a great scientist

and humanitarian; her grand parents came from Poland etc. Though Sontag herself

resisted an autobiographical reading of the novel, yet she confessed in an interview to

Elzbieta Sawicka in Warsaw in January 1998:

I am myself an actress, a closet actress. I always wanted to write a

novel about an actress. I understand what acting is all about and what

goes on in the profession (Rollyson, Reading Susan Sontag: A Critical

Introduction to Her Work, 176).

The character of Maryna is in fact invested with all that Sontag knows about

being an artist, activist and performer. Sontag had herself acted in school and she

loved performing. Sontag told Will Blythe in Mirabella that the novel In America is

about a woman who understands that to have a big career you can’t really go all out

on private life. Women do not have that luxury. In addition we also have the glimpse

of Maryna in the concluding pages of the novel:

Maryna sat down and looked into the mirror. Surely she was weeping

because she was so happy--unless a happy life is impossible, and the

highest a human being can attain is a heroic life. Happiness comes in

many forms; to have lived for art is a privilege, a blessing (369).

Sontag has made many confessions regarding this in her various interviews.

When asked if Maryna is a sort of fictional self-portrait, she quickly admitted in

another interview to Evans Chan, “I identify entirely with those words”. Thus, the

novel is metafiction in its self-conscious treatment of the genre and for reference to

contemporary as well as historical issues. It is filled with ideas filled with mini essays

on the making of European and American modernities. It in fact becomes a

compendium of Sontag’s intellectual, interests. We are given comparisons between

Europe and America. We are told Europe is about past, about tradition, and America

is about the present and freedom. Sontag writes America is “where the poor can

become rich and everyone stands equal before the law, where streets are paved with

gold” (60).

The intrusive autobiographical element in Chapter “Zero” also reminds the

readers of Sontag’s unique standing in American Intellectual life. It also suggests that

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Sontag cannot forget about herself and her integral position in America’s intellectual

history. She identifies herself with Darothea Brook in Middlemarch and tells us that

she wanted to be like Marie Curie. Sontag grew up in California and this novel may

be seen as almost invisibly water marked by her own nostalgia for that early

landscape. “Perhaps one day in California--even now, already in America, it thrills

me to write-- CALIFORNIA” (135) writes Maryna in a letter to her friend and this

seems to be Sontag’s sentiment also. A kind of ecstasy takes over her expression

when she writes about California desert. In a lyrical and precise mode, she writes:

Hardly anything is near anything here: those slouching braided

sentinels, the yucca trees, and bouquets of drooping spears, the

agaves, and the squat clusters of prickly pears, all so widely spaced, so

un-resembling – and nothing had to do with anything else…The purity

of the vista, its uncompromising bleakness, seemed first like a menace,

then an excitement, then a numbing, then a different arousal. Their real

initiation into the seductive nihilism of the desert had begun. The

soundless, odorless, monochrome landscape, so drastically untenanted,

had the same effect on everyone, an intoxicating impression of

aloneness (155).

Thus, the novel is a portrayal of its subject as a construct by the author and a

further construct of her own through her pioneering journey to America. The novel

not only is a fine piece of historiographic metafiction but also includes the events,

which happen at a magical real level. The narrative is presented from many

perspectives. The perspectives shift throughout the novel. In chapter zero, the point

of view is that of an unidentified narrator who appears at a social gathering in Warsaw

on a cold wintry night. The narrator scans the room and describes the various

characters, explores her personal relationship with her characters. While overhearing

their talk, the narrator is magically transported to her past. She talks of her stay in

besieged Sarajevo, her knowledge (dabbling) of German, Japanese and still not

knowing the language of the people about whom she is about to write. The metaphors,

similes, intertextual references are allusions to various cultural biblical issues.

Reading the novel often requires dictionary and encyclopedias. The words such as

‘Wertherish’, ‘goatee’, ‘indefatigable’ etc, and also “the towering, fire-concealing

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stove instead of a waist-level, blazing fireplace” require an effort to be understood

(18).

The use of difficult word in the text not only leads to the complexity of the

narrative but also arouses the curiosity. The images of the past intermingle with that

of present. As the storyline progresses further, the point of view again shifts among

other character from Maryna to Bogdan to Ryszard and back to the narrator. We also

have letters, diaries, telegrams that shift the point of view from one character to

another. This shift in the perspectives also demonstrates that there are many different

ways of understanding the characters and events in the narrative. Bogdan is a denoted

and faithful husband but he discovers in himself a lust for the Mexican young

labourers who work on their vineyard in California. We come to know all this through

the confessions made in a diary. In the diary entry, Bogdan admits to his homoerotic

lounging for the young Mexican youth. He writes in his diary “I cannot control what I

feel. I cannot control its reverberations in my flesh and my heart” (209).

Bogdan does not share his viewpoint with anyone but his diary entry shows

another important aspect of his personality. Maryna’s flirtation and affair with

Ryszard provides another perspective on the narrative. Ryszard’s point of view shifts

from a participant to a journalist when he tries to capture the experience of coming to

America. Ryszard’s point of view gives us another glimpse of Maryna’s personality.

Ryszard, who is twenty-five year old young writer provides more reckless aspects of

her personality and whose intelligence he founds endearing. Ryszard also fantasizes

about winning Maryna from Bogdan once they reach the new world. This skillful use

of multiple points of view not only sustains the reader’s interest but also gives a better

understanding of the various characters and their motivations. The presentation of

events and characters from multiple view points also indicates the postmodern

plurality of view points.

The character of Maryna is also a fantasy – a pure dissolution of divaness.

Sontag mentions this in ‘zero’ also how she is taken with divas. She confesses that

first time she saw a diva closely was thirty years ago, when she was in New York. She

even narrates a scene happened between diva Maria Callas and the director Rudolf

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Bing. However, we do not come to know any thing from Maryna herself about

divaness. The fact that Maryna never phones in a sluggish performance, never even

flubs a line is hard to believe. However, this is not strange, as Sontag’s fiction has

always flared with fantasy. Her earlier novels, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover and The

Benefactor are also ripe with ideas and she seems drawn to fantasy. In the present

case also, the character of Maryna is funneled with glamour. She never goofs, never

seems graceless or cowardly and she never contradicts the adoring saloonkeeper

Minnie who tells her: “You’re a star, Everyone loves you, You can do anything you

want”(213). Maryna who seems to be genuinely in love with her husband and son but

even she considers these as secondary to her own dramatic passions and love for the

theatre. This actress was so polished in art and she was considered one of Poland’s

National treasures whereas at one point in her life she thought she could not live

without comfort and luxury. Moreover she left a very successful career to create a

farm commune when she was aware of the likelihood of failure. But the challenge of

succeeding where the communities like Brook Farm, failed is too enticing for her to

pursue.

Thus, fantasy has been used to upset the clear- cut distinction between fact and

fiction. However, the mere inclusion of elements of the fantastic does not constitute

employment of the mode of magical realism. Here we are reminded of Warne’s

suggestion that “The key defining quality of magical realism is that it represents both

fantastic and real without allowing either greater claim to truth” (3). Sontag herself

also asserts that the function of fantasy is not to escape the pre-existing historical

reality but to create a different world where the reader can enjoy multiple realities.

Thus, Sontag includes fantasy yet she has also included the real people and actual

events so that the readers can enjoy pluralities.

The whole narrative, which includes the life in Krakow, vacations in

Zakopane, the transatlantic crossing, has been captured in a way that holds our

attention. We live the communal life with all the different personalities of the group.

We sit for a memorable photo session and share the story telling. We even accept

failure of the communal experiment. In fact the novelist is also telling what it is to

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act, how stage behaviour applies to real life. In addition, at the same time Sontag has

used a technique that suggests not to worry about the story being one hundred percent

correct. Sontag also reinforces the idea of writing and acting as story telling. In

addition, on the subject of storytelling Sontag herself confesses:

There are so many stories to tell, it’s hard to say why it’s one rather

than another, it must be because with this story you feel you can tell

many stories, that there will be necessity in it (27).

On the concept of story, Sontag declares that, “A story, I mean a long story, a

novel, is like an around-the –world-in-eighty-days: you can barely recall the

beginning when it comes to an end. But even a long journey must begin somewhere,

say in a room” (27). Thus, the journey of In America for Sontag began in the room.

The device of directly addressing the reader is also the significant feature of story

telling. With the help of these tools, Sontag has addressed some of the most difficult

issues of history and politics. The ending of the novel is also remarkable. The reader

is left to wonder about Maryna. Even though she reaches the pinnacle of success as

an actor but loneliness and futility, await her at the end. The unexpected kinship

between Poland and United States is also fantastical. In actuality, the countries have

been singled out though for different reasons. In fact, this is the small bit of magic,

which allows the two realities to be possible which would not exist otherwise. As Luis

Leal has also explained in an essay:

Magical realism is, more than anything else, an attitude toward

reality that can be expressed in popular or cultured forms, in elaborate

or rustic styles in closed or open structures…The principle thing is not

the creation of imaginary beings or worlds but the discovery of the

mysterious relationship between man and his circumstances. In

magical realism key events have no logical or psychological

explanation. The magical realist does not try to copy the surrounding

reality or to wound it but to seize the mystery that breathes behind

things. (Luis Leal, “Magical Realism in Spanish American Literature”.

Magical Realism. 119-123)

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The extensive use of imagery by Sontag is another feature, which puts the

novel in a magical realist novel category. When the journalist crosses the Atlantic, his

boat trip marches at a T like the one we expect in movies. Sontag captures all this

holding our attention as if we were watching it ourselves. The narrator has narrated

the surreal so naturally that it becomes real. This refers to the visualizing capacity of

magical realism. As the eminent critic, Lois Parkinson Zamora has also given an

insight on this saying:

Critical attention to the visualizing capacity of magic realism will, I

think, generate interesting questions: how do magical realist

authors think, how do magical realist authors describe their

fictional worlds, and how differently from realistic writers? How

do they use “figurative” language to structure their displacements

of conventional realism? How do they negotiate the potential risk

of showing too much?”(Zamora, “The Visualizing Capacity of

Magic Realism: Objects and Expressions in the work of Jorge Luis

Borges”, Janus Head: An Interdisciplinary Journal, February 5,

2002, 22).

To talk of the visual capacity of objects in painting is one thing and to talk

about the ways in which visible objects suggest invisible meanings in literature is very

different. As Zamora further says, “In printed texts, all “seeing” is symbolic, and

requires mental operations that literary critics take for granted when we speak about

verbal “images” (23). Sontag has used this very skillfully in her novel giving us the

dazzling details of both America and Europe.

Like her previous novel The Volcano Lover, Sontag has designed a novel in

which real figures from the past enact their lives. It is a fictionalization of the

American experience of famous Polish actress first as queen of the entourage, next as

Centre Star and then as a working collaborates with American. The novel is in fact

about many other things also. The novel also depicts a woman’s search for self-

transformation; the fate of thought and culture; many varieties of love and most

importantly about stories and story telling. While telling the story of Polish actress

Sontag has told many stories with élan and intelligence. The novel got a mixed

reception from the critics. Sontag was also charged of plagiarism for In America.

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Sontag was accused of taking at least a dozen passages from several books of history

and journalism, to which she responded saying, “All of us who deal with real

characters in history transcribe and adopt original sources in the original domain”.

(Rollyson, Reading Susan Sontag. 41). She clarified that she has used the sources but

transformed them totally for using in her fiction.

The novel is an exhilarating journey into the past combining it with historical

imagination. She has skillfully used elegant language, monologues, and diary entries

for turning the novel into a fine piece of historiographic metafiction. She makes the

real and the fantastic with skillful time shifts to create a magical real text. The novel is

a melting pot of history and fiction, romance and reality. While using a fictional cast

of characters and declaring that a real group of people inspired them, Sontag has

created an exhilarating journey into the past. The role of the reader of a metafictional

text, as Hutcheon argues, is no longer that of a passive receiver, but that of an active

participant in the writing process. The reader’s task becomes increasingly difficult and

demanding, as he sorts out the various narrative threads. The universe he thus creates,

he must then acknowledge as fictional and of his own making.

The novel got a mixed reception from the critics. Sontag was also charged of

plagiarism for In America. Sontag was accused of taking at least a dozen passages

from several books of history and journalism, to which she responded saying, “All of

us who deal with real characters in history transcribe and adopt original sources in the

original domain”( Rollyson, Susan Sontag: The Making of an Icon, 41.) More over

she made a larger statement regarding this saying that “literature is a series of

references and allusions” (41).

Thus the novel in its own way produces an alternate form of history and raises

questions for the contemporary readers. While using magical realism, anachronism,

humour, and self-reflexivity, Sontag has evoked striking parallels between historical

events and those of contemporary society. At the same time the unreliable narrator,

parodies of earlier literary texts and the mixing of historical and imaginary have also

challenged the traditional idea of narrative construction, reality and historical truth.