Jardine Libaire is our kind of writer: she delves into the world of pretty, coke-addled hipster sluts! Her new novel Here Kitty Kitty just might make chick-lit cool and, if it doesn't, it still sounds like something we'd read for the naughty factor. After the jump, Jardine considers the modern-day Holly Golightlys and tells us all about the wonderful world of callgirl couture.

Age: 31

Location: Brooklyn

Occupation: Writer

1. Your debut novel Here Kitty Kitty is unabashed chick lit. The main character seems like the type of impossibly hot Williamsburg party girl that's always going to be interested in some guy with more money and cocaine. Why should I pursue this girl, and to a further extent, this book?

I suppose Lee, the main character, is hot
- except when she
s vomiting on herself in her sleep, or gravely and irreparably failing friends and family, or smoking crack off a soda can, or revealing her own racism. She
s a party girl who
s not invited to many parties. She
s made of extremes: I think of her as 49% absolute loser and 51% girl-I
d-love-to-know. In this way, her character deviates from the traditional chick lit girl. Those "other girls" are as narcissistic and crazy as Lee, but are presented as basically loveable. Their neuroses are announced as neuroses but are supposed to be cute. Dieting, over-shopping, obsessing over men and being jealous of other women: this life is theoretically adorable and universal.

Lee doesn
t diet. She
s cowardly and crafty and mean
and the reader is not required to love her. She
s also charming and wild and hedonistic
and the reader is allowed to like her. I read Donleavy
s The Ginger Man right before I started writing this book, and I was so inspired that the main character was an asshole. But a wicked, lustful, brilliantly funny asshole. Chick lit is so full of politeness and the desire to please; it was fulfilling and exciting to be rude in the genre, to make a controversial figure that could be disliked.

Why would you pursue Lee? I actually wouldn
t recommend it. But the book itself is a good detour from the main drag of chick lit. Here Kitty Kitty doesn
t have a happy ending
but it
s not a go-ask-alice cautionary tale either. And the main character, in fact, is not even Lee but the city itself. The book spends most of its pages on the streets, the landscape, the high and low places, the nooks and crannies, the secret spaces and the people of Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Because it
s ugly or dark in places, its beauty and light are enhanced. It
s extreme overall. It
s a strange little story, albeit in chick lit wrapping.

2. What do you think is going to become of all these twentysomething "modern-day Holly Golightly's" when they hit their mid-30's? I fear the worst for them: magazine editors in rehab.

Oh lord, the inpatient newletters they
ll put out! I don
t know
I don
t think there
s a special class of Hollys now that didn
t exist in any other generation. And inside that group, I think there
s a spectrum of lifestyles and possibilities. There are women who party and run wild and rebel because they are alive and kicking. There are women who do the same because they are self-loathing or chemically dependent or scared. There are instances where the self-destruction or the damage to others is too great to fix, and instances where a wild life can lead to growth or enlightenment or character. There are women who will come around, and women who won
t.

3. I'm not a Nerve Premium subscriber so please tell me if "Embracing the Inner Call Girl" is all about slutting it up for your boyfriend or not.

That essay was about shy girls who dress like tarts. I
m an expert on being shy, and on being perceived as aloof because I
m shy, and I find myself dressing more like a Parisian hooker than a Brooklyn yuppie sometimes to counteract the aloofness. It
s like slipping a valentine into a boy
s desk when he
s not looking. Callgirl couture is a kind of apology: "sorry I
m blushing and can
t look you in the eye, but these fishnet stockings are supposed to say what I would say if I could speak."

4. Now here's something different, "tag-team fiction." Was it as hot and steamy as it sounds?

No. But intimate nonetheless. Two writers who don
t necessarily know each other trade a story back and forth, each one writing part of it. I was paranoid that she hated every word I wrote. Usually I
m the only one in a position to hate my work while I
m writing it.

5. I read your piece in New York magazine about the language of flowers and while it's very interesting I'm left with one burning (obvious) question: will flowers get me laid?

If only I had the authority to make such promises. If only anyone had such authority.

Jardine Libaire
s Top Five Quotes Scribbled in the Back Pages of Her Notebook

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

—Robert Frost,
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Reality is a crutch for people who can
t cope with drugs.

-
Lily Tomlin

He boiled my first cabbage

and he made it awful hot,

he boiled my first cabbage

and he made it awful hot,

when he put in the bacon,

it overflowed the pot.

—Bessie Smith,
Empty Bed Blues Part 2,
1928

The fairy tale begins with the hero at the mercy of those who think little of him and his abilities, who mistreat him and even threaten his life, as the wicked queen does in
Snow White.
As the story unfolds, the hero is forced to depend on friendly helpers: creatures of the underworld like the dwarfs in
Snow White,
or magic animals like the birds in
Cinderella.
At the tale
s end the hero has mastered all trials and despite them remained true to himself, or in successfully undergoing them has achieved his true selfhood. He has become an autocrat in the best sense of the word
a self-ruler, a truly autonomous person, not a person who rules over others. In fairy tales, unlike myths, victory is not over others but only over oneself and over villainy (mainly one
s own, which is projected as the hero
s antagonist.) If we are told anything about the rule of these kings and queens, it is that they ruled wisely and peacefully, and that they lived happily. This is what maturity ought to consist of: that one rules oneself wisely, and as a consequence lives happily.

—Bruno Bettelheim, THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT

Every toy has the right to break.

-
Antonio Porchia