Jay McInerney and his world
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Jay McInerney must be very charming in person. ‘I guess I’m an optimist,’ he says to Susan Salter Reynolds. ‘Why else would I get married four times?’
He also speaks thoughtfully about writing. ‘Look,’ he tells her, ‘people pick up books for two reasons: entertainment and edification. I don’t set out with a didactic purpose. At most, you hope to illuminate what it is to be human. Fiction distills, shapes, abstracts the flow of experience and sensation. All this time, I’ve been trying to have fun with the language and tell a story in a voice that was uniquely mine.’
But then there are the trappings. He says that he’d like to see New York be rid of its investment banker culture in favor of artists and bohemians — while sitting on the roof of the Soho House, the private club that charges $1,400 and up annually for regular memberships. He’s heading out to Turks and Caicos with his wife, Anne Randolph Hearst (yes, that Hearst family), for a few days’ vacation. It’s a charmed life, one that, in these difficult economic times, seems almost excessively privileged.
The economy has been on his mind. ‘I feel terrible for people,’ he says, ‘but I’m kind of excited about the recession. It might make us better people.’
Yes, it might.
— Carolyn Kellogg
