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Featured New York: Interview with Jay McInerney

Posted on October 15th, 2009 in entertainment

Pillar of the Manhattan underground for 80 years, filmmaker Jim Jarmush follows closely the changes in his favorite city. The punk years are over, but nothing can kill the spirit of New York.

Jay McInerney will he ever wrote a single book: Diary of a night owl (Bright Lights, Big City, 1984), chronic urban underground of New York of the 80s? Will it forever glamor boy, cocaine and covered with top models in the shadow of Bret Easton Ellis on the group photo of a clique of young writers circa 1985, some of which quickly lost sight? Everyone wanted to renew the American literature in crudely chronicling their own lives: between brands of clothes and excesses of drugs, sleepless nights, sex, money and disappointment. And if Jay McInerney was the writer most underestimated of America? The most misread? A few decades later novels, it is time to measure the importance of one who has taken the pulse of the city, New York, at a given time (80s to today), the pretext being examined humanity Western and privacy in terms of its societal changes (the end of Day 80’s with Thirty years and counting, the shock of September 11 in the lives of New Yorkers with La Belle Vie).

If the establishment has always looked askance, Jay McInerney, who could slide into self-destruction as Truman Capote, has gradually penetrated, whether literary or social (he married the heiress Anne Hearst, Patty’s sister and granddaughter of Randolph Hearst, the media magnate who served as a model for Citizen Kane by Orson Welles). Like it or not, he participated in one of the most important parts of American literature and, 54 years, he is emerging as one of the best writers of his time with a collection of short stories, all I spit, unanimously acclaimed in his country. Sixteen microromans perfect concision, elegance, an acuity without compromise on his contemporaries, he also deepens his favorite subject: the loves missed amid Manhattan cocaine, cynical, ambitious, dropped. Sixteen texts that give us more than ever the new New York yesterday and today.

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Why this desire to write new stories, seven years after How It Ended, your first book?

Jay McInerney – After finishing La Belle Vie, I do not know what to do, so I started to read news: Hemingway and Fitzgerald and especially Raymond Carver. It was very important to me because since his death in 1988, I have never read it, it depressed me too much. Carver has been my mentor and taught me two things: firstly, it is not worth being an alcoholic if one has not even begun to write – I drank a lot at the time and n ‘had no discipline. He taught me that a writer must adopt special hours writing each day, as work. He also learned to be wary of pretty phrases and flourishes to always find the right word.

Reread his new has been a real inspiration. I realized how much I love the news and how I wanted to understand how this form works. In six months, I wrote twelve. Usually, I used to like the new sketches for novels, but then I felt to learn something to write a new one, you must keep in mind prior to the atmosphere, the idea and history of the text, unlike the novel – I have already written a hundred and fifty pages of my novel and I do not know yet how it will end! The starting point of all this news is a story: for example, my wife Anne told me the story of this couple whose wife miscarried each time her husband had an extramarital affair … It was so incredible that I had to imagine their lives. And then they told me the story of two girls of high society who are in a restaurant, talking with a young man who knows very well in wine and cooking, until they realize that because it is server: I made a history class, where the young man understands that he will never part of their environment, they will reject it because it is finally server.

These stories are much darker than your novels. The short form makes you a pessimist?

It seems that a new one, you can not develop a set of varied emotions like a novel, you have to choose and that you hold. And it is easier to write texts dark, not because I’m depressed – I was much more depressed decade ago – but because the dark aspect of life leads to a dramatic narrative more interesting that the success or happiness.

You seem happy today. You’re married, you are successful, and yet your texts reveal a very dark vision of existence …

I’m believing that goodness and grace are possible, that change is possible, I also know that human nature is profoundly weak and that vanity is stronger than all good intentions. Of course, I survived my own crises, I have surpassed some of my weaknesses, but I was lucky, simply. The fact that I’m happy in love now that I’m out of certain problems, not the general condition of mankind. I also believe that writing novels is to imagine things that could happen, but that did not happen. When I write, I think of other decisions that I could take, the choices that I have no facts. Happiness is fragile, and human life, and there are so many opportunities to spoil. That is the basis of my work. Tolstoy said that all happy families are alike but all unhappy families are unique in their misfortune …

Therefore, in your books and stories, all love stories end badly?

I have been married four times and I am well placed to know how difficult it is. I paid very dearly for my quest for romance so I learned a lot, especially that love is something complicated in our time.

Only then is it not rather New York destroys any emotional relationship?

My view, as a writer is totally shaped by New York. I write about New York, New Yorkers, and indeed, this city is terrible for the couple to monogamy, because you constantly aware of all options available to you. People always want more: more money, more consumption, and, somehow, love has become part of this desire to scale. In addition, people who settled in New York, those who live there, are the most accomplished of the United States: it is therefore very attractive people, and it’s very hard to resist. A part of me hopes that the couple is possible, another part wonders if the human heart is only able to rest. We change partners because we believe that there is somewhere an ideal that will satisfy us completely. Of course, this is an illusion. It would be just what we a. At the literary level, it is the people disenchanted with the ambitions that interest me the most …

Do you think September 11 and the recent economic crisis they have had an influence on the behavior of New Yorkers?

Less than we had thought. Just after September 11, everyone thought that life would never be the same. When I began writing La Belle Vie, three months after the events, New Yorkers were in a state of acute awareness: more than ever aware of mortality, the world around them, other … A state of mind like we have in time of war – a condition very difficult to maintain. Gradually, life takes over and people become again as before. The new crisis, this recession has not changed much: people want to become unconscious and buy back as a year ago. Only if the economy remains low for a very long time that our culture can find it really influenced. For now, everyone is as before but with more hypocrisy: a friend who worked at Prada told me that some customers do not want to put their purchases in a bag but siglé Prada bag brown cardboard stock.

The crisis is she the backdrop of an upcoming novel?

I started to write a novel during the summer of 2008, shortly before the crisis, about a man who has lost everything. I am interested in this subject is to show how this character will start again, without money, friends …

In twenty-five years of writing, you become the chronicler of New York life. What have you learned from this city?

New York seems to be renewed every four years. The style, manners and clothes change, but human nature never changes really. Our sense of progress and change is an illusion: September 11th is a great example. In New York, we always feel we are starting a new chapter but basically nothing happens. When you’re young – I landed in New York in 1979 – you think everything is possible, but when you get older, you understand that people are always victims of their habits, their vanity, it is very difficult to achieve your dreams, life is a struggle.

Do you feel that you have been too small for your first novel, Diary of a night bird: the guy who goes out every night, drag models and dope?

It amuses me to see that people think about me today with this book when I wrote it twenty-five years. But I can not complain: this book helped me become a writer, to be successful and continue to write.

With hindsight, how do you see the 80s?

As a decade rather naive when it’s supposed to have been super decadent. Of course, people talked a lot of money at the time, but it was nothing compared to the 90s or today. The alleged decline of the time no longer seems so obvious that it even, somehow, it was a fairly innocent period saw everything that has happened since. It was an era of hedonism, a partisan era where people were not concerned by the world’s problems, but I think the worst vices have emerged in the 90s … And compared to today, There was a greater, or say a true counterculture: punk rock, graffiti, hip-hop culture. There was more room for the young arty penniless they could rent apartments on Manhattan because there were not expensive neighborhoods, albeit dilapidated and dangerous, but now they are forced to leave Brooklyn. Manhattan was more varied and down town energy was incredible. It was the focal point of the cons-artists, writers and all the freaks who invented an alternative lifestyle. Today, everything has become much more mainstream. I am increasingly nostalgic for the creativity and the freedom of the 80 who were not sponsored by Hermes or Gucci: only the celebrations were something hedonistic and an opportunity to express themselves, have fun. Today, as soon as something happens, it recovered and it became official the next day. A book like Diary of a night bird is the time to be issued, dated and obsolete already at its output. The fact that everything is available so quickly ruined any possibility of culture-cons.

Do you think Americans are struggling to take you seriously because of that image of cocaine that night owl you drag the past twenty-five years?

Of course this has tainted my reputation as a writer. But what could I? I published Diary of a night owl in 1984 and became famous overnight, all publishers were then made about publishing novels about the life of the gilded youth written by a young writer, and Bret Easton Ellis Less Than Zero released nine months later. I organized a big party for him, Billy Idol, Umberto Eco, Michael J. Fox were there, but also journalists and photographers from the Times and the next day, we were photographed in the press. We went out all night in clubs or festivals, and boom, they opened the newspaper and it fell on the photos of us. We even designated as a group of writers and revelers, the “brat pack” … I could separate my personal life from my professional life, pay more attention to my image, but I was not aware of have one. I lived just the life I wanted to lead. It is true that I loved my books are read as I’ve written rather than as projections of my fame, and critics have fewer prejudices. At the same time, I am who I am not the kind of writer who is hiding in the countryside or in a university. And then I’m sure my life flamboyant fed my work in a positive way: I think I understand the American culture much better than a writer who would not have experienced so intimately. I was at the heart of this culture as no other American writer has not been.

You are close to Bret Easton Ellis and Candace Bushnell, author of Sex and the City. How do you see this generation of writers?

I am always connected with Bret, but currently lives in Los Angeles and his new book will be located between New York and Hollywood. Bret has always had the vision the darkest, most cynical of us all, while mine is basically a romantic. What is interesting about Candace is that she became a writer when she began as a journalist. I like to see change because even though we are almost the same generation, we do not discuss things or do not work the same way. Bret is my alter ego, but my alter ego monster. I wonder how he managed to sleep at night (laughs). Maybe he channeled his demons in his books …

In an interview, Bret Easton Ellis said that you had responded poorly in finding you in cameos in Lunar Park, his autobiography.

At the time I was in shock, especially as Bret made me look like I was in 1987, I’m not really today. Then I understood his plan, which is to mix all periods of his life in one book, and then my “character” really made me laugh … Bret loves dramatizing. He told everyone that I was angry with him due to Lunar Park, which is false. However, in my next novel, there will be a character inspired by writer Bret!

What do you think of these right wing groups who react violently against Barack Obama? America is still profoundly racist it?

The good news is that 55% of Americans voted for Obama. I believe this has happened in any European democracy, right? Most Americans love him and want him to succeed. But yes, there are still racists in the United States and generally they are extremists. Let all the racists have not suddenly disappeared as no surprise. The surprise is that a black president was elected. I never thought this possible in my lifetime. Furthermore, I do not think that these reactions are only due to the color of Obama. These people, far right hate just as Hillary Clinton.