The Kept Man

Original airdate: February 27, 2009

Jami Attenberg is a neat chick. Her Richmond reading at the Fountain Bookstore was the last stop on her six-month, couch-hopping book-tour. She recorded interviews with friends and authors who lent her futons and floor space along the way and posted them on YouTube. The video snapshots are a bit pasty and dehydrated, but illustrate the lifestyle she crafts in her newest book, “The Kept Man.”

The book is centered on Jarvis Miller, a former hipster bartender and fringe groupie of the Brooklyn art scene who divorces her nocturnal lifestyle and marries a painter.  Unfortunately, he has an aneurysm while painting and goes into a coma that lasts for six years. Jarvis too is caught in time, a metaphorical coma, suspended between hope and grief and two past lives. She sustains herself on the swelling commissions that her husband’s work has reaped since the day of his accident. When Jarvis meets three guys in a laundromat who are completely supported by their high-powered wives, her life is resuscitated by jolts of new activity.

The book is filled with thickly-laid, colorful descriptions of people, parties and paintings. Set in the stylish Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, the story walks the streets and renders a portrait only a resident would appreciate.

At her own admission, Jami was really hung over when we did this interview. She had also spent six hours in the car already that day, driving from Charlotte to Richmond.  She made some good points about life on drugs and her bed-hopping past. Weaving the interview together are her readings from “The Kept Man,” which frame small parts of life that were vividly detailed in her work.

Thanks for tuning in.

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