The Good Life: A Novel - Jay's Podcast

LA, San Francisco, and Seattle

Wed, 08 Mar 2006 00:24:44 -0500

Jay makes "the list" and is presented with a stolen copy of a manuscript he wrote (but never published).» download podcast

Transcript:

Hi, Jay here again, I just finished the west coast leg of my tour. I arrived in LA last Monday to find that not only was I #4 on The LA Times bestseller list, but I was two spots above the The Da Vinci Code. I think I'm going to have to frame that one. I didn't imagine I would find myself, however briefly, above The Da Vinci Code on any bestseller list. Anyway, it was a nice little welcome to LA I read at a bookstore in Beverly Hills, it was called Dutton's. The whole west coast leg brought home the fact that people really come out of the woodwork for these things, including Bret Easton Ellis. But he lives in LA and he's always coming out of the woodwork.

I had a very strange reunion with a guy I met many years ago in Milwaukee, who subsequently decided to make a pilgrimage down to my then house outside Nashville, TN, a little farm that I had with my ex-wife for a number of years. In fact, by the time he arrived there the house was up for sale and we were not in it. Apparently he took the liberty of, well I guess he broke into the house, and he managed to discover an unpublished manuscript of mine. A manuscript of an entire novel that was in one of my drawers, we hadn't exactly moved out yet. He somehow felt he was rescuing this manuscript, this was five or six years ago. So for the past five or six year this guy from Milwaukee has been in possession of this manuscript which in fact would have been my third novel if I had published it. I wrote it, put it aside, and I think wisely decided not to publish it. Suddenly, six years later, Matt, the man in question, shows up with my manuscript and also a bottle of 1985 Dom Perignon, which he bought for me around the same time. It kind of took the sting out of it and I was kind of amazed and happy to see my manuscript. And I was very happy to see Bret there. I don't think Bret has ever been to one of my readings. Afterwards we went out to dinner at Spago.

I was traveling with my girlfriend Anne, which made the whole LA/San Francisco experience a little better, a little more bearable. In San Francisco I ran into an old old old friend who was my waitress for many years at an old New York institution called The Lion's Head, an a number of other old friends and acquaintances. In Seattle, the highlight was probably the lunch with the people from Amazon. Who would have guessed there are actually people at Amazon? But there are, very nice people, Daphne, Tom, Brad, Sarah, Terry. The people who make that whole thing run. We had a very fine lunch at my hotel, the Alexis, in Seattle. I gave a reading later at the university. And now I'm in Nashville. Tune in next time for my report from the south.]]>

Los Angeles

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 19:03:12 -0500

On being mistaken for Bret Easton Ellis, making the L.A. Times bestseller list, and taking a trip down memory lane at Spago.]]>» download podcast

Transcript:

Hi, Jay McInerney here, again. I'm in L.A., I arrived the day before yesterday. Last week I was in Toronto and Brooklyn. In Brooklyn I was at Court Street, sort of an out of town gig for me, I don't know. Brooklyn is a little outside of my turf New York-wise, but it was a good reading and a good crowd. It's a beautiful bookstore, it's called BookCourt. Monday I flew out to L.A. and picked up a paper and discovered I was #4 on the L.A. Times bestseller list, and more astonishingly, that I was two places ahead of the Da Vinci Code. So, something I never imagined I would be in my lifetime.

I met my girlfriend Anne out here, which makes the whole thing more bearable, and last night I went to read at a place called Dutton's. My friend Bret Ellis had preceded me there, where he was promptly mistaken for me by the bookstore owner. That seems to be our fate, to mistaken for each other for all eternity. I'm constantly getting thanked for my big Christmas party, which is actually Bret's big Christmas party, even by people who ostensibly know me. So it was sort of strange and wonderful having my doppelgänger there. I don't know if Bret had ever actually heard me read before, we tend to avoid each other's readings. But, it was good for L.A., I gather, it was a huge crowd, which is to say a medium-sized crowd anywhere else.

I read from Chapter 5, which is what I'm usually doing now. It's the day before September 11, actually I guess since it takes place after midnight, I guess technically is September 11. Corinne and a movie director named Cody Erhardt are talking about love and fidelity and sex and three-ways in a bar a few hours before the catastrophe of September 11. It actually turned out to be strangely topical here in L.A. because a lot of us have also done movies and screenwriting. It concerns Corinne's screenplay version of Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter and seredipitously, I was browsing in a bookstore here in L.A. on Robertson, right next to The Ivy and discovered a first edition of Greene's The Heart of the Matter and promptly bought it. So it seemed like a good omen. It was a good reading.

I later went out to dinner with Bret at Spago, what was once the hottest eatery when I first came to L.A. many many years ago in 1984 to write the screenplay for Bright Lights, Big City. It's now moved to a sort of tacky new, Las Vegas-y location in Beverly Hills. It felt like completing a circle, in a way, and tomorrow I'm off to San Francisco. So stay tuned for the next one.

New York, Again

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 16:57:34 -0500

On reading for a hometown audience including an ex-girlfriend and the age-old comparison of Jay to Bret Easton Ellis» download podcast

Transcript:

Hi, Jay here, I'm back in New York. I just returned from Miami, where I did a reading at < a href="http://www.booksandbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp" target= "new">Books and Books, which is this really great independent store down there. A lot of independent stores are withering away. Mitch Kaplan, who it turns out has been in the book business exactly as long as I have, the first book he really remembers selling is Bright Lights, Big City in 1984, so it was great to go back there. It was a good crowd, this was in Coral Gables, also the questions were really good. A lot of people wanted to know about Brightness Falls, which is my 1992 novel, which was the predecessor to this one, The Good Life. I was sort of pleased that there were a lot of Brightness Falls fans out there. And we sold a lot of those, too, I think.

The night before I was in New York, I was reading at Barnes & Noble and I hate reading in New York because it's the hometown audience and New Yorkers are so jaded and they have so many things to do on any given night that I was utterly convinced that I would show up and there would be no one there and I would be humiliated. That's the standard author nightmare, equivalent to standing up in front of the class and discovering you're naked. But anyway, I trudged off, sort of unwillingly, actually trudged up the street to the Barnes & Noble at Union Square. It's only about five blocks from my apartment and I was quite relieved to see a lot of people there. They told me 250-300 people.

It seems that the hometown audience isn't quite as jaded as I thought. A lot of my friends were there, old girlfriends, people I hadn't seen in years. Including my old girlfriend Jeanine, to whom The Good Life is dedicated. She actually showed up late so therefore she missed the remarks about her. Jeanine was actually the first person to call me on the morning of September 11 and tell me to turn on my TV although I was already watching riveted out the window because I had a great view of the World Trade Center at that time. But anyway, I dedicated the book to her in part because she lived through the writing of it and in part because we got back together on September 11, 2001. And there she was.

I thought the reading was great, questions were great, I signed books for about an hour and then later I met Jeanine around the corner for a drink at Gramercy Tavern. I told her how relieved I was and how great the crowd was and she said, "Yeah, well you didn't have as many people as Bret Easton Ellis did. But not bad."

So apparently I'm not as successful as I thought. My friend Bret got a bigger crowd and there's always something to feel bad about. Anyway, I hope my next reading is at least as much of a success. I'm off to the west coast. So, if you can't come out, tune into my podcast next week.]]>

Jay's February 13 event in Atlanta is cancelled

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 16:46:27 -0500

Sorry to disappoint fans, but check back on the tour page in a few days. This event may be rescheduled.

Boston

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 18:15:31 -0500

On fiction as disguised autobiography, being a "literary transvestite" and how Jay felt about a certain Sunday Styles piece in The New York Times. ]]>» download podcast

Transcript:

Hi, it's Jay here again, I'm just back here in New York again from Boston. It's kind of my homeland in a sense, my parents are both from Boston, but until recently I've had mixed feelings about it. As an adopted New Yorker I obviously had to choose between Boston and New York, and certainly had to choose between the Red Sox and the Yankees. But it was great to be there, actually, and sort of my liveliest and smartest audience yet. So, go Boston! I was at the Brookline Booksmith, it was packed, it was a great audience and they were hanging from the rafters. They were rowdy and enthusiastic, I think the questions could have gone on for an hour, although we stopped after half and hour.

Some good questions, I'm trying to think, I remember someone asked me what it was like writing from a woman's point of view, vis a vis Corrine, the protagonist of The Good Life. I actually think it's more fun than writing from a man's point of view, in fact if fiction is anything other than disguised autobiography (see James Frey, Oprah, etc.) then I think it represents the projection of oneself in an imaginative fashion into the shoes of other human beings and consciousness'...that's the ultimate challenge fiction as opposed to nonfiction. For some reason I've always liked writing from the point of view of women. Maybe I'm a sort of literary transvestite. My third novel, Story of My Life, is told entirely from the point of view of a twenty-year-old party girl, Alison Poole.

The other question that was kind of interesting that everybody was hanging on was how I felt about the profile in the Style section of The New York Times this Sunday, which I kind of liked and was kind of freaked out by. The picture was so big it almost scared me. I wish the article had concentrated a little more on the book and a little less on my love life, but for anybody who wants to read about my love life over the past ten years, hey, check out the Style section of the Times, last Sunday, two days ago. And if by any chance you're in Miami, look for me there. Coral Gables actually, at Books and Books. Stay tuned for another installment of my tour diary.

New York and Philadelphia

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 15:40:26 -0500

Jay reads an excerpt from The Good Life about love and marriage and fidelity, and dishes about his star-studded book party in New York. ]]>» download podcast

Transcript:

Hi, it's Jay again, I'm just back from Philadelphia where I read once again with my old friend Julian Barnes. It was actually I guess our last appearance together which is kind of sad. He's off to some other part of the country, which I'm sure you can find on his website.

We had a great time in Houston and on Monday night we read at the 92nd Street Y in New York, where we got to introduce each other and basically rib each other in the process. I read from what's settling into maybe my usual reading piece which is from the fifth chapter of the book and it takes place on the night of September 10, 2001, and it's basically a conversation in a bar between Corrine Calloway, our heroine, and a movie director who's sort of thinking about directing her screenplay of Graham Greene's A Heart of the Matter. Or at least he's pretending to be thinking about it and they chatting a lot about love and marriage and fidelity. Which is of course is pretty much the theme of the book. And I just thought I'd read a little of it here for you for those of you who can't make the next appearance. Corrine is talking to the movie director, whose name is Cody Erhardt and she says:

"Why do most men cheat?" she asked. "I'm curious."

"Why ask me?"

"Because you're such a perceptive observer of human nature. And you're a man."

"Because we yearn for the unknown."

"Strange pussy."

"If you will. Because men are romantics. Scobie's not. He's a realist. Don't laugh. You think I'm kidding?"

"How do you define romantic?"

"Unrealistic expectations. A yearning for the infinite. Dissatisfaction with the actual. The actual being the familiar. The body of the woman you've already slept with. When you fuck a strange woman, you're searching the void for meaning."

"Oh, please."

That's a little taste of Chapter 5, which I have been reading lately. We had about 200 people in Philadelphia, very polite crowd, almost too polite. We did a question and answer period afterwards and I was asked at one point if I had based this sort of love triangle from my fifth novel The Last of the Savages on one of Shakespeare's sonnets. It was one of those moments when I really wanted to say yes and take credit, but in fact no, I had no such thought in my mind as is often the case when we're asked these questions about literary illusions.

Tuesday night I had a great book party here in New York. My girlfriend Anne threw me a party at "21". We had a good writer turnout: Donna Tartt, Nathan Englander, Patrick McGrath, and Dominick Dunne was there along with some other high voltage figures. Uma Thurman came, I've actually known her for about fifteen years, and her boyfriend Andre Balazs, an old old friend of mine. A few of my guests behaved very badly, tripping over themselves to throw themselves across her path. Martha Stewart was there, claiming that we had had some nightclubbing days together, I don't really remember the details of those. A good time was had by all.

So I'm in Boston next Monday, February 6. Hope to see you then. Tune in next week for my further adventures on the road.

In the News: More Jay on the Web

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 13:59:34 -0500

We'll update this post to include links to more features on Jay or The Good Life online. E-mail us if we're missing something good.]]>

Fresh Air with Terry Gross: Seeking "The Good Life" in Post-9/11 New York

New York Times Sunday Styles profile: His Morning After by Warren St. John

Vanity Fair: Proust Questionnaire

Slushpile.net: McInerney Roundup

New York Social Diary: Report from the party at "21"

Houston

Mon, 23 Jan 2006 16:48:37 -0500

Jay reads a sexually explicit passage to a crowd in Houston, enjoys a tremendous meal and witnesses a drunken car crash. » download podcast

Transcript:

So, I kicked off my tour in Houston where I was a last minute replacement for Gish Jen, whom I gather, was sick. The book isn't even officially out yet, but I decided to do it partly because my friend Julian Barnes was the other author on the bill and I was dying to see him, although I just saw him for his birthday in London a couple of weeks ago. He just wrote Arthur & George, which may be his best novel yet, for which he got screwed out of the Booker Prize. But that's another story.

So I decided to slip in and do this event and I'm glad I did it, it was a great way to start, even though I think Houston physically is sort of baffling to a New Yorker and terribly uninteresting. Sort of sprawling suburbs with clumps of skyscrapers here and there in the skyline. But the people we met were great and in some ways a lot less jaded and more culturally avid I think than the average New Yorker.

I flew in with my editor, Gary Fisketjon, who is also Julian's editor and we stopped at the University of Houston, at the Master's Program, and gave a little talk. And then we went to, gosh, I'm forgetting the name of the theater now, but we had a great audience, about 350-400 people. Somehow Julian and I both picked sexually explicit material, I'm not sure why, and looking out into the audience at one point, I realized that half of the audience was much older than I was. I was slightly nervous about my choice, and probably I was underestimating them, being the snobbish New Yorker that I am, but it went down really well.

Afterwards, we went to a dinner sponsored by this great group that brings these writers to Houston called Imprint. We managed to see one of the nicer neighborhoods in Houston, and went to a private home, a couple named C.C. and Mack Fowler, where there were 20 or 30 people and had a tremendous meal. Slightly disappointing wine, Julian and I are both oenophiles. We both deplore this tendency to serve top shelf liquor and rotgut wine, that seems to be so widespread. But otherwise a tremendous evening which ended rather spectacularly when a passing motorist drunkenly crashed into the wall outside the house and then fled the scene of the accident. So that provided some nice punctuation for the evening.

We got driven home to our hotel uneventfully, where we discovered that at a quarter to twelve in Houston even the hotel bars are closed although we managed to find an Irish Pub around the corner and have a couple of bourbons before we called it a night. So tune in to the next podcast ]]>

Introduction to The Good Life and Jay's tour

Fri, 20 Jan 2006 16:49:36 -0500

Jay McInerney introduces readers to his series of podcasts, reflects on why he wrote The Good Life, and rememembers book tour hijinks gone by.]]>» download podcast

Transcript:

Hi, this is Jay McInerney and this is the first in a series of podcasts that I'm going to be doing from the road for my book tour for my new book The Good Life, which is coming out January 31. The Good Life is my seventh novel and it's definitely kind of a departure for me, in that, well first of all, it took me a very long time to write it. It's been six years since Model Behavior, my last book and I was just starting into what I had hoped would be my seventh novel when two planes crashed into the World Trade towers.

That's the backdrop of the book, it's not about September 11, it's actually a love story about two people who meet in the aftermath of these events. They're both married, they both have children and yet they both have decided that their lives up to that point are kind of a sham, and they're reconsidering everything. So that's the basic plot of the book and I guess it's the first book I've ever written that isn't somehow about post-adolescent flailing. I think that's another thing that took me a long time about this book was sort of reevaluating my narrative strategy. I think all of my books from Bright Lights, Big City all the way through Model Behavior have been to some extent coming of age novels and once you pass forty, a coming of age novel becomes a little harder to sustain and to justify. So these character, they may be my first adults, for better or worse.

I did not have a book tour for Bright Lights, Big City. There was barely such a thing then, the concept hardly existed. And the budget for Bright Lights, Big City was about six or seven dollars, as I recall. The last time I was out was about six years ago for my novel Model Behavior. I remember one particular lowpoint when I was at the Buckhead Barnes & Noble and all of four people showed up. I certainly hope that I don't experience anything like that on this book tour, so I'm hoping that many of you will come out to hear me, wherever I am.
The schedule is posted here on the site, check it out. And I hope you'll tune in to the next podcast, where I'll be recounting my adventures and misadventures while I'm on the road. I hope they're not as colorful as they were from my 1988 book tour for Story of My Life, which I barely survived. I tended to be showing up at TV studios and local TV stations at 6:30 or 7:00 in the morning, having never actually gotten to sleep and I'm going to try to make this a somewhat less eventful tour, but I hope one that's not without interest. So tune into the next one and read The Good Life.