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Pif Magazine
Pif Magazine |
In America In America : Page 1, 2 Both more and less than a single character, Maryna is the embodiment of Actress, a woman who changes roles so often and so skillfully that she no longer knows who she is. Similarly, her adopted country is both more and less than the United States; it's America, land of myth. It is in many ways, as she discovers, the ideal country for an actress. For what is acting but the ability to try on different lives, to conceive of oneself as something and then become that? And what else is America, but the land in which everyone is free to reinvent him or herself? "Americans have turned out to excel at freeing themselves from the past," Maryna explains to a friend. Elsewhere she considers America as a place of unlimited stories: the country where you can rewrite your history as often as you choose, change your name, embellish or erase your features as it suits you. As Sontag knows, every story can be told in myriad ways, in different languages, through different perspectives, with different emphases. Late in the novel, Maryna finds a metaphor for America, and the life of an actress, while playing solitaire backstage during intermissions: "You don't cheat when you play solitaire," she reflects. "But neither do you accept every hand you deal yourself; you redeal and redeal until you see a hand…that gives you a better chance to win." There is of course the underlying question of whether real, essential transformation of the self is ever possible. You can doff your persona as often as you want, but can you change who you are? Is there such a thing as 'who you are,' other than the persona you present to the world? In Sontag's hands, each premise leads to a question, each question to a more intricate question. But this may be the unavoidable consequence of American-style freedom. When, on first arriving in this country, Maryna travels to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, she mistakes the displayed arm and torch of the as-yet-unfinished Statue of Liberty for a completed sculpture. Later she learns of her error and writes to a friend at home: "How, I ask myself, does one ever know what is finished in this country, and what is merely under way?" Sontag is nothing if not fiercely intelligent, and that intelligence (or that ferocity) makes her slippery. She plays with readers' expectations, delivering books that are not wholly fiction but not wholly anything else, characters who both are and are not themselves, stories that are familiar even while they make us reexamine accepted tales. In her own terms, the success of In America may rest in the fact that her very absorbing plot still allows room for the more abstract explorations it engenders. For readers, the book is remarkable for the opposite reason. The sophisticated philosophizing in which the author engages only adds to, without weighing down, her fabulously readable novel. Tell us what you think. Email talkback@pifmagazine.com Want Pif to review your book? Emily Banner is a co-founder of Inkberry, a nonprofit literary center in the Berkshires. She lives in western Massachusetts. |
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