Alfalfa and Actresses in Susan Sontag’s ‘America’

Susan Sontag’s just-released novel “In America” is the story of Maryna Zalewsky, a famous Polish actress who, in the late 19th century, moves to Anaheim with her husband, son and a group of friends to establish a Utopian farming community.

When the farm fails financially, Maryna returns to the stage to become one of the world’s most successful actresses. This Sunday, Sontag will talk about her work at the downtown Central Library.

Question: You use Southern California in the late 19th century as the setting for a major section of “In America”; did the fact that you went to high school in Los Angeles influence that?

Answer: I’m sure it did. I could have had [the characters] go to Texas--there was a Utopian community in Texas at the time that my people set out, and if I were from Texas, I suppose I would have set it there. I’m a daughter of the Southwest, and there was some deep pleasure in trying to imagine what it was like 130 years ago. I also did enough reading to realize that someof the fantasies about Southern California that we think of as 20th century--like it being a place for health, as well as a place that had a lot of religious and other kinds of cults--were very true then, as well. There is a certain deep satisfaction in being able to draw on an old knowledge and old interest in Southern California.

Q: Your central character is such a strong woman, totally assured of her own talent and her own needs. Did you set out to write about a significant woman?

A: In the 19th century the great female success stories were the great performers--whether opera singers, dancers or actresses. To be an actress was quintessentially an acceptable role if a woman was going to have a big public career. Maryna is tough in the sense that she can move on if something awful happens. A lot of what I know about the psychology of actors went into her.

The psychology of an actress really interests me. I love the theater. I have known actors--both men and women--a lot in my life. I’ve acted myself; I’ve directed theater and films; I’ve hung out in the world of theater and films.

Some other things I really had to work up. One of the things I’m exceedingly ignorant about is farming. Alfalfa--I knew the word “alfalfa,” but I realized I hadn’t the faintest idea what alfalfa was.

I found about three books on the history of vineyards in the 19th century in California and read them through--cover to cover--just to get through my thick head something of what a vineyard community would be like. You have to find the right details. A novel is like a trip; you want to make it lively for the reader. But the most important thing is the relationship of the characters and the world.

Q: There’s one place in the book where you have Maryna say twice in a short space, “Acting is misrepresentation.” What do you mean by that line?

A: [Laughs] There’s a little joke there. She says [to a friend], “Acting is misrepresentation, and I could only say this to you.” Then a page and a half later she says it to somebody else. And that’s one of those little tiny details that’s very true of actors. They are seducers, emotional seducers. I know a lot of actors as close friends, and they kind of sit in your lap and say, “Of course I could say this only to you,” and you feel very close to them, but of course they’re saying it to other people, too. Because they have an immense appetite for that kind of bonding with other people. So that was just a tiny little detail of actors’ psychology.

Q: I could almost see that statement, “Acting is misrepresentation,” as a full essay by you.

A: Yes, well, I don’t do that anymore, and these are not my opinions. I’m creating a world.

But this is the kind of thing that an actor might say, and it would be a kind of flashy, clever thing to say. Way deep down they don’t believe it, and way deep down they also do believe it.

I believe we all contradict ourselves and are capable of holding contradictory or contrary views of the same thing--that’s what life is about. And that’s why the novel is such a great form--the novel can represent that complex view of people. I believe that it’s a moral or ethical obligation to see people in a complex way, not to see them reductively. If you do, I think you have more sympathy for them, more compassion. Because you see their struggles. I think that’s a great thing that fiction can do--enlarge our sympathies.

BE THERE

Susan Sontag appears with literary critic Michael Silverblatt Sunday at 2 p.m., Central Library’s Mark Taper Auditorium; general admission $8, library associates $6; reservations: (213) 228-7025. Sontag also will appear at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on May 1 at 7:30 p.m. Free. Information: (323) 857-6088.