sontag’s last novel in americashodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/9758/9/09_chapter...
TRANSCRIPT
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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.