Vladimir

A middle-aged English professor's life is upended when her husband, chair of the department, is caught up in a #MeToo scandal. While his behavior wasn't illegal, it was opportunistic and predatory and as he waits for a hearing to find out his future, his wife, who had previously been seen as a popular and as a feminist role model, is being regarded as complicit, especially as she has not spoken out against him. And her husband is feeling hostile and hard done by, leaving her lonely and unmoored. Which is when Vladimir enters the picture, new assistant professor and author of a well-regarded novel. Friendly and eager to please, he is exactly the right man to develop a crush on, an easy distraction from unpleasant reality.

For the first show more two-thirds of this novel, I was sure that the author was engaging in a clever bit of bait and switch. It's a thoughtful and very well-written look at academia, at aging, at a woman having to reassess her ideas about herself, and at a marriage that was not designed to withstand pressure. I enjoyed this part of the book immensely, and was laughing to myself about how an essentially quiet book about a middle-aged woman was marketed with that cover and a misleading title when the novel exploded into an entirely different kind of thing and became anything but quiet and thoughtful. It was definitely a book that surprised me. show less

Ok fine! I’ve changed my rating. Happy?!
(Yelling at my inner self who battled with hating this book and realizing that I was so mad at it because the author did such an amazing job writing something uncomfortable in a weirdly subtle, just-get-under-your-skin, tricky, eye-squinty, are-you-messin-with-me kind of way...)

How to recommend a beautifully written novel with reprehensible characters? Carefully. This novel has received plenty of critical attention as a result of its amazing sentences, paragraphs, pages, chapters...I could go on. The voice is that of an unnamed fifty eight year old academic and her older husband. They agreed early on to an open marriage, primarily due to her contempt for her own physical being, which she has deemed monstrously unattractive since the birth of their child. Her husband, English Department Chair John takes full advantage of her granted permission and has consensual relationships with his much younger students up to and until the college deems this to be grounds for dismissal. Eventually, John, and his wife by show more virtue of her association with him and her non-condemnation of his proclivities, are subject to a hearing and dismissal. Simultaneously, she is violently attracted to a new, younger colleague who is also a brilliant writer. All ill and bad, except for the stupendous nature of the author's talent, including cogent analysis of today’s college students, and an exceedingly clever ending.

Quotes: "We moved around the house hushed and with care, like silent monks on balance beams." show less

The protagonist of this novel is not, as one could lazily expect, the eponymous “Vladimir”, but rather, the book’s unnamed 58-year old female narrator, a popular professor of English literature in an American college. Our protagonist is passing through an eventful period. Her husband, John, is being investigated for inappropriate sexual relationships with former female students. Her lawyer daughter is back home after having broken up with her girlfriend. Last, but not least, our protagonist is also feeling the burden of getting older. Enter Vladimir Vladinski, uprising star of the literary world, married to Cynthia Tong, herself a celebrated memoirist, both newly employed by the college. Vladimir quickly becomes the target of the show more narrator’s erotic obsessions, seemingly providing her with the opportunity to assert herself and her sexuality in a world which is losing its bearings.

Vladimir is quite correctly described as a debut because it is Julia May Jonas’s first novel. But Jonas, a critically acclaimed experimental playwright, is no rookie and her foray into novel-writing is remarkably assured. Unsurprisingly, she is particularly strong in conveying the voice of the narrator, not only in her interior monologues, but also through the often witty and acerbic dialogue between the various characters. Jonas is also excellent at evoking memorable scenes, even though the concluding ones require some suspension of disbelief.

In certain respects, Vladimir seems to be a playful send-up of Nabokov’s Lolita, the alliterative name “Vladimir Vladinski” at once recalling Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov and “Humbert Humbert”. At a deeper level, Vladimir is also a #MeToo novel which covers some of the same ground as My Dark Vanessa and Magma but in a possibly more nuanced fashion. Indeed, the irony in this work is that the narrator is a respected feminist, a strong and assertive character, who is dismissive of her husband’s accusers precisely because she feels it is offensive to suggest that young women have no “agency” when they seek the attention of older, powerful men. The narrator also seems to imply (as did some female/feminist critics of #MeToo) that the movement was reintroducing an element of prudery in sexual relations and reinterpreting consensual sexual encounters as “wrong”. Jones uses the countercultural voice of the narrator to challenge her readers, while at the same time giving space to alternative positions and ultimately suggesting that the protagonist is way more conservative than she makes herself out to be.

This novel is addictive and entertaining, but ultimately also provides much food for thought…and discussion.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2022/02/vladimir-by-julia-may-jonas.html show less

This was so creative and surprising and funny and smart. I love books by writers that love books, and boy is this ever that. The connection people assume to Lolita is very much here (though not clear until late in the book) but that connection is not terribly strong and it seemed more for fun than to make a point. I felt at least as much connection to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and I saw a subversive nod or two to Roth's Zuckerman books. Both the Albee and Roth references are very much updated for the 21st century, but to me quite strong.

Mostly this is a commentary on the death of creative critical thought within academia and outside of it. Lolita is a perfect framework for that now that we live in a world that believes that book is show more primarily about sex predators (If you have not read it, it is not really about that, though Humbert is ... troubled and troubling.) It is not just in academia people are quick to avoid the rigor of thought, to focus on the most superficial facts, to believe that anything that offends them or includes people doing bad things is bad. This is what will be the death of us. When students' feelings trump the free exchange of ideas for purposes of critical analysis and discussion education is dead. I blame Oprah who convinced people they needed to build their self-esteem. I am only half-joking when I say that. This whole pop psych self-esteem thing allowed people to believe their opinions and gut reactions had the same heft as educated considered supported assertions. You want self-esteem? Do the work required do be worthy of esteem. The line from What to Say When You Talk to Your Self and QAnon is essentially as long as a couple exits on a superhighway. Jonas and I are on the same page on this.

Jonas and I are also on the same page about the things we most enjoy, food and literature and being a mom. Her discussions of all were so gratifying! (I will say that our narrator shops for food like she lives in Brooklyn, not in rural upstate New York.) I think she also did a good job of capturing the internal unexamined self loathing/body dysmorphia that is so common in women of a certain age (that would be my age.) The "a moment on the lips a lifetime on the hips" and the concept of a "cheat day - the messaging that eating is something to be apologized for and that fat makes us worthless." We reject that line of thought, that self-consciousness intellectually and politically, we would rather die than communicate those messages to our children, but they are hard-wired for so many of us.

This book worked very well for me, I am the same age as the narrator and I am a women in academia. As it happens I read it at a time when students' "feelings" were making my life sort of hellish (luckily not their feelings about me, but I got sucked into the muck), so that helped. I did think the climax of the story was stretched out beyond reason, but then I came to feel that the hyperattention to detail was consistent with the narrator's personality. I also felt that Vladimir behaved in a way toward the end of the story that was not consistent with the character. In particular it was not consistent with his earlier interactions with and discussions regarding his young daughter. I would take a half star away for that, but I am going to round up because I just flat out loved reading this. show less

The protagonist of this novel is not, as one could lazily expect, the eponymous “Vladimir”, but rather, the book’s unnamed 58-year old female narrator, a popular professor of English literature in an American college. Our protagonist is passing through an eventful period. Her husband, John, is being investigated for inappropriate sexual relationships with former female students. Her lawyer daughter is back home after having broken up with her girlfriend. Last, but not least, our protagonist is also feeling the burden of getting older. Enter Vladimir Vladinski, uprising star of the literary world, married to Cynthia Tong, herself a celebrated memoirist, both newly employed by the college. Vladimir quickly becomes the target of the show more narrator’s erotic obsessions, seemingly providing her with the opportunity to assert herself and her sexuality in a world which is losing its bearings.

Vladimir is quite correctly described as a debut because it is Julia May Jonas’s first novel. But Jonas, a critically acclaimed experimental playwright, is no rookie and her foray into novel-writing is remarkably assured. Unsurprisingly, she is particularly strong in conveying the voice of the narrator, not only in her interior monologues, but also through the often witty and acerbic dialogue between the various characters. Jonas is also excellent at evoking memorable scenes, even though the concluding ones require some suspension of disbelief.

In certain respects, Vladimir seems to be a playful send-up of Nabokov’s Lolita, the alliterative name “Vladimir Vladinski” at once recalling Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov and “Humbert Humbert”. At a deeper level, Vladimir is also a #MeToo novel which covers some of the same ground as My Dark Vanessa and Magma but in a possibly more nuanced fashion. Indeed, the irony in this work is that the narrator is a respected feminist, a strong and assertive character, who is dismissive of her husband’s accusers precisely because she feels it is offensive to suggest that young women have no “agency” when they seek the attention of older, powerful men. The narrator also seems to imply (as did some female/feminist critics of #MeToo) that the movement was reintroducing an element of prudery in sexual relations and reinterpreting consensual sexual encounters as “wrong”. Jones uses the countercultural voice of the narrator to challenge her readers, while at the same time giving space to alternative positions and ultimately suggesting that the protagonist is way more conservative than she makes herself out to be.

This novel is addictive and entertaining, but ultimately also provides much food for thought…and discussion.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2022/02/vladimir-by-julia-may-jonas.html show less

Provincial as it may be, I can't look at a the sexually charged cover of a novel called Vladimir without thinking of Nabokov, and the book's opening passages on the attraction between young women and older men do little to correct the association. Like several of the other Vladimir's best works, Julia May Jonas' novel unfolds in the leafy cloisters of a nameless liberal arts college, this one in upstate New York. The female narrator's tranquil academic middle age has been punctured by twin disruptions: the public revelation of her husband's numerous affairs with students, and the arrival of a lauded younger author named Vladimir and his family. Moving seamlessly from the protagonist’s literary work to her fantasies to her reflections show more on changing campus politics to her unsettled family life Jonas explores the effect of a lifetime of insecurities, fears, and regrets on a woman whose world is becoming unmoored and unrecognizable. Small events and defeats slowly build to a crescendo when she decides to take matters into her own hands in dramatic fashion as it all falls apart.
The writing is measured yet passionate, the voice believably intelligent and literary without feeling edited. I found myself transported by the occasional passages describing natural beauty, which never felt purple, and charmed by asides about the proper ratio for a martini or the importance of including olives in pasta sauce. As a novel squarely concerned with the female experience and perspective, inner monologues were fascinating (and frankly disturbing) and I discovered I had much more patience than expected for political topics which only occasionally strayed from a delicate balancing act between platitude and Twitter thread. Though they sometimes stuck out from the flow of the story, they were mostly well-stitched and consistently interesting. I was a bit less sold on the novel’s ending, but it was bold and unexpected, and I have no idea how else the story’s threads could tie together more satisfactorily. Perhaps it’s an admission of my own ignorance of the genre, but the parallel I saw most directly was to Rachel Cusk’s novel Second Place, another story of a middle-aged woman in a complicated relationship with her daughter, her husband, and a brilliant artist. I enjoyed Vladimir quite a bit more, especially the perception and agency of the Jonas’ narrator. In both books, the protagonist is buffeted by forces and personalities beyond their control, but Vladimir’s is well aware of her own predicament and foibles and makes no decisions or mistakes which feel beyond the pale of the character’s behavior. I look forward to more novels from Julia May Jonas, and I’m excited to seek out her other work. show less