Books: A Travelogue in Time

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In the 1870s, Poland's most beloved actress, Maryna Zalezowska, abandons the stage and sets off, with a small entourage of admirers in tow, to found a vaguely utopian community in Southern California. No one understands why the acclaimed diva has decided on this strange mission, and she chooses not to enlighten them: "I don't owe anyone an explanation." The experiment, set up on 47 acres near the village of Anaheim, soon convinces the 14 emigres involved that successful farming and the contemplative life are incompatible. Leaving her husband behind to settle the debts, Zalezowska goes to San Francisco, polishes up her English and makes a triumphant American stage debut. Soon she is more famous in her adopted land than she ever was in Poland.

But what's it really about? The question arises because the author of the new novel In America (Farrar Straus Giroux; 387 pages; $26) is the formidably intelligent critic Susan Sontag. Ergo, a long story that looks like a historical romance, a celebration of a 19th century woman who, in contemporary parlance, had it all--devoted husband (a Polish count, no less), passionate younger lover and glittering career--must be hedged about with postmodern ironies, runic clues to the reader not to mistake surface for substance. Mustn't it?

Surprisingly, the answer seems to be no. In America displays Sontag in a relaxed, pleasure-seeking mode, guiding her characters through a long travelogue in time, specifically the beginnings of the gilded age in the brave new world. Here are sumptuous theaters in Manhattan and hotels in San Francisco; a journey 1,900 feet down into a silver mine in Virginia City, Nev.; cameo appearances by such luminaries as Henry James and Edwin Booth.

There was a time when Sontag the critic scorned scenery-crammed, realistic Victorian novels and their confident claims of authorial omniscience. Now she has written one and demonstrated, in the process, that narrative skill can come in unfashionable packages.

--By Paul Gray