Jami Attenberg
With Ryan Walsh of Hallelujah the Hills and food from Kickass Cupcakes
Brookline Booksmith
Tomorrow, January 10, 7:00 pm
Free
Attenberg's official site

Set in the art world of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, Jami Attenberg's The Kept Man follows a woman whose relationship has been in limbo for six years. Jarvis Miller's husband, a successful painter, has been in a coma, and she almost becomes a ghost along with him, immersing herself in memories, staying in their apartment, clinging to his paintings, and visiting him regularly at a long-term care facility.

When she encounters some kept men in a Laundromat, that taste of life, romance, and a little danger pushes her to take action and wake up from her own figurative coma, even if it changes how she views her husband. What's most impressive about Attenberg's work is her ability to capture the liveliness of Williamsburg in words, and her description of the paintings and photos made by Jarvis' husband make the paintings seem tangible, like you could see them in a gallery right this minute.

Bostonist talked to Attenberg and overcame some cell-phone static to cover gentrification, sexism in the art world, and more:

Could you tell Boston readers a little more about Williamsburg, why it's such a hot place for hipsters and artists, and why it's changing right now?

The book spans about 10 years, and about 10 years ago it was a really cheap place to move there. A lot of artists were moving there, and there's a lot of great raw space--warehouses and that sort of thing. You could get a studio really cheaply. Once the artists developed the neighborhood, then of course it becomes fashionable, and you have the hipsters come in and that sort of thing. So it's really been built up a lot, especially in the last 3 years, with really fancy condominiums, and the price of rent has really gone up, and there's a lot of new restaurants and shops and bars here, but I think there's still a core artistic sensibility merging with all kinds of communities that live here. It's interesting to see it merge with this influx of people.

Image by Marion Ettlinger. More interview after the jump!

How do you feel about gentrification in general? Boston's South End is going through similar struggles right now.

I don't have an answer to that question. I guess I'm part of the problem. I moved her five years ago, too, and I certainly enjoy all the benefits of it. I wish there were some sort of limitations to it. There are million-dollar condos on our waterfront now that none of us can actually afford to live in, and everyone's getting priced out. I don't know if there's really a solution to it. It seems sort of inevitable in any sort of urban environment that this thing happens.

Would Manhattan be too expensive of a place to live? Why did you set everything in Williamsburg in particular?

The East Village used to be where all the artists lived, and then they all got priced out and moved to Brooklyn. It was true to what was going on. I don't think I made that part up at all--this is really where people were moving to at that time, so it was a logical place to set it.

Moving from setting to the plot, is the idea of women working while men are at home--or at the Laundromat--is that really common?

I don't actually go to Laundromats myself because I have a laundry in my building, but I do see a lot of people out in cafes during the day in Williamsburg, and I was wondering who they all were. I have met a lot of people, a lot of men, who don't seem to have any source of income but have working wives. I think there's definitely a shift, at least in New York City, where the traditional gender roles have been flipped. If it's anywhere were gender roles are going to be flipped, it's going to be in New York City.

So, why then did you decide not to give Jarvis a specific profession. She's more of a hobbyist when it comes to art?

There were a lot of women who were muses to men, and I wanted to discuss that, especially in the artistic community. It's very much a boys' club in New York City. It seemed very true to what was going on in the art community in Williamsburg and in the city. If you look at the top artists in the world and who's selling the most, it tends to be men, even though there are just as many female artists out there. It seems inequitable to me, and I wanted to expose that a little bit.

Regarding the relationships between men and women in the book, your characters aren't always likable. How do you keep them sympathetic?

I'm glad that you found them sympathetic. I guess I've succeeded in my task! To me, Jarvis is the most frustrating character of all because you can tell she's this witty child-woman who has an artistic eye, but she is trapped in his identity. It was a challenge to make her likable while making her as human as possible. I don't like her half the time. But I wanted to make sure the reader was willing to go along for the ride. You have to make the characters a little bit likable to get people to read all the way to the end. If you completely hated them, you would throw the book out the window.

Without giving too much of it away, what kind of statement did you want to make about the bad things that people can do to each other?

Nobody's an innocent. I don't think that any of the characters are innocent. Before we judge, we have to look at ourselves. What Jarvis has to do in order to move on, you see where she came from and who she's become, and you see why she acts the way that she does.

This is the second story that's come up in an author interview in which a character has a life partner in a comatose state, the other being John Fulton's "The Sleeping Woman. Why does that story and the Terri Schiavo case resonate so much with authors?

For me it was an upfront metaphor for just letting go in general. At the time, I was trying to let go of a past relationship. I think that authors want to understand what it feels like, that life and death situation. It's a compelling question--what would you do in that situation? Life and death is the biggest question we can answer.