An Interview with Jessica Anthony, Author of "The Most"
Anthony's "The Most" was long-listed for the 2024 National Book Award in Fiction.
Sometimes, you find the perfect book. Other times, the perfect book finds you.
“The Most,” by Jessica Anthony, practically fell into my arms during a mad dash through my local book store in late December. I had never read Jessica Anthony before, nor had I known that “The Most” (Anthony’s fourth novel) had just been long-listed for the 2024 National Book Award in Fiction.
Rather, “The Most,” jumped off the shelf at me because as a new, sleep-and-time-deprived parent about to travel cross-country for Christmas, this slim 144-page paperback made me pause and think, “Wait, I could actually finish this!”
Little did I know what a punch this story packed - or that I’d soon get the chance to ask Anthony herself how she crafted this stellar, seemingly-effortless yarn.
To write my full review would overshadow the Q+A below. I’ll just say: by the first chapter I was hooked, by the second chapter I was invested, and by the end of the book, I just had to ask the magician how the trick was done.
Okay, before the Q+A from Jessica Anthony - who so kindly answered my questions over email - here is the back cover blurb, for context:
It’s November 3, 1957. As Sputnik 2 launches into space, carrying Laika, the doomed Soviet dog, a couple begin their day. Virgil Beckett, an insurance salesman, isn’t particularly happy in his job but he fulfills the role. Kathleen Beckett, once a promising tennis champion with a key shot up her sleeve, is now a mother and homemaker. On this unseasonably warm Sunday, Kathleen decides not to join her family at church. Instead, she unearths her old, red bathing suit and descends into the deserted swimming pool of their apartment complex in Newark, Delaware. And then she won’t come out.
A riveting, single-sitting read set over the course of eight hours, The Most is an epic story in one single day, masterly breaching the shimmering surface of a seemingly idyllic mid-century marriage, immersing us in the unspoken truth beneath.
Q+A with Jessica Anthony, Author of “The Most”
Rian Casey Cork: How did the overall idea for "The Most" come to you? In bits and pieces? In mostly-full form? How easy or difficult was it for you to work this project from initial concept, to final form?
Jessica Anthony: A feeling develops, incubating for years, until the moment comes to write and figure out the concept. The germ of this novel began fifteen years ago, when I read an amusing article about a naked man who refused to get out of the swimming pool of an apartment complex. Seven years after reading that article, it was summer, I was alone on a hot day, and treading water in a swimming pool in rural Slovakia. I started writing that afternoon, and wrote the first draft very quickly. About six weeks.
RCC: Like a high-stakes tennis match, "The Most" builds tension by ricocheting back and forth between the point of view of Kathleen Beckett, a former women's tennis champ, and that of Virgil, Kathleen's insurance salesman husband.
When in your creative process did you discover/decide that tennis would shape your story - in terms of both Kathleen's backstory, and the story's literal narrative structure?
JA: Early on I knew that Kathleen was athletic, strong enough to endure a day of resistance in the swimming pool, and discovered that she was a tennis player only when pressed to make a declaration of what sport she played. I researched the sports played by women in the 1950s, and tennis struck me as the choice Kathleen--who grew up in a wealthy neighborhood in Wilmington, Delaware--would have made.
RCC: "The Most" opens with a kind of "game" initiated by Kathleen (deciding one Sunday morning to swim in the pool instead of joining her family for church). From there, many more "games" are initiated, or revealed.
Can you speak to the importance of games or play in the overall story of "The Most?" For you personally, how do games or play show up (if at all) in your creative life/process?
JA; I loved all manners of games when I was young: cards, board games, sports. I liked thinking about rules, and how those rules are broken, and I liked the opportunity for second chances that games provide. Lose at Monopoly? You might win the next one. Winning or losing a game is virtually meaningless, which means that liking games means liking the play that leads to a meaningless outcome. That is life, no?
RCC: Other reviewers have noted that bridges are a motif in "The Most." In fact, you wrote "The Most" while guarding the Mária Valéria Bridge in Slovakia (itself referenced in the book, right?). How long did your Bridge Guard creative residency last? How much of "The Most" were you able to complete while living abroad?
JA: The residency was for three months. I finished my previous novel there, “Enter the Aardvark,” and wrote the first draft of “The Most.”
RCC: Flawed characters bring "The Most" alive. Can you share any more about the role or importance of flawed characters in your story? What are some challenges of crafting genuinely flawed characters? Do you have any favorite flawed characters in literature, and why?
JA: A flawed character is a person who is getting it wrong, or trying to get over from getting it wrong, which means they are a human being. But a flaw is not objective, and is wholly dependent upon the judgment of others, which complicates the question: what is a flaw, really—and who wants to read a flawless character? What would that person possibly be like? I have a deep suspicion that the only flawless characters in literature are dogs.
RCC: One of the things I loved most about "The Most" was that Kathleen and Virgil's "game" of reckoning helps to differentiate them from the 1950s milieu they inhabit. What was it about that decade in American history that made you want to peek beneath its varnished surface, via these two characters?
JA: Well, the decade is regularly pointed to as an exemplar of the American experience, which of course is a bigoted mythology. Brown vs. Board was 1954. Civil Rights was a decade later. I had been teaching a course on women writers of the 1950s and began to wonder what a lost novel of the period might look like, and how that lost novel might speak to the 21st century.
Kathleen and Virgil are each adrift in their era, trying to make the best of a social structure that punishes independent thought and experience. People like them in the 50s existed, of course, as did people who outright rejected the status quo. But the visible social movements of the 60s were only possible because of the more obscure work on justice that began in the late 40s and 50s. And so the 50s were the correct time for these two, who are not activists. They are simply trying to figure out how to survive.
RCC: One of the pillars of this newsletter is "curiosity." Can you share anything about what role curiosity plays in your life as a writer and teacher, and author of "The Most"?
JA: I view curiosity as the essential ingredient to art—any art. Kafka begs us to follow our obsessions mercilessly. And so the artist must always possess raised antennae, always alert, always receptive, ready to pounce when a question or feeling comes our way that grips our curiosity and does not let go.
RCC: Last question - what are you working on next??
JA: AH, I don’t talk about work in progress…but it will be a novel. A longer novel, this time.
RCC: Thank you, Jessica, for taking the time to complete this interview! Best wishes for the year ahead.
END INTERVIEW
***
Author Bio
Jessica Anthony is the author of four books of fiction, most recently the novel THE MOST (Little, Brown & Co.), longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award. Her novel ENTER THE AARDVARK (Little, Brown & Co.) was a finalist for the 2020 New England Book Award. Anthony’s novels have been published in over a dozen countries, and are featured in Time, Newsweek, Esquire, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times Book Review as an Editors’ Choice.
Anthony has received literary fellowships from the Creative Capital Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation (Italy), the Bridge Guard Foundation (Slovakia), the Maine Arts Commission, and she recently spent a month in residence at the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington. Anthony’s story “The Death of Mustango Salvaje,” originally published by McSweeney’s, is currently in development with A24 for a limited TV series, filmed in Spain.