Molly McGhee’s debut novel Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind was published in 2023 by Astra House. McGhee earned her M.F.A in fiction at Columbia University, where she currently teaches undergraduates. She has also worked in the editorial department at The Believer, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and elsewhere, as well as in publishing at Tor.

Interview by Isabelle Sakelaris

What inspired you to write from the perspective of a male-identifying character? Why was it important to you to share Jonathan’s perspective rather than, for example, Kai’s?

Gender controls our world. We are prisoners to its circumscriptions. Some of us are trying to break out of the madhouse, and some of us have not realized we are being kept behind bars. For this project, which explores how delusion, entitlement, assumption, desperation, and misconception feed capitalist agendas, it was more narratively fitting to have a narrator attuned to Jonathan than a narrator attuned to Kai. The suffocating nature of Jonathan’s perspective—and the dramatic irony of that perspective in contrast with the lives of the women he is surrounded by—is the central conceit and horror of the book. Even though Abernathy is well-meaning (especially in comparison to other male characters of the text, like Penn), he cannot escape the fact that his perspective is a blackhole that subsumes all other narratives, thus preventing him from truly participating in the community he is surrounded by.

If the reader is someone who believes in female agency and intelligence, they are rewarded by reading between the lines as each character responds to Abernathy’s delusion and aspiration. If the reader is not aware of those power dynamics, elements of the book remain obscure to them, which I believe is fitting, as it mirrors the truth of Abernathy’s life.

Were I to write a traditional hero’s narrative, Kai’s story would be an interesting candidate.

There is a lot of transformation in this novel. At the same time, a constant in the book is Abernathy’s debt, which the Archive ensures he will never escape. The passage of time also seems important to this novel, especially when we meet life itself in the Archive toward the end. How did you navigate all these transformations, growing and waning tensions, and the passage of time over the course of the novel? What was the process of revision like? Did the novel change much from your first draft to the final version?

I perceive transformation and change as the underlying truth of existence, so capturing the mercurial and ever-evolving nature of being and relation is central to my goals as a writer. How does one capture any of the big truths? Slowly. By paying close attention, accepting the accompanying emotional discomfort, and attempting to alleviate and embody that pain through language and story.

Revision, also, is like this. Like getting to know someone. At first, you think the novel is one thing. But then you realize your conception is only part of the whole, and to truly understand, you must wade into the murky, undefinable lows and shadows. Not only must you go there, you must accept it. More than accept it. Embrace it. This takes bravery and is hard. Only then can you go back and reify the highs, and appreciate that only through contrast do we achieve actualization.

One of the things I struggled to accept through my drafts was the reality of Jonathan’s character, and the gap between that reality and his self-conception. His lack of consideration for other people and his own relentless self-interest and self-pity are not malicious, yet still cause extreme harm to the people he is in community with. Yet we love him anyway. Why do we love him anyway? As I worked with the text more, I began to understand the characters and the nature of the project. Throughout the various drafts, everything became more human, which is to say: more beautiful, and more flawed.

A turning point in the novel is when Abernathy reflects on auditing Rhoda’s dreams. You wrote, “In the most intimate rooms of another’s interior, Abernathy gains very little emotional insight about himself. In the megadome of his own thoughts, he tries his best” (186).

This reminded me of my role as your reader and the way I might use your words to make sense of—or glean insights that I can apply to—my own life. In another instance, you’ve written that without context, dreams are “merely a series of clichés and irregularities stitched together” (145). Continuing with the dreams-as-text metaphor, how do you build context for the reader as a writer? As a reader and a writer, which approach(es) to building context do you find the most effective?

Every novel is different and reads differently. This is because all novels are created by human beings and read by human beings. Every human has a different conception of existence, reality, and what it means to be themselves, but not every human knows this is so.

I suppose my approach is one of acceptance. I accept that the reader will arrive as their self. I accept that the story will arrive as itself. I accept that the amalgamation of the two is a personal, private experience and that an author’s attempt to anticipate or control what that may be for another person is futile. To create art, we must accept the mystery of art. With all this in mind, I try my best to write honestly and passionately. To me, truth and passion is that which facilitates creation.

There are some elements of horror and humor in this novel. In general, it seems like humor is more widely regarded as a tool, while horror is relegated to genre. Is that fair to say? How do you balance horror and humor in your writing, and will you continue to employ both in future projects?

Horror and humor are intimately related. That intimacy is something I’m extremely interested in. Like comedy and tragedy, or sanity and insanity, the classification is determined by point-of-view, authority, atmosphere, and ending. Hamlet would have been a comedy if it were about Horatio surviving the love of a madman, rather than about a man in love who goes mad. Cassandra was a prophet, but only posthumously. When you think about all the people whose suffering could have been alleviated: is that funny or is that horrifying? Perhaps the answer is both.

As someone who has worked in both publishing and as an educator, what advice do you have for aspiring writers? Did anything about the process of bringing this novel into the world—writing it or publishing it—surprise you? If so, what was it?

You will suffer. You will be surprised by how much suffering you are capable of. However, listen to me when I tell you: it is better to do the work and suffer, than to suffer and not do the work.

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Isabelle Sakelaris is an art writer and aspiring poet who lives and works in New York City.

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