From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Barrett McInerney Jr. (born January 13, 1955 in Hartford, Connecticut) (pronounced /ˈmækənɝni/) is an American writer. His novels include Bright Lights, Big City, Ransom, Story of My Life, Brightness Falls, and The Last of the Savages. He edited The Penguin Book of New American Voices, wrote the screenplay for the 1988 film adaptation of Bright Lights, Big City, and co-wrote the screenplay for the television film Gia, which starred Angelina Jolie. He released a novel in 2006 titled The Good Life. He is the wine columnist for House & Garden magazine, and his essays on wine have been collected in Bacchus & Me (2000) and A Hedonist in the Cellar (2006).

Contents 1 Life and work 2 Quote 3 Bibliography 3.1 Fiction 3.2 Nonfiction 4 Films 5 Trivia 6 References 7 External links

McInerney’s career began with the novel Bright Lights, Big City. The title refers to a 1961 blues song by Jimmy Reed. Published in 1984, the novel was unique at that time for its depiction of cocaine culture in second-person narrative. Bright Lights, Big City established McInerney’s reputation as part of a new generation of writers. Labelled the ‘literary brat pack' in a 1987 article in the Village Voice McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis and Tama Janowitz were presented as the new face of literature: young, iconoclastic and fresh. In the September/October 2005 issue of Pages magazine, the literary brat pack was identified retrospectively as Bret Easton Ellis, Tama Janowitz, and McInerney. Other authors associated with the Brat Pack also included Donna Tartt, Susan Minot, Peter Farrelly, Mark Lindquist, Peter J. Smith, and Mary Robison. McInerney, Ellis and Janowitz were based in New York City and their lives in that city were regular literary themes, as their own lives were also chronicled by New York media. After the success of Bright Lights, Big City, publishers started looking for similar works about young people in urban settings. Ellis's Less Than Zero, published the following year, was initially promoted as following McInerney’s example. Throughout his career McInerney has struggled against the strong, almost indelible, image of himself as both the author and protagonist of Bright Lights, Big City.

On 21 November 2006, McInerney eloped with his fiancée, publishing heiress Anne Hearst.^[1] He has twins (Maisie and John Barrett McInerney 3rd, born in 1994 to a surrogate mother) with his former third wife, jewelry designer and writer Helen Bransford.^[2] His first wife was Linda Rossiter, a half-Japanese fashion model, and his second wife was writer Merry Reymond; for four years he lived with fashion model Marla Hanson^[3][4]

There's always been a personal element to my critical reception as a writer; people say that I'm too much of a public figure. My relationship with the press is an odd hall of mirrors. ^[5]

• Bright Lights, Big City (1984)
• Ransom (1985)
• Story of My Life (1988)
• Brightness Falls (1992)
• The Last of the Savages (1997)
• Model Behavior (1998)
• How It Ended (2001)
• The Good Life (2006)

• Bacchus and Me: Adventures in the Wine Cellar (2000)
• A Hedonist in the Cellar: Adventures in Wine (2006)

• Bright Lights, Big City was made into a film in 1988, directed by James Bridges and starring Michael J. Fox, Kiefer Sutherland, and Phoebe Cates. McInerney wrote the screenplay.

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• Bret Easton Ellis used McInerney's character, Alison Poole (Story Of My Life), in his novel Glamorama; Victor Ward (a character from Ellis's novel The Rules of Attraction) is having an affair with Alison in the first part of the book set in NYC. Alison was also unfortunate enough to have spent a painful evening with Patrick Bateman in American Psycho; when they run into each other in a restaurant in New York, Bateman reflects that during his torture she never cried, and that's the only reason he hadn't killed her^{[citation needed]}.

• McInerney himself has a cameo role in Ellis's Lunar Park, attending the Halloween party Bret hosts at his house. It was later stated that McInerney was not pleased with his representation in the novel.^[6]

• McInerney studied writing with Raymond Carver, and worked as a fact-checker at The New Yorker, much like his unnamed protagonist in Bright Lights, Big City.

• He was mentioned as an icon for the 1980s on the erudite television comedy Mystery Science Theater 3000 in the episode "Hobgoblins".

• Director Wes Anderson has stated that his character of Eli Cash in the film The Royal Tenenbaums is loosely based on McInerney.^{[citation needed]}

• Author's homepage
• Jay McInerney at the Internet Movie Database
• Interview with Guardian (UK) from 2000