Jami Attenberg and Joshua Mohr together at Modern Times Bookstore March 9th

Authors Jami Attenberg (The Melting Season, The Kept Man, Instant Love: Fiction) and Joshua Mohr (Some Things That Meant the World to Me) will be reading March 9^th at Modern Times Bookstore. Kirkus Reviews says The Melting Season is, “An intelligent, moving portrait of a journey to self-awareness, with meaty characters and a refreshing absence of psychobabble.” Publisher’s Weekly, in a starred review, says Mohr uses “punchy, tightly wound prose to pull readers into a nightmarish landscape, but he never loses the heart of his story; it's as touching as it is shocking.”

I asked these two authors to answer the same five questions in tightly wound prose with no psychobabble. Here’s what they said.

J.A. It's hard to pick just one. I know I have a problem with semi-colon abuse, and have written page-long sentences. Nobody needs to be reading page-long sentences, at least not written by me. What about, “He smiled quietly.”

J.M. I once quit a job without notice via email—faking an injury as my excuse—and the opening sentence still makes me feel like a terrible person: "I'm dictating this message due to my injuries." 

J.A. He could screw every tattooed barista in the southeast, but it still wouldn’t help him get good credit again.

J.M. There's something beautiful to feel here, but I'm already gone.

J.A. This isn't an adjective, but I am pretty sure I have used "nine million" in more than one book, and definitely more than one essay.  As in: "I smoked nine million cigarettes that night." 

J.A. “Poontang.”  I don't know, is that one word or two?

J.M. "Mulch" makes me salivate in an unpleasant way because it sounds like some sort of inappropriate euphemism.

J.A. No, but it did make me love someone ever so slightly less.

J.M. I once ended a relationship because the young woman called her mother "Mommy" several times while we were out at dinner. Isn't that a kind of social grammar?

 Jami Atttenberg is the author of Instant Love, The Kept Man and The Melting Season. She has contributed to The New York Times, Salon, Print, Nylon and more.  

 Joshua Mohr is the author of the novels Some Things that Meant the World to Me (Two Dollar Radio) which was one of O magazine's 10 best of 2009, and Termite Parade due out in July 2010.