Feminist Author Sontag Discusses New Novel About Immigrant Life

Feminist, activist and author Susan Sontag last night discussed her latest piece of historical fiction, In America: A Novel, a work that she insisted is not only a story, but is a novel about storytelling.

"The stories that attract me are the ones in which I can tell other stories," Sontag told a crowd of over 150 people in the Graduate School of Education's Longfellow Hall.

In America tells the story of a family of Polish immigrants who come to America in the 1870s. The protagonist, actor Maryna Zalewska, decides to simplify her life, moving with friends to California to start a farm.

Zalewska is forced to return to the stage and continues her career as a successful actor when her utopian dream of farm life falls apart.

Sontag discussed the plot, characters and writing process behind her novel, emphasizing that Zalewska re-invents herself and lauding the character's search for self-transformation and openness to change.

Change is familiar to Sontag, who has written on topics ranging from photography, AIDS and revolution, to pornographic literature and fascist aesthetics.

Although born in New York City, Sontag was raised in Arizona and California and entered the University of California, Berkeley, in 1948 at the age of 15. She transferred to the University of Chicago in 1949, and attended graduate school at Harvard from 1955 to 1957.

Before embarking on her career as an essayist and novelist, she studied in Paris and lectured in philosophy and religion at various New York universities.

Sontag's interests have also been extremely diverse. She began writing In America in 1993, but was interrupted for three years when she traveled to Sarajevo to fight for human rights.

Sontag said she plans to continue writing rather than pursuing political action for the near future.

"I'm back to writing," she said.

She did say, however, that she would continue petitioning for the rights of women in other countries and would remain politically involved.

Sontag acknowledged that In America has been criticized, citing one writer who claimed that Sontag did not present any new ideas about America in the book. But she said there are no new ideas about America and that it is not the novelist's job to create idea-driven writing.

"[Fiction should] create a mental, physical, emotional world that dilates your sympathies...and [that] conveys and inculcates wisdom about our humanity," she said.

Sontag said her book, which is based on a true story, is nevertheless a fictional work. She said that for this reason, she "writhes" when she hears the book referred to as a historical novel.

The freedom of fiction, she said, allows the writer to contradict herself. Sontag said she often changes her mind about something she has written almost as soon as she has written it. Fiction, Sontag said, allows for her to be flexible in her writing.

This flexibility prompted Sontag to recall a quote by one of her favorite authors, Henry James.

"Nothing is my last word on anything," she said, quoting.