Images That Stick: An Interview w/ Mary Jones
Mary Jones is the author of the USA Today bestselling short story collection The Goodbye Process (Zibby Books 2024). Her writing has appeared in many journals including Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Subtropics, Alaska Quarterly Review, EPOCH, Gay Mag, Epiphany, Santa Monica Review, Brevity and elsewhere. The recipient of a summer prose fellowship from The University of Arizona Poetry Center, her work has been cited as notable in The Best American Essays and appeared in The Best Microfiction 2022. Originally from Upstate New York, she lives in Los Angeles.
Her short story, “We’re Not So Far From There” was published in our Spring / Summer 2012 issue.
What are the catalysts for your stories? Of course motivations to write stories are complex but I wanted to try to understand what stimulates you to write about certain places or subjects. For example couples splitting apart or places in upstate New York seems prevalent.
My stories often start with some image or moment that stays with me... It could be something I experienced, or a conversation I overheard, or the way someone looked at someone else… I will usually just start writing toward that image or moment and build from there.
I was born and raised in Upstate NY in what was a mostly working-class neighborhood. That place, and its people, have stayed with me more than any other place I’ve lived. I feel like I can vividly recall every detail of the cities and small towns in that area, and I feel like I intimately know (and care about) the people there, and their struggles. So, it is a place I always come back to in my writing. It is the place I see, I guess, when I close my eyes.
I’ve learned to follow my writerly obsessions. Couples splitting apart—or more broadly, people coming to the ends of things—is subject matter that I always find myself returning to. I’m endlessly fascinated with the intricacies of very close relationships (husbands and wives, parents and children, siblings), and in how people fail each other, and how they come through for each other.
William Trevor began his adult life as a sculptor and later described his writing as chipping away at a block of marble. Are you a chipper or a builder? In other words do you chip away at a block of writing, or are you more methodical, building up the block brick by brick?
I’m a bit of both, I think. At first, I am a little more prone to building up the block brick by brick. I try to get my first drafts on the page as quickly as possible, before the story loses energy. I am not usually particularly quick about this, but what I mean is: I try to get to the end of the story, to tell the whole thing, as quickly as I possibly can. Once I have that first draft, which is usually a skeleton of the final story, I start editing: slowly going in and building up the story with more scenes, stronger characterization, more setting details—whatever it needs.
In later edits I do chip away at it and refine the scenes and the language to only what’s essential. At this stage I am always asking myself of the work, “Is it true?” To me this is a reminder to always question whether I am saying something in as honest and as true and as clear of a way as possible. If the language is intentionally flowery or verbose or clever, then to me it isn’t true. I refine any sentences or scenes that are like that to make them more concise.
I notice that you use male narrators in your stories. How do you choose your narrators? Does a narrator that's different from you help you tell the story?
I think a lot of writers have a favorite POV to write in, whether it’s first person, or third person female, or even (in rare cases) second person. I don’t have that sort of default POV that I return to. Most of my POV choices are unconscious. Lots of times I go into a story with the first sentence. I like when that happens because with a first sentence, you have the voice, you have the characters, you probably have a hint at the situation, and you almost always have the point-of-view. I tend to follow that no matter what it is: male, female, first person, third person, second person, etc.
The story “Realtor” is the only story in the collection that has multiple POV characters. That’s a departure for me. “Realtor” is a dark love story about a luxury Los Angeles real estate agent who is obsessed with his own beauty. He embarks on a relationship that frees him from that obsession to disastrous consequences. That story was a real breakthrough for me. When I started writing it, I didn’t have any idea what it was going to be or where it was going. It kept moving in unexpected ways and surprising me. Eventually I realized that to tell the story that I wanted to tell, I needed multiple POV characters. This was a risk for me, but I’m proud of how it turned out.
It is often said that writers write from the wound? Do you think this is true and do any of your stories come from difficult and painful places? In other words are wounds a kind of gem that allow us to spin big tales?
While my stories are fictional, they always come from a place of emotional truth. The Goodbye Process is a collection about loss, or letting go and moving on. While I have not had the same losses as the characters in these stories, in every case, I understand where they’re coming from. I think I need to feel that kind of empathy for my characters to write the story. For instance, the title story, “The Goodbye Process” is about a man who loses his wife of over forty years and hires a professional mourner to ensure her funeral will go well. I started writing that story quite a long time ago, but I wasn’t able to finish it until many years later when I had a loss of (what felt to me) similar magnitude.
I like what Tim O’Brien said about “story truth” vs. “happening truth,” and how, in fiction, there is a deeper truth (story truth) than the truth of what actually happened (happening truth). While I don’t typically explicitly write about my own wounds, I do think the experiences I’ve had serve my fiction.
In the story published in Epiphany "We Are Not So Far From There" a marriage is coming undone. How did you come to the bit about the fires being set? Talk about the symbolic parallels you use in your stories.
I never intentionally try to write symbols into my stories. For this story (and for most of my work) I didn’t know where it was going when I started. I knew a husband was feeling jealous about his wife’s relationship with her ex, and that was all. When they sat down to watch TV, I considered what might be on the TV. During a certain time period, in Upstate NY, where this story takes place, there was a lot of arson happening, and that is what came to my mind, that is what I thought might be on the TV. Later, when the arson in the town ended up working as a symbol for what was happening in the couple’s relationship, it was a surprise to me. I like the saying “no surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader” so I am always thrilled when I am genuinely surprised where a story takes me, or what little magical things like this naturally emerge. I think the unconscious mind is always a better storyteller than the conscious one.
In what ways has publishing in literary magazines helped you? Did your perception of yourself as a writer change as you published?
One of my mentors, the wonderful author and teacher, Jim Krusoe, always said you will write well for at least five years before anyone notices. I think it can be hard to pursue a goal without any external affirmation that you are doing okay, or on the right path. My publications in literary magazines over the years helped me in this way. These publications were very affirming signs to me that I was doing something right and someone (who does not live in my house) was responding to the work. So, this was meaningful and gave me the little boost I needed to keep me going.
I think submitting to literary magazines in general, not just getting published, also helps. Sometimes even an encouraging rejection, a short note from an editor, can be enough to keep you going. I had this back and forth with (the late) C. Michael Curtis from the Atlantic over the years. While I never placed a story there, he let me submit to him directly and he’d send back a note about what he liked or didn’t like about the story and always end with “try again?” I had so much respect for him, and just knowing he was willing to read my work again gave me the fuel I needed to keep writing.
Does crazy shit you have done inform your writing?
Yes and no… I really like the quote from Lorrie Moore “the proper relationship of a writer to his or her own life is similar to a cook with a cupboard. What that cook makes from what’s in the cupboard is not the same thing as what’s in the cupboard.” The “ingredients” for my fiction—both the characters and the circumstances—come from life in that way… Tiny bits from things I’ve witnessed, experienced, heard about, and imagined, get broken apart and mixed together again in such a way that they form something entirely new.
There is humor in your writing. The Goodbye Process. Burglary. Do you laugh when you write?
Sometimes I laugh, yes. Sometimes I’m surprised to hear what readers find funny in my work, as I might not have thought of it in that way. When I was younger, I read my mom a story that I thought would make her cry, and she laughed and laughed. Fun times.
I use humor to cope in my real life; it is often how I get through bad things, and that comes through in these stories. Sometimes when something awful happens, right there next to it—if you are open to seeing it—is a funny way to look at it. This sort of humor is a dark humor, yes. But I think if you are able to go there, it can be a momentary relief and even a comfort. I think I go there in moments in these stories, and, in a way, I think this relieves the tension for the reader when dealing with serious subject matter.
I also find that there is a certain humor that occurs simply when something rings true. I think that’s where a lot of humor in these stories comes from. So in most cases, there are no lines written with the intention of being funny, no jokes. I think the lines can just read as funny if something is described in such a particular and accurate way that the reader knows exactly what I’m talking about and feels in on the observation.
Books you are reading or thinking about now.
I recently read All Fours by Miranda July. I’m a huge fan of July’s short stories, and really enjoyed this wild ride of a novel. It’s loaded with insight and wisdom and is laugh out loud funny.
I also recently loved Ling Ma’s collection Bliss Montage. I was blown away by Taylor Koekkoek’s collection, Thrillville USA, and also by Manuel Muñoz’s collection, The Consequences.
I’m excited to read Chelsea Bieker’s forthcoming novel, Madwoman. And I will never stop thinking about Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These.
Advice?
There is a line from a Raymond Carver poem I really like. The poem is called “Sunday Night.” In it, Carver details all the things he sees and hears, such as, “the woman bumping drunkenly around the kitchen,” and “the light rain outside the window.” The final line is, “put it all in, make use.” I think this line is great advice for any writer. For a long time, I kept the words “make use” as the wallpaper on my phone to remind myself to stay open for business, to keep my eyes and ears open to the world around me, and put it all in.
