Significant Others - Sandra Newman on her Retelling of 1984

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

Sandra Newman was given one assignment by the Orwell Estate: Re-write 1984 from the point of view of the character Julia.Julia: A Retelling of George Orwell’s 1984

Welcome to Significant Others. I'm Liza Powell O'Brien, and in this week's episode, we heard the story of George Orwell's first wife, Eileen Blair. Today, we're joined by Sandra Newman, author of the novel Julia, which is a retelling of Orwell's classic 1984, from the point of view of its main female character. Sandra, thank you so much for joining us today. Can you start off by telling us how this book came to be? Yes. So I was actually approached by the Orwell Estate in the person of Bill Hamilton, who is the literary executor of the Orwell Estate. And he asked me if I would be interested in writing a book that is 1984 from the point of view of Julia.

And that was it. That was the whole description. So it could be taking place after the events of 1984 or before the events of 1984. Somehow has to do with 1984, but it was very, very wide open. And the Orwell estate wouldn't be paying me for it. I think that's a common misconception. They're not paying me for it. And they don't make any money directly from it because it's not their book, because I'm not Orwell. But they actually wanted to control the production of this book. Interesting.

So their concern was that somebody else would write the book with 1984 coming out of copyright in the UK. Right. And then it would be some book that they would find, you know, somehow cheapening to Orwell's legacy or antagonistic to Orwell's legacy in some way that they felt was bad. I don't know. Mm-hmm. they felt was bad. I don't know. And within that, it sounds like they want something that's going to be completely Orwell-friendly, completely positive about Orwell, and specifically something that's not going to be too feminist. But actually, that turned out not to be the case. And one of the main things that Bill, representing the Orwell estate, wanted to know from my book was why on earth Julia was ever interested in Winston in the first place.

That is a great question. Yeah. Yeah. It had haunted him like all these years. He's read by T.D. Park and talked about it all his life. So he just really wanted to know that. He kept on me about that. And initially was not satisfied with my answer and found it unsatisfying. What on earth could she see in this man? a feminist retelling of 1984. And when did that word enter the conversation?

Was it like part of the assignment or part of their hope for it? You know, Bill did not say, he did not actually, I don't know if he's ever said the word feminist, but it was sort of obvious. It was obvious when it was announced long before the book was ever written.

When the project was announced, the word feminist immediately was attached to it. Right. So before anybody had read the book, they said it was a feminist book. And I was like, I don't think there's a way you can write it without it being feminist, actually. And I think we'll get to that. I think it's just inevitably a feminist project. As almost any project is, that you're writing from the woman's point of view in a world that was initially created by a male author or a male field maker. When you switch it to the woman's point of view, you're aiming to add something that wasn't there in the first place. And not always, but usually that involves some

sort of feminist angle. So I have a question about what you just said, which may be better off coming later, but I'm going to say it now so I don't forget it, which is, I was trying to think, I did not do a deep dive into this, but I was trying to think if there are other examples of books or other pieces of art that have been made probably more in the visual art sphere but that have been made that reimagine a well-known piece of work from a minor let's you know not the main character's perspective anyway but are you aware of any any others uh the the great one that everyone always brings up is the book Wide Sargasso Sea, told from the point of view of the first wife of the character Rochester in Jane Eyre. Got it. woman's perspective and you know somebody with mental illness and she tells her story whereas

in in Jane Eyre she's very much like a monstrous figure who whose only role is to threaten the main characters yeah that's a great one um okay so you've written multiple novels and I'm curious that I am assuming this is the first experience you've had of working with another author's world or material in some way. Yes. And so how did that inform the process? It was funny. You know, at first I wasn't sure I could do it. You know, you think, well, okay, this sounds like a project that would be thrilling and it would get a lot of attention. And I do love Orwell and I've read all of his books and I've read 1984 multiple times. So it sounds like actually intellectually engaging, but is it actually going to work as a novel or am I going to lose interest within two weeks?

weeks. And what I actually found working on it was that it was kind of this, if you're an artist of any kind, I'm going to say it from the point of view of a novelist, but it's transferable to most forms of art. On the one hand, you always want to be working on your novel and anything that is not your novel is offensive to you. And someone invites you to a party and you're like, oh, I want to work on my novel. Or you have a day job, God forbid. And it's always like this burden because you want to work on your novel. Or a family. Yeah, or a family. Yeah.

Yeah, a social life of any kind. Like people who love you, anything. You want to work on your novel. But then if you have some time to work on your novel, you want to do anything but work on your novel. Absolutely everything else is more appealing to you. And what I found was that having this kind of assignment, because it wasn't really my novel, it was a perfect mix of my novel and not my novel. And I was really able, I wrote it in record time. I wrote it like in an incredibly short period of time because it was this kind of wonderful mix of what, of the world that expects things from me that are not my novel, but also my novel.

Right. Well, you've made it, for me as a reader, you've made it completely yours. And I can understand this sort of, you know, once some choices, big choices are taken off the table, then yeah, it might help us get the ball of turning a tapestry over, you know, and that I was seeing the same tapestry from the other side and seeing it was not maybe by the end I felt slightly different about it. But I was I was really blown away by how that world could be reanimated or animated to begin with sort of from the other side and completely align. It's not that it was, I wasn't taken out of that original experience at all. I also felt it could be its own experience in a way that was remarkable. It did not, and I don't know how much of that was intentional for you, but it is a standalone piece of work. It's not only a compendium, you know, of this other thing. Yeah. Thank you. So how did you start? Did you start with the character? Did you start with a scene? Did you,

you know, did you know that you wanted it to sort of walk through the same plot as 1984? Or did you have to find that? 1984 or did you have to find that it took me i i did very quickly come to realizing it had to be the same plot as 1984 but i started by rereading 1984 so i just like hold up hold up in like a friend's apartment he was away and i was looking after his cats so here here I am alone in this apartment reading 1984. And within the first chapter, I had begun to write my book. It seemed very clear to me. Oh, here is the first scene. I'm going to use his first scene. It will be the same first scene, and that will be a strong move. I tried to work in the first sentence, but it ended up getting thrown out, actually. I tried to work in the first sentence, but it ended up getting thrown out, actually.

So that move didn't work. But yes, there's the first scene, essentially, of 1984. Technically, Winston's remembering this scene, but the real first scene is at the two-minute tape. Right. So that's the first scene of my book, too, from her point of view, because that's the first scene in which we see Julia in 1984 is at the Two Minutes Haight. Which, from my point of view, I think anybody who's ever had a really boring day job where they develop a crush on an inappropriate co-worker who, in any other context, would not be appealing, could understand how she ends up with Winston. And then, you know, from there, like, the first time they meet, they sleep together. So, or really, it's the second time they meet, technically. The first time they're alone together, they have sex. And the thing about it is that reading 1984, I mean, I'm reading 1984

essentially from the point of view of Julia. And so as Julia, the character in the novel, I have some problems with Orwell's approach to me. And I feel like he hasn't done me justice, and I begin to have objections that I want to express. And I feel like he hasn't done me justice. And I begin to have objections that I want to express. And there's the seed of the novel, basically. And then as the writer of Julia, I begin to think about all the rest of Julia's life, which Orwell alludes to really frustratingly. There are all these tantalizing references to her trading on the black market and having other love affairs. But Winston is astonishingly incurious about her, never asks her any follow-up questions. So we never find out how the black market works or

what it's like to trade on the black, even who she's buying from. And we never find out anything about her previous affairs and how she got away with it. And like, why is she suddenly confessing love to Winston? She's had all these previous lovers. It doesn't make sense. So I wanted to know all about that. And that gave me all of this scope to basically write a novel answering those questions that's kind of tagging along after 1984 and sometimes dovetailing with it we end up in scenes that are in 1984 from her point of view with all the same dialogue too that was really fun i was thinking of that actually i was like wow this has got to be such an unusual experience as a writer and as you say maybe like, okay, we know what's going here. And, and I could, there was a different quality to the dialogue when, again, not out of sync with, with this book, but I could always tell when it was original dialogue to 1984. And it's just a fascinating kind of study in two voices kind of meshing. Yeah, it was really fun, you know,

and there was this feeling all along. I felt like sometimes I would be kind of going head to head with Orwell and thinking, oh, you've got this wrong, essentially. Like, that's impossible. As you would as a reader, or as I have anyway, reading 1984, where I think, you know, come on, you know, in all of the ways you've already mentioned. And then also just, you know, Julia's sexuality is so convenient for Winston and for Orwell and to, you know, and some of the things that she says and you think, you know, it is frustrating. I could almost, it was, I don't know, it was this great, like, this version of it was a great exorcism of the frustrations I had felt as a reader of 1984. But that didn't invalidate 1984. Yeah, yeah. I think that, I mean, there are two things about the treatment of Julia in 1984. One is that I think it genuinely is really sexist. There's no question. It is really sexist. But also Julia is one of those points where you feel like no author can do everything in a book.

And he just didn't do Julia that much. He just didn't go that far with that character. He was focused on another thing. And in some ways, she's a bit of a plot hole because of that. He uses her and she's convenient, but she's there to serve the plot. She's there to serve Winston. And if you start thinking about her motivations, you lose engagement with the story. So in a way, like writing Julia, there were points where I felt like he left me all of this room to work in, and it was almost like collaborating with him and working with him. And he was the ideal collaborator. I mean, first because he was absolutely brilliant and created all this great stuff like the Junior Anti-Sex League that I could describe that he just mentions and leaves to me to do. Thank you.

That's great. And the art sum, like the artificial insemination that the party has women do, like again, he mentions it, but doesn't describe it. So he gave me all of this great stuff to do that was in a lot of ways more interesting than the stuff that he had himself do. So ideal collaborator already for two reasons. And the third reason is that he's dead. Right. So like if I decide something.

Your word is last, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Like I get to make all the decisions and I'm always right. So it's an absolutely fantastic working experience. The best significant other might be the one who's no longer with us. Yeah. The torture scenes in both 1984 and in Julia are quite something. Were they difficult to write? They were. I mean, the book in general was difficult to write

emotionally i would think like it really it did it was not the happiest like year and a half or two years of my life was like really really not a good period especially given that it's it's not really a happy time to be thinking about authoritarianism. No. I think I'll just leave it at that. We all know what I'm talking about. Yeah. And the torture scenes, like in a way, like I find that kind of stuff in a sense easy to write because I just race through it. I don't know why, but I just go into it and I have to finish it compulsively. So it gets done very quickly.

And usually for some reason, the first draft is pretty good. So I don't have to fix a lot of it. But then, you know, at the end of the day, you're a complete wreck. So I can't even imagine. I mean, I was impacted reading it, and I thought you didn't shrink from any of it, which I was impressed by because, you know, it's tough. It's tough to go through that stuff line by line. does. I think he was really wonderful in his descriptions of prison and torture. The one thing that always stood out to me is the first time anybody actually physically strikes Winston. And it's just this guard, I guess, hitting him on the elbow. But the blow is so great and the pain is so tremendous that Winston crumples to the floor. And it's just a description of what it's like to have somebody, like how painful it can be, just that one blow, which becomes this sort of metonymy for all of the pain that's going to happen to him. And how it feels psychologically to have that happen to you and know that it can be done to you again and again and again. And it's so powerful. It's really, really amazingly done.

Do you have a favorite part of 1984 or a favorite image or phrase or anything? Or if that doesn't spark anything for you, is there anything about 1984 that you think people tend to miss or misunderstand or you know refer to but not you know without a full understanding of the of the work itself i think after having read it god knows how many times i i still keep coming back to the extremely long villain speech of o'brien at the end of 1984 and the dynamic between him and winston which i think make the book like i think that really is what elevates the book above like all the other books about totalitarianism written at this time and the strangeness of the scene, the erotic elements of the scene, which are really profound and which show up in 1984 fan fiction really reliably, incidentally, for those who partake. So both the kind of strange take on the psychology of fascism and Soviet communism that it shows,

the idea of it, which whether or not any individual totalitarian ever thought exactly those things, there's a truth to it. It's so exaggerated's so exaggerated it's so sort of horror movie it's like it's like the revelation of the horror movie supernatural creature that scene right and yet it's true right so so i mean i think that's fascinating and and it does have a weakness in that i don't know if anybody like no matter how clearly they are a fascist in their politics, I don't know if anybody ever reads that scene and thinks, oh, hey, I'm the baddie. So that's a weakness of the scene. It doesn't really give you a way to recognize yourself in the O'Brien character. it's really revelatory and it's been very important, I think, in the attitude towards totalitarianism and authoritarianism that we have had for many decades. I think it actually has

had a positive influence politically worldwide, which is something you can say about very, very, very few novels. Very true. i noticed as i was reading julia that i was conscious of god existing in the universe of the book and it made me i had i didn't read 1984 with that question i so i don't really know but i i i feel my sense of it is that God is not present in the world of that book that, you know, God has been replaced by Big Brother and that's the trouble. But in Julia, you know, she sees the bird on the branch at one point and thinks, we could never have made that. You know, like, there are these moments, I can't remember any of the other ones, of course, but that one really stuck with me. And I don't know if that was something that you did intentionally, if that's even something that you agree with being true, but it was a really interesting distinction that struck me between the two. That was completely unconscious. I think for Orwell, nature is tremendously important.

Yes. And maybe something in my concept of it via Julia creates more of a sense of the transcendent. I don't know. That's interesting. Sundin? I don't know. That's interesting. This might be a silly question, but again, a reading of this book that I had only because it's relevant to the frame of this podcast is I felt like, you know, I'm very conscious the whole time I'm reading of Julia being the counterpart to Winston in both the original work and in this one. This book is a counterpart to that book. But then I got to a certain point in Julia and I felt like, oh, the party is her significant other. Like that's what has formed her and what her experience as a character revolves around. Is that a thing that resonates for you?

Yes, absolutely. a thing that resonates for you yes absolutely and and big brother as the imaginary embodiment of the party just as like you know a nun is a bride of christ every female member of the party and really every male member too like again as we say they're the erotic overtones and uh winston sing with o'brien so but i think But I think it's much more direct and clearer and less apologetic in the case of a woman being a member of the party and watching Big Brother all her life from early childhood and that sort of erotic attachment to authority and to the male embodiment of authority and to authority as male and to masculinity as somehow dominant and also an object of desire. And it's interesting. In a sense, you can sort of see 1984 as a story about Winston

being in the closet both as a kind of, you know, maybe a bisexual man and as somebody who really wants to love the party in his heart and at the very end he has managed to come out and admit to himself

what the secret truth of his soul is whereas like Julia is sort of the opposite. Oh, this is a spoiler, but anyway. We can take it out if you want. Yeah, whatever. Or everyone skip ahead if you don't want it spoiled. Yeah. So she starts out, well, again, she's sort of making a head road to gay trajectory trajectory but obviously away from the party the last question i always ask everyone is is there and you can answer in this in any way you like is there a person or an event or um an experience that you consider to be a significant other for you professionally, could be an actual spouse or teacher or, you know, mentor or anything like that, that without that person, your life would look very different.

Oh, I would so much like to have an interesting answer to this, but my actual spouse is so much that person that it would be really offensive not to cite him. I'm in the same boat. I get it. And in fact, we wrote a book together. That was how we got together. We were writing this book together when I was still married to someone else. And in the course of writing the book, which was called How Not to Write a Novel. And it was funny because he, my husband, my now husband, Howard, actually proposed this book to me in the hope of winning me away from my previous husband. And it worked. So we had this collaboration and wrote this book together, like meeting in cafes for like two years. And then I left my husband and moved in with him.

Wow. That's a good story. It is a good story. And he is so much like my significant other and my helper in every way that I have to cite him. And he is really all the things. When I'm working really hard on something, he just does life for me, which I think is a very rare thing in a husband. Yes, it is. Well, thank you so much for talking with us today. This has really been a pleasure. Yeah, it's really great to meet you. Join us next week on Significant Others to find out which famous artist had a 48-year marriage to a woman with whom he only slept once. Significant Others is produced by GenSamples. Our executive producers are Nick Liao, Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and Colin Anderson.

Engineering and sound design by Eduardo Perez, Rich Garcia, and Joanna Samuel. Music and scoring by Eduardo Perez and Hannes Brown. Research and fact-checking by Michael Waters and Hannah Sio. Special thanks to Lisa Berm, Jason Chalemi, and Joanna Solitaroff. Talent booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista.