jami lives in a very brooklyn building

Jami Attenberg’s new novel The Melting Season just came out from Riverhead, and she’s reading tonight at Word Bookstore in Brooklyn.  The novel’s about a woman named Moonie Madison whose husband has a micropenis, and she has some adventures involving lost women, dangerous men, Prince impersonators, and Vegas.  The writing is really good and the book is Jami’s best so far.  (I reviewed her first novel, The Kept Man, when it came out, and her collection Instant Love is excellent.)  I asked her some questions about the book and about writing sex scenes and what kind of musician impersonator she’d like to hook up with.

The Melting Season is more kinetic than your last novel (although still primarily character-based). It kicks off with the Hitchcockian/Highsmithian line “I did not mean to take the money.  Well, not *all* of it,” and then becomes a disorienting journey, both geographic and psychological, for the narrator.  And the difference is there in the concepts as well: The Kept Man concerns a woman whose husband is comatose and immobile, and The Melting Season concerns a woman who is constantly in motion.  Why the difference?  How much do you think about “story,” and how interested are you in writing a “page-turner”?

I think about story somewhat when I am starting a book. There’s usually some sort of hook that fascinates me.  But, in general, I am so much more about character, and creating a believable, authentic voice.  I’m definitely interested in making every sentence count, though, and think regardless if you are more interested in story or character, that’s what is going to make a page-turner.  I like to read books that move quickly, so I try to write them as well.  I recognize it’s not important for everyone, but it’s pretty important to me.  If I am going to ask people to spend time with 300 pages of a book, then I better give them something that is going to captivate them.

I feel like you are probably way more informed than I am!  I like a lot of women who make comics: Julia Wertz, Gabrielle Bell, Vanessa Davis, Emily Flake.  I always want there to be more cross-over between the lit world and the comic world, and these women are poised to do it.

Maybe like a super young Mick Jagger?  Mick Jagger circa Altamont was kind of ridiculously sexy even though he was obviously a total jerk.  But if it only had to be for one night…

I have a first draft of a new book.  It sags extremely heavily in the middle, poor thing.  It needs some love and care. I haven’t written fiction in a while though; it seems really far away from me.  I have written essays and blog posts and answers to a lot of interviews, all in service of promoting The Melting Season.   I always push down the voices in my head when I’m in the process of promoting a book.  But  I will be ready this spring to get back to work after my tour.