ELISSA NADWORNY, HOST:
Julia Langbein has thought a lot about the stories of the saints, particularly women saints.
JULIA LANGBEIN: They are often presented with a temptation. So a man, a randy Pagan, comes along and wants a piece of them. They resist. They are tortured or killed for this, usually in quite gory ways.
NADWORNY: Like knifed in the throat, burned at the stake, stretched on a rack, starved, then venerated for their steadfast faith. Their stories pepper Julia Langbein's new comic novel. But the saint guiding the action has not been wronged to death. Instead, she's survived public humiliation.
LANGBEIN: (Reading) Without thinking about it, I had invoked something more than a single life. It was an instinct, an assumption that there was some greater being called Monica Lewinsky.
NADWORNY: In "Dear Monica Lewinsky," a woman named Jean is in turmoil over her past. And as she reads her diary from 1998, she sees how she had judged Lewinsky for her relationship with President Clinton. Now 45 and remembering her own mistakes, Jean calls out to Monica Lewinsky and gets a blast of divine intercession.
LANGBEIN: (Reading) Then with a pang of terror, I remember what I said about her all those years ago, how little I cared when I should have. Is she here to punish me, to make me pay? Please forgive me. I should have defended you, and instead, I was unkind. She stared steadily at me, her chin rising slightly. I'm so sorry. I look at her face, a face I've known all my adult life, one that has meant a cluster of things, ripeness and error, lust and humiliation, and later, the surprise of survival of new life. I forgive you.
NADWORNY: (Laughter) Why did you decide to make a saint out of Monica Lewinsky?
LANGBEIN: So the origin of this book is that I stumbled on a diary of mine from 1998 when I was 17 years old, and to my shock, I had said something disparaging about her in my diary, like, just called her kind of stupid in passing or something. And I was so horrified at this that I put the diary down, and I kind of whispered to the sky, dear Monica, dear Monica, dear Monica, I'm so sorry. And I think the writer and the historian in me both realized that this was not just me being weird, which is entirely possible, but that I was glimpsing something collective, that her public life, this massive world historical humiliation that she underwent, and then her subsequent grace and I think her implicit forgiveness of those who trespassed has made her a figure of inspiration - has created something truly larger than, quote, "Monica Lewinsky." And I mean, again, I'm not saying that she is a saint. What I'm saying is that her public life is one that matches in many ways the trajectories of these saints.
NADWORNY: So she comes to kind of help Jean through crisis. What do you think Jean needs help with?
LANGBEIN: Jean had this affair with a college professor during a study abroad program when she was 19, and it was only for a summer. But it was really the first time she really gave her heart away, and he really cut her off in a very cruel manner afterwards. And it's not just that she feels now 20 years later that that's derailed her life, but she even feels bad that she's let that derail her life. Like, why can't she just get over it? But what Saint Monica shows her is that what she is is a lover and a giver. I mean, her natural talent is that she's a chef. She likes to please people. And she's been made to feel that being a pleaser and a lover and a giver is weak and stupid and degraded.
NADWORNY: Yeah. She's kind of awkward.
LANGBEIN: For sure.
NADWORNY: And she's on this summer abroad program, studying medieval churches in France. So she's also kind of out of her league. I guess my question is, who kind of owns this story? You know, she pursues David, this married academic who's helping run the program. Is David pursuing her? Are they both pursuing each other?
LANGBEIN: I think that they are people who would connect naturally. I think that their affection for each other is real. They get each other. The problem is, David, this older professor, doesn't understand that by indulging in this relationship - that he knows that he can never actually fully give himself to because he's married to someone else - that he will have to hurt her, and he doesn't really care. He doesn't really see her personhood fully. He doesn't think of her as somebody whose future potential matters and could be hurt. And I think that in the moment, he does care about her. But when it comes time to save his skin, of course, he saves his skin.
NADWORNY: I found myself kind of conflicted when I was reading because I liked Jean, and I wanted her to get what she wanted. Like, there's this romance element of kind of, like, will they get together? How will it happen? And I actually had to check myself because I knew the summer wasn't going to end well for her.
LANGBEIN: That's great. I've done my job well here because I want you to feel that that desire is a good and a natural and a powerful thing. And that's not her fault, you know, being a 19-year-old who's just, you know, on this, like, hormonal roller coaster, right? And also, she's so turned on by what she's learning and seeing, right? Part of being a student is being really open, like, open-hearted, open-minded. You don't want to tell someone, feel less, but the person who was in the position of power didn't have the guardrails on. So I think I agree. Like, when I'm writing it, you know, I think her desire is legitimate, and Saint Monica's message isn't - you shouldn't have wanted him; you were so bad to feel this way. The message is - you're allowed to love. You didn't mess up. The problem is that somebody wasn't looking out for you.
NADWORNY: The backdrop for all of this is the medieval religious iconography, too, that these students are seeing in the French churches. You know, it has this mix of, like, gross and holy.
LANGBEIN: Exactly. I think I describe it at one point as the era in which the holiest men have the donkeyest (ph) breath.
NADWORNY: (Laughter).
LANGBEIN: You know, the arts of antiquity which preceded the medieval or the Renaissance which followed, you know, these are periods in which beauty is perfection. And the medieval era is, like, so wonderfully rich for me because my comic sensibility loves the collapse of high and low. The medieval period is seen as the adolescence of Western history. It is awkward. And so it's the perfect terrain in which to plant a story about both individual and collective error and forgiveness.
NADWORNY: OK, so I don't want to give away the ending of this book. But I will say that it is full of wonder and humor, and it is very satisfying.
LANGBEIN: Oh, thank God (laughter).
NADWORNY: I guess I'm curious - like, had you been wanting to kind of revisit the version of this story raised by, like, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, and do you feel like we're just ready for a new perspective?
LANGBEIN: You know, what interested me was the way that this fictional character could connect to this modern saint. But then, of course, I finished the first draft of this in, like, 2022 or something, and all of the Epstein stuff has come out since. And again, we saw the young women whose dignity, privacy and personhood were disregarded. I think it's really easy to look back and say, oh - pat ourselves on the back and say, wow, we were so wrong in 1998, but we've figured it out now. And I think, actually, what I want to ask is who's in our blind spot now? And who are we going to be asking forgiveness from 20 or 30 or 50 years from now?
NADWORNY: Did you have to clear any of this with the real Monica Lewinsky?
LANGBEIN: We didn't have to clear it with her, but I have been conscientious about making sure that she doesn't encounter this book in the public sphere and thinks she's being made fun of or something. We've sent her the text of this before anyone else received it, things like that. So I'm very aware that she is a real, living, breathing human being.
NADWORNY: Did she answer your prayer?
LANGBEIN: You know what? I have never had a character come to me with such completeness in an actual epiphany - because, also, in 1998, Monica Lewinsky was the butt of every joke, and to give her this kind of Bugs Bunny energy, where she's so chill, you know, the Elmer Fudds of the world are running around with their brutal tactics, unable to touch her. And she's not only a source of wisdom, but she comes in with a sense of humor. That to me was so magical, was such a feeling of power to get to restore the comic voice to the Saint Monica character.
NADWORNY: That's Julia Langbein. Her new novel is "Dear Monica Lewinsky." Thank you so much for talking with us about it.
LANGBEIN: Thank you so much, Elissa. It's been a pleasure.
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