The Importance of Being Stubborn: Jeff Jackson in Conversation with Juliet Escoria
Over the course of several books, Juliet Escoria has shown a remarkable ability to portray uncomfortable situations and elicit visceral emotions. Her audacious debut novel, Juliet the Maniac, vividly portrays a teenage girl caught in a downward spiral of mental illness and self-destruction. It’s rightfully collected accolades from across the literary map: Publishers Weekly called it “searing and intimate” and NPR praised it as “a nightmare journal of the space between girlhood and womanhood.” The New York Times noted that “Juliet’s level of general intensity can make Martin Amis characters read like prudes.”
It’s easy to get swept up in the work’s raw immediacy and overlook Escoria’s prodigious literary skills. She draws on autofiction techniques, but bends them to her own needs. Among the drugs, sex, and suicide attempts, she carefully modulates the tone so there are also moments of connection and tenderness.
Escoria and I talked about the novel for several hours online. I started by asking her about one of the book’s most important elements, whose sophistication might be easy to miss.
One of the things I admire most about is its unusual and inventive structure, the short chapters that sometimes only last a few sentences. What led you to
