Jay McInerney's bright lights still in the big city
The author has matured and widened his scope, but in "The Good Life," New York is his muse.
By John Freeman
From the February 2, 2006 Philadelphia Inquirer
For about two decades, Jay McInerney has been a romantic hiding in plain view. This should come as no surprise. Even Bright Lights, Big City, McInerney's zeitgeist-capturing 1984 debut, portrayed New York as a place where the young ferry their innocence to and from clubs, hoping to make it home before spoiling this thing they so obviously cherish.
McInerney has since worked in different veins, and his novels have become more mature. In Brightness Falls (1992), he showed what happens when a generation of pleasure seekers hit that ultimate killjoy - marriage - while Last of the Savages (1996) peers down the wormhole of the '60s into America's past.
But none of that compares to the emotional ambition of his latest novel, The Good Life, which seeks to remember the heady, headlong days after Sept. 11, 2001. Sitting in New York's latest downtown eatery, the Spotted Pig, the 51-year-old author explained why he had to capture that moment.
John Freeman: Russ and Corrine Calloway also appear in Brightness Falls. Why did you choose to go back to them?
Jay McInerney: I always had it in the back of my mind that Russ and Corrine would be my Rabbit Angstrom. I thought of them as representative figures of my generation . . . who come to New York in the '80s. For a variety of reasons, some having to do with a terrible case of writer's block, it just took me longer than I planned. I was trying to create a new story for them when Sept. 11 came - and I just thought, "It's a whole new world, why not register the event through them?"
J.F. A few novelists who have written about 9/11 have earned flak for it. Are you worried about that?
J.M. I think Jonathan Safran Foer took some really unfair grief for alleged presumption and exploitation. I think it's outrageous for anyone to question the right of a novelist to try and make sense of and interpret this experience.
J.M. Yes, I knew somebody who knew somebody - that started this thing. He said, "Go down there. They really need help." So I got on the subway . . . . It came off at Bowling Green: Stopped right there. I popped up at ground zero and they were happy to have help, and I did that for a couple of months. It was a way of feeling useful, if nothing else.
J.F. In the novel, two characters meet at ground zero and strike up an affair. Funny, we've thought about 9/11 babies and 9/11 marriages, but there were probably just as many 9/11 separations or divorces.
J.M. Yeah, I know people who woke and thought . . . "If a plane hits the building, is this the person that I want to die with?" And they discovered the answer was no. I even know a guy who got a sex-change operation. He decided to stop living the lie. Left his family behind.
J.F. You used real names in this novel. Why?
J.M. You know, I am writing about contemporary New York, and there is a sense in which there have to be portals of interpenetration between my imagined New York and the one the New York Times and the New York Post write about. In the case of those literary figures, you know, Russell [Calloway] is an editor. The movie director isn't real. I didn't want to have Quentin Tarantino walking into the book, that kind of glossy, bold-faced name would upset the spell of an imagined world.
J.F. I guess that's the same principle Bret Easton Ellis was following in Lunar Park, where you appear in a cameo and do lines of cocaine off the hood of a Porsche.
J.M. I get tired of that persona. That person is me in 1989. [Ellis] actually wrote that scene 10-12 years ago. It's just not me anymore. On the other hand, as a sort of historical document, I find it interesting. And I found it a really good book. But, as times go by, our projects diverge more and more, and our sensibilities diverge more and more.
J.F. And you've continued writing about New York. In your books, there is this sense of all the delights the city offers. There is also this lurking danger. Did you ever feel like 9/11 was predicted? I mean, the WTC is on the cover of Bright, Lights, Big City.
J.M. Well, the interesting thing is, when I came to New York in 1980, the sense of danger was externalized. It was on the streets. Everyone I know except me was mugged on a regular basis. My car was stolen twice. My apartment was broken into. I don't know how I managed to survive these drunken trips on the subway at 3 a.m. Going down into the subway was a scary proposition. You really felt like you were taking your life into your own hands. I felt like we lost something when this city became so safe: You couldn't locate the edge.
But it's funny the way the anxiety . . . has transmogrified into something else. . . . Going down into the subway is scary for a different reason - because, look: I can't believe it hasn't happened yet. I don't even want to say it. I mean the inevitable attack there. Or coming from the sky, you know.
J.F. Were you looking up every time a plane flew over for a while?
J.M. I still do.
