About a Book and a Boy Named Jess
Agnès Madrigal, interviewed by Sara Parrot
Agnès Madrigal is a writer of works of fiction. She has completed two novels, a novella, and several short stories, among various other writings. I met with Agnès to discuss her most recent novel, Jess. This story focuses on a schoolteacher who, upon meeting a new student in her class, questions all of the values she has upheld throughout her life. Agnès and I met at Maison Nico in San Francisco and walked about the North Beach neighborhood with our steaming coffees and sweet tartlettes, discussing this book and its intricacies. Here are some of the takeaways from our conversation. SP
Sara Parrot: So, tell me about Jess!
Agnès Madrigal: Well, when you speak of Jess, you speak of two elements: a novel and a character. The novel is named after Jess, a seventeen-year-old student who newly transfers into the narrator’s high-school in the second semester of his junior year. The narrator, Viola, teaches English literature. When she first meets Jess there is an ineffable quality about him that intrigues her, fascinates her, and even, to a certain degree, obsesses her.
One of Agnès Madrigal’s “inspiration boards” for her novel Jess, a story that pays homage to the Midwest and to the human heart. “I was listening to the songs of Nick Drake,” the writer says, “and I was longing for a certain kind of landscape, and maybe even an innocence.” Photograph by Madrigalit
SP: Tell me more about Viola’s perspective. Is she in love with him in a romantic way?
AM: I suppose that it sounds that way, and I would say that the story is not without a few somewhat controversial or at least surprising twists. However, I would sincerely hope that readers do not reduce this story in such a crude manner—and I mean no offense by saying that, as I think what you’re getting at is good to question. Though this story began with that proverbial writerly question “What if?”—and it followed that query through to a logical end—it was never intended to be shocking or transgressive and, as such, it is not.
“In the first weeks of the semester with Jess in my third-period class, there are hundreds of tiny details to record and yet nothing particularly substantial to say. He does not seem attached to his clothing, for one thing, which is casual, slightly ill-fitting. His clothes are basic: brand-less jeans, plain t-shirts, untucked Oxford shirts, and some flannel—they do not speak in any way to his personality as most of the other boys’ garments do, like the football jerseys and the concert t-shirts. It makes me sad to think that perhaps he’s had no say in his clothes, that no one has bothered to ask him what he might like to wear, though I can also imagine that he doesn’t really care, that he preserves his thoughts for other things, that he’s distracted from the common choices that affect him and is more preoccupied by whatever else he thinks about.”
—from Jess by Agnès Madrigal
SP: So, how does this story work?
AM: Viola is not just a schoolteacher, she is also a devout Catholic, an upstanding member of her community, and, in her own opinion as well as that of others, a moralist. This story talks about morality, including its complexity, and it displays various immoral and moral outcomes along its way—most of which take place outside of the direct relationship between Viola and Jess. The great writer Vladimir Nabokov was deeply interested in morality. His novel Lolita, which I did think of when first writing this book—as Jess was first appearing in Viola’s story—can be viewed as a moral fable. If Jess is also such a kind of parable, it works quite differently. Without giving anything away or making any kind of generalization, this book’s very premise is entirely unique from that of Mr. Nabokov, if only in that Jess’s narrator is female.
SP: Do you think men and women have different morals?
AM: No, not at all. When Nabokov tells us a story about Humbert Humbert, he is describing one man. When I offer my tale of Viola, she represents one woman. There are different moral quandaries, different outcomes, depending on each specific person—Humbert and Viola each get the conclusions that their characters create and, perhaps, deserve. Yet I think it is probably safe to say that, historically, female desire has been less explored than male desire, or that female desire has not always been excavated from the female point of view and so, in this regard, Jess examines morality—and a lot of other topics—in a fresh light.
“The people here are farmers mostly. They have, over some generations now, plowed the same lands, again and again, but without the grandeur of a slowly growing cathedral to behold. Whatever plans they might make in advance to plant this here or to plant this then, they are always at the mercy of the weather, which has been wildly unpredictable in our region, even before the climate-warming news that the scientists are telling us about today. They teach it in the geology class at the high-school now—environmentalism—though the farmers say it’s always been this way: the hail, the wind storms, the locusts, and more. The farmers who say that there is always this pestilence, they are the true witnesses to all of what god gives—god’s bounty, god’s contradiction, and god’s mischief.”
—from Jess by Agnès Madrigal
SP: Tell us more about the character Jess.
AM: Jess is—and I only say this now, now that the story is completed—a messiah figure of sorts. He is an outsider at the school, which is why he is so striking to Viola, but in spite of his difference, he is still respected and respectful. He is quiet, curious; through his interest in music, he is an artist. The name “Jess” is a name I’ve always liked, and I felt it had the casual candor of his character, a character whose hair seems always to be falling into his eyes or who doesn’t create a great stir upon entering a room. I realize now, as I think about Jess more religiously—a theme that is not overt in the book at all and certainly not intentional—that his name is strikingly close to “Jesus.” But I would caution readers from reading too much into this aspect of the narrative.
SP: Well, I always like to end these interviews with the same question: What do you want readers to draw from this book?
AM: Jess takes place in a fictitious small town somewhere in the Midwest. It is, in many ways, a love letter to that part of the country and its people whom I admire so deeply. Viola, in various of her characteristics, represents all that might be a good in a human, including a certain kind of modesty and a wish to do what is right for others more than for herself. I think Viola’s disposition is what makes the story so interesting—that she has to confront other parts of herself unexpectedly, parts that appear quite powerfully against her own wishes or her own determinations of what she thinks she wants. And this conflict brings out the greater theme of the book, which is the nature of what it means to love and the many different forms that love can take, including the sacrifice of oneself or one’s freedom, or even the perception of that freedom. Perhaps this story aims to reveal that love is a choice—one much more profound than desire, which may not always feel like a choice; that love is all encompassing, wholly satisfying beyond desire, and that love, maybe, reveals just how meek desire is in the end. Have I said too much? [Smiles.] I’ll stop there.