In America: A Novel
Susan Sontag
Language: English
Pages: 398
ISBN: 0312273207
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In America is a kaleidoscopic portrait of America on the cusp of modernity. As she did in her enormously popular novel The Volcano Lover, Susan Sontag casts a story located in the past in a fresh, provocative light to create a fictional world full of contemporary resonance.
In 1876 a group of Poles led by Maryna Zalezowska, Poland's greatest actress, emigrate to the United States and travel to California to found a "utopian commune." When the commune fails, Maryna stays, learns English, and―as Marina Zalenska―forges a new, even more triumphant career on the American stage, becoming a diva on par with Sara Bernhardt.
In America is about many things: a woman's search for self-transformation; the fate of idealism; a life in the theater; the many varieties of love; and, not least of all, stories and storytelling itself. Operatic in the scope and intensity of the emotions it depicts, richly detailed and visionary in its account of America, and peopled with unforgettable characters.
In America is the winner of the 2000 National Book Award for Fiction.
town on the route, Nowy Targ, where they could wash and eat a hearty meal and drink the Jewish tavernkeeper’s execrable wine. Sated, and soon to be hungry again, they regained the wagon, which continued along meadows lush with grass and herbs and bordered by a lively stream. Beyond, ahead, rising into a bluer and bluer sky, was the limestone and granite Tatras wall, crowned by the double peak of Mount Giewont. They were munching on some dried cheese and smoked ham purchased in Nowy Targ when the
I stalled for a moment, wondering if I hadn’t misjudged Maryna. If too successful to keep an ex-mentor by her side, while not yet old enough to feel unthreatened by the young, she still might have included one younger actress in her circle of friends; and I found her quickly, a pale delicate woman with a large locket on her bosom, who kept brushing back her auburn hair with a gesture very much like Maryna’s. Oh, and one of the women could be a relative and, indeed, somebody I thought looked
breathing, a cambric handkerchief to her left cheek. È sempre brava, the doctor confided to the mystified waiter who was refilling his glass. Following a lull in the voices and a return to more dedicated eating, of course I was hoping for something else, the critic rose unsteadily, vodka in hand. To you, Madame. Every glass except Maryna’s was lifted. To this evening’s triumph. The doctor eased his glass toward his mouth. Hold on, not so fast, Henryk, the critic exclaimed with mock severity.
in Poland as a book—had finished enough stories to make another book, was nearly done with a novel set in a mining camp in the Sierras, and had begun in his head a long novel set in ancient Rome in the time of Christian persecutions under Nero. When not writing he was off hunting—the meat-eating majority still depended on his forays—and had recently acquired a steed of his own, a Mexican horse, for which he’d paid eight dollars; overpaid in fact, since these could be had in Los Angeles for five,
it on the stage and hands it to the actor; when a costume needs adjusting, the actor stands a little apart from the others and the dresser arrives to fix the costume. No—” Why am I chattering like this, Ryszard admonished himself, when she can see everything I’m seeing, and more? At the tumblers and the pasteboard lions and dragons Maryna clapped her hands gleefully. “I could sit here all night!” she exclaimed, she exaggerated. “I want it to go on forever.” Ah, said Ryszard to himself, it’s