Julia May Jonas: On the Marginalization of Older Women in Society, Writing the Banal and Her Debut Novel, "Vladimir"
Written with the captivation and power of a monologue, Julia May Jonas’ debut novel, Vladimir features a razor-sharp protagonist as her English professor husband stands accused of having inappropriate relationships with his students. But the narrator is more interested in her own desire for something else - the new professor and young novelist, Vladimir. Thus begins a story of power and obsession, a #MeToo tale with a twist.
We spoke with Julia about exploring the marginalization of older women in society, writing about the garbage in our brains, her writing process, and her debut novel, Vladimir.
Kailey Brennan DelloRusso: I love the main character of Vladimir. She is so aware of herself in so many ways, yet oblivious to some of her absurdity. As a writer, how did you get so close to this character?
Julia May Jonas: At the risk of sounding a little woo woo I felt like I was channeling her as I wrote. She led the process of revealing herself in a way. I would also say that because I'm a playwright, I think I approached writing her like I would write a monologue. So I had this sense of her speaking to an audience. And something about that, just let me be free with her in this particular way.
KBD: Yeah. I was actually curious how your skills as a playwright may have helped you write a novel.
JMJ: I actually just wrote a piece about this for Lit Hub. I think certainly the idea of her delivering the monologue was one thing that I think really helped in having a sense of audience. I think also a sense of scenes. I don't think every novel has to have a sense of scenes, but I very much wrote Vladimir with a sense that something needed to change by the end of the scene or the end of the chapter. So that every time we started a new chapter, we would start in a new place.
I think there's also a sense that in playwriting you can't write without rhythm. When I was writing, I had my ear very much turned on the rhythm of the words as they unfolded, even when it was narrative and not just dialogue.
KBD: Did you read out loud a lot?
JMJ: I did when I was editing. I would write and then I would go back over it and I would read it out loud. I especially did it when I was doing my first round of edits after it was going into publication. But also certain parts I would read out loud to get the sense of flow. The sense of flow was always something that I was looking for.
KBD: I always feel uncomfortable reading my work out loud even though it’s my own words. (Laughs)
JMJ: Yeah. I definitely do it with my plays and I did it with this as well. I think it's necessary because I think you want to feel what doesn't feel good. It’s like one person's rhythm will not be the same as another person's rhythm. There's no universal flow, but I think there's something about feeling like you have a sense of how these sentences unfold, just kind of beat by beat. That is really helpful.
KBD: Definitely. I also was intrigued by the choice of having an older female character. In our society, aging, of course, is not valued or celebrated, especially for women. It comes with a lot of erasure and high double standards. While the narrator desperately doesn't want to be vain, she can’t help but critique her body. What was your own interest, as the writer, to write about the desires of an older woman?
JMJ: First of all, just a feeling of anger, unexamined or not, that this is what I felt like was going to be my fate unless I did some thinking about it. I feel like the main question I kept bouncing around in my mind as I was writing was this expectation that I had about how I would want less and expect less. And that we have this idea that women, as they age, just become really comfortable with marginalized existence.
So I found myself getting quite angry. Especially as I was becoming a parent and taking on, in certain circumstances, a role as a mother, which already has a lot of self-sacrificing stereotypes attached to it. So that was really the drive of me wanting to write this older woman being dissatisfied. This sense that I felt like I had to puzzle out for myself. This idea that I would want less, about everything and that it wouldn't be sad, you know?
As far as the body stuff, I really like when a book can kind of toggle to between the more lofty or being a book of ideas, and then banality. I feel like we're always kind of doing this dance between trying to live a life that has a kind of integrity and intellectual inquiry and all of these things that bring us out of ourselves. But then we're also just really stuck in our bodies. We have phones. There's garbage in our brains that we can't help, but just constantly be sorting through. So I always like it when I feel like a character is sorting through not only their higher ideals but also the garbage. That was something I wanted to explore with her.
KBD: Yeah definitely. I loved the part, I think about midway through, where she says she feels the need to consume and makes herself all this food and cocktails. I loved those passages so much.
JMJ: Yeah, I mean, food writing is such a big part of literature, I think. And that was definitely something I wanted her to be in a relationship with. It feels related to what she’s going through overall with Vladimir. What she’ll let herself consume.
KBD: I was curious what your writing routine looks like. Do you have a specific practice?
JMJ: Yes. I feel like I learned about writing a novel by watching my husband write a novel. He has had three books come out. For eight months, he writes every day. And there is a kind of patience around just like sitting down and writing every day. I actually started writing this novel right when the pandemic happened and our lives were all turned upside down. I had an hour and a half where I didn't have to do any sort of work for theater or plays. So every day for an hour and a half and I just wrote without rewriting. I think that was really crucial because I had started a lot of fiction projects before, but I had tangled myself up in rewriting and rewriting and rewriting the same 2000 words, and then I couldn't get past it. Or I would get to maybe 70 pages or 50 pages and it would just be so tortured and then I would go do a play because that would feel immediate and fun. I think the pandemic was helpful for me. Obviously, it was a horrible, very traumatizing thing for our country and the world but it was very helpful in getting me to slow down. And I think that was really crucial, this idea of slowing down the process, of just putting in your hour and a half every day without hope or fear, and not rewriting.
I'm kind of skeptical about having the perfect place or the perfect routine or anything like that because I think that can give you a lot of excuses not to write. If you have too much surrounding it, then that can be tricky. So anywhere I could, I would flop down and just make sure I put that time in.
KBD: So did it take you a full year to write the novel and then the next year to get it published? Or how quick was that process?
JMJ: It was actually pretty quick. I started in March and I was finished in November. I sent it out to agents on Thanksgiving and waited and then had one contact me in December and said he was interested in representing it and could we have a conversation after the holidays. So then I wrote to all the other agents kind of very boldly. I was quite, I don't know, fearless in some way. I think I felt faith in the book honestly. But I also just was fearless in the way that I'm not normally. Maybe I felt desperate. There was this other complicating factor where my husband lost his job and I was like, I've gotta save this family. I've gotta sell this book. (Laughs) And I was pregnant. So I wrote to all the other agents and said, someone's interested in representing this book. A few got back to me. Then I had a conversation with Anna Stein and she read the book and said she wanted to represent it. She's such a force. Then we sold it. She gave me some edits and I worked on it a little bit, and then we sold it in February.
KBD: Wow.
JMJ: I know it was really, really quick. Basically one year.
KBD: That’s great. You never really know how long the process can be.
JMJ: The selling was really fast but also I had said to Anna that I was going to have a baby soon and I really wanted to just sell it before I had the baby if we can. And she said, yes, we can. But I think [it sold quickly] because they felt like there was an element about the book that was timely and they felt like it was in good shape. We didn't do a huge editing process with it. I mean, we edited it for sure, but the process wasn't a huge amount of changes. It didn't have to be restructured or something like that. So that was the process. Kind of wild, very fast, very whiplashy. My theatrical career has been like molasses. It’s so slow. Like incremental little bits of getting to know artistic directors, getting workshops, and things like that. So to have this happen so fast was surprising to say the least.
KBD: You have already said so many helpful things throughout our conversation but I love to ask debut novelists for any advice that you held on to while writing.
JMJ: So my daughter had this inspirational calendar. She was five at the time. She found it in our apartment laundry room and she used to pull out the pages and attach them onto the wall every day. This is a long preamble, but normally I don't like inspirational sayings. (Laughs) They make me very uncomfortable. But she had one that said, “do not let doubt reap what was sewn in faith.” And I would think about that whenever I was starting my novel. I'd be like, you want to write a novel. You want to finish it. You believe in it. And you started it in a faithful place, which is better than a doubtful place. So don't pay so much attention to your feelings. Just keep working.
KBD: I love that. Because you really can talk yourself out of anything if you want it.
JMJ: Yeah, absolutely. I would see this in my students, you know? I teach playwriting as well and that's shorter, but it's similar. And I would say don't worry about how you feel about something. Just finish. It’s a very, very long race. It's a marathon but you can't stop and go walk away. You gotta just keep going. It could be that you're the slowest person to finish that marathon, but in the end, you'll be finished and then you'll have something that you can really work with. If you don't finish it, you can't work with it.
Julia May Jonas is a writer, director, and the founder of theater company Nellie Tinder. (www.nellietinder.org) She teaches theater at Skidmore College and lives in Brooklyn with her family. Vladimir is her first novel.
