Author Jami Attenberg might be filed under chick-lit, but KEVIN SAMPSELL finds that she'll likely be slapping around the rest of the books on the shelf.
What's your theory about this shape-shifting cover image? (AP Photo/HO/Courtesy Shaye Areheart Books)
You might get confused about Jami Attenberg. You may mistake her for the newest chick-lit author with a blog (hers lives at http://www.whatever-whenever.net .) You might wonder why her characters don't obsess over their dress sizes or guys with big wallets. You may wonder what the heck that melting thing on the cover of her book, "Instant Love," is (A Popsicle? A Twinkie? A banana?).
In a materialistic literary genre full of Prada-wearing devils, struggles with trendy diets and high-heeled shoes, Attenberg is writing fiction that speaks more to the down-and-dirty girls out there. The kinds that pick up guys at bars and eat Taco Bell. Women who seduce guys to hurt them and troll chat rooms for sex. With another book already slated for next year, Attenberg is getting people's attention. Her style is sleek and inviting and can sometimes be darkly reminiscent of Mary Gaitskill or A.M. Homes.
In an asap interview, Attenberg revealed further details about some of the things in her book.
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ON HICKEYS
"Hickeys are simultaneously the most innocent and dirtiest things in the world. When you're a teenager they're one of those things that help you track your sexual progress, along the lines of when you get felt up for the first time. It's a little bit of a war wound that you get to carry around for a few days, which some people find kind of sexy. I remember being in high school and rubbing a spoon on my neck to get rid of one -- because makeup does not cover that up, no matter what they tell you -- but then being secretly glad you could still see it. But when you're a grown-up, it feels super dirty for some reason."
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ON REAL PEOPLE BEHIND HER CHARACTERS
"Gareth (a passive-aggressive children's books author) is inspired by every bad date I went on in the year 2000. I kept meeting all these men who were really clear that they wanted to find a nice girl and marry her and impregnate her as quickly as possible. I was new to New York, living in the East Village, and carousing quite a bit. Marriage was the furthest thing from my mind. I'm sure I was pretty rude to them at the time. Then a few years later, I started seeing all their wedding announcements, like, seriously, five of them, and I was so excited for all of them that they had their happy ending."
"Professor Stoner (a lecherous professor) is loosely based on a college professor I had who is a famous writer. Right before I graduated from college we had our final meeting and he said, 'Honey, if you don't continue writing, I don't think you should feel bad. Not everyone can make it.' Like a week before graduation. I didn't write for two years after that. He wrote these overly masculine 500-page tomes that won tons of awards, and which I could never finish. His author photo at the time was him with a long gray beard on a boat. Just in case you were wondering if he were an old man who loved the sea."
"Carter (a famous sculptor afraid of commitment) is like every male artist I know in Williamsburg. They're totally adorable and irresistible and completely full of shit. Rich boys who have never been told they can't their entire life. You have to love them though."
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ON STORIES WITHIN STORIES
"The surest way to my heart is to tell me a good story. And of course, it's as much about the way a person tells a story as the story itself. I wanted to create worlds within the worlds. There's something incredibly satisfying about that. It's a bit of a trick, too, I guess, one of the weapons in the writing arsenal. Some of my favorite writers do it. It makes my heart race when Paul Auster goes off for twenty pages on a story within a story. It's like a bonus track."
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ON UNDERDOG WOMEN
"I am always being told to make my characters nicer by my editors, but I'm interested in the darker side of humanity, particularly what bubbles beneath the surface of a supposedly normal person. I am fascinated by people that have really conventional lives, and I want to deconstruct them, and find their frailties and freakish tendencies. So there is this sense of how much can I get away with and still have someone willing to publish my book? I think most first-time authors have this sneaky feeling like, 'Holy shit, how did I con someone into publishing me?' Some of the women in "Instant Love" are pretty downtrodden -- dark, sad, cynical, depressed, and self-destructive -- but I still laced it with a little bit of hope. I don't dislike these women -- I have faith some day they'll be happy. Messy people are just way more fun to meet. And I think everyone has it in them to get a little bit messy."
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ON LOVE
"Well, like a lot of people out there, I look for love all around me. I can in fall in love for the length of a subway stop if I see a guy who is reading a book I like. It's easy to project on someone if you never talk to them in the first place. I have had a chaotic love life at times, as most writers I know have. But I feel like everyone around me is that way. New York City is the emotional ADD capital of the world. I'm just reflecting the time and place I live in."
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Kevin Sampsell is asap's Book Pusher, reporting on the word scene from the inside. Sampsell is an event coordinator at Powell's Books in Portland, Ore. He also runs a micro empire called Future Tense Publishing.
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