In America
(Susan Sontag)
n America is Susan Sontag's bold, brilliant new novel -- a
kaleidoscopic portrait of America on the cusp of modernity. As she did
in her enormously popular novel The Volcano Lover (1992), which recast
the legendary love affair of Emma Hamilton and Horatio Nelson in a
fresh, provocative light, Sontag once again starts from a story located
in the past to create a fictional world full of contemporary resonance.
In 1876 a group of Poles led by Maryna Za???owska, Poland's
greatest actress, emigrate to the United States and travel to
California to found a "utopian" commune -- they think of it as a new
Brook Farm -- outside the village of Anaheim. Maryna, who has renounced
her career for this venture, is accompanied by her small son and her
husband, an aristocrat in revolt against his family; in her entourage
is a rising young writer who is in love with her. Sontag's gripping
narrative shows us an exotic, still largely empty, up-for-grabs
southern California, with European newcomers lording it over native
Californians and Native Americans. When the commune fails and most of
the émigrés return to Poland, Maryna stays, learns English, and -- as
Marina Zalenska -- forges a new, even more triumphant career on the
American stage. A diva on a par with Sarah Bernhardt, Maryna soon forms
her own company and crisscrosses the country in her private railroad
car, year after year, eventually playing opposite Edwin Booth, the
greatest American actor of the age.
In America is about many things: a woman's search for
self-transformation; the fate of idealism; a life in the theatre; 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
(Minnie from Puccini's Girl of the Golden West makes a startling
appearance), richly detailed and visionary in its account of America,
and peopled with unforgettable characters, In America is Susan Sontag's
largest, most astonishing achievement.
Resumos Relacionados
- Tocqueville On American Character
- Living Adventures From American History Volume 3
- Living Adventures From American History: Volume 5
- The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer
- The Kitchen God's Wife
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