{"id":164946,"date":"2024-09-06T08:21:21","date_gmt":"2024-09-06T12:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=164946"},"modified":"2024-09-06T15:06:23","modified_gmt":"2024-09-06T19:06:23","slug":"faculty-in-the-news-novelist-jessica-anthony-96-talks-craft-classrooms-and-time-with-literary-hub","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2024\/09\/06\/faculty-in-the-news-novelist-jessica-anthony-96-talks-craft-classrooms-and-time-with-literary-hub\/","title":{"rendered":"Faculty in the News: Novelist Jessica Anthony ’96 writes about craft, classrooms, and time for Literary Hub"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lecturer in English Jessica Anthony \u201896 has had some dazzling reviews for her new novel, The Most, <\/em>since it was released by <\/em>Little, Brown & Co. in July. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

NPR\u2019s reviewer said the slim novel, just 133 pages, \u201cblindsided me with its power.\u201d The Washington Post <\/em>called The Most<\/em> \u201ca spare, elegant novella\u201d and the Chicago Review of Books<\/em> compared her to mid-century critical darling Richard Yates: \u201cJessica Anthony renders the pathos of older domestic dramas such as Revolutionary Road<\/em>, but with an admirable economy of words and a creative omniscient narrator.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Faculty in the News: Bates Bylines<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Jessica Anthony ’96, lecturer in English<\/a>, is the author of four books of fiction. Her novels have been published in over a dozen countries, and have been featured in Time, Newsweek, Esquire, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal<\/em>, and The New York Times Book Review<\/em> as an Editors\u2019 Choice.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

In the midst of that response to her fourth book of fiction, Anthony did something unusual. While she speaks on the topic of craft constantly in her creative writing courses at Bates, she rarely writes about it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But last month she published a piece in Literary Hub<\/em><\/a> <\/em>(better known as Lit Hub<\/em>), the online publication devoted to all things literary. In it, she celebrates using time as a form of structure for her fiction, and both showing and<\/em> telling. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Lecturer in English Jessica Anthony \u201896 has received glowing reviews for her new novel, The Most<\/em>, published in July by Little Brown & Co. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The Most<\/em> takes place on one November day in 1957, when a housewife named Kathleen climbs into the pool at her apartment complex and spends the whole day there, contemplating choices both before and behind her while her husband Virgil and two young sons watch in wonder and consternation. There are some flashbacks to her life as a youthful tennis star before she met Virgil, via self-reflection, which Anthony puts in the category of telling, but Kathleen and Virgil\u2019s story unfolds in the course of that day.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her LitHub <\/em>essay, Anthony connects her use of time as a form of structure with what she learned from teaching her students at Bates, particularly in the midst of the pandemic in 2020, when she had to use Zoom. As a decidedly un-tech-oriented person, this initially felt like an impossible task. \u201cI had no idea how I was going to teach structure on a screen, because the only way I\u2019ve known to teach structure is by intimately connecting it to character and style.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anthony went back into her own writing practice \u201cand realized that what I had been doing was teaching myself, through experimentation and failure, about the art of time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“This superb short novel, about a marriage at its breakpoint, deserves to become a classic.”<\/span><\/cite><\/p>Heller McAlpin for NPR<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n<\/div>

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Anthony\u2019s other books include The Convalescen<\/em>t (2009), a graphic novel called Chopsticks<\/em>, published in 2012, and Enter the Aardvark<\/em>, which came out in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anthony writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c I started to see scenes differently, not as a structural apparatus, but as a magical contradiction of time. When I sat down to write Enter the Aardvark<\/em>, I gave myself three days to bring down the re-election campaign of a U.S. congressman. How different would that novel have been if I gave myself a full year? What about twenty minutes? How much time would I have spent in scene versus narration? When I wrote The Most<\/em>, I gave myself one working day. Eight hours. We know how much we can get done in a day according to our clocks. So it can go in story. What if we only met Emma Bovary for two days, and not a lifetime?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"JessicaAnthony,
Lecturer in English Jessica Anthony ’96 introduces her colleague Myronn Hardy, assistant professor of English, prior to his reading from Aurora Americana<\/em>, his new collection of poetry, in Gomes Chapel on Oct. 11. 2023. (Carly Philpott ’27 for Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In a note to BatesNews<\/em>, Anthony added a few more thoughts: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTime’s malleability is one of the reasons why I suppose I have not grown tired of the novel. Time allows for an infinite parade of formal constructions. An entire act of a character’s life can occur in the seconds it takes to simply recall, remember. A whole season can occur over a single day. (Virginia Woolf understood this, perhaps, better than anyone.) The writing of this novel encouraged me to reimagine how I communicate structure to the fiction writers here at Bates. The best tools for a writer are always the simplest, and Time is a useful tetherer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More on The Most<\/em>, from critics:<\/p>\n\n\n\n