Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
You started your New York life as a fact checker at The New Yorker and became known as a literary man about town after the success of Bright Lights, Big City. But in the 1990s you moved to Tennessee. What drew you back?
I never actually pulled up my roots. I alternated between New York and Tennessee when I was married to a Tennessean. I could never really leave New York because New York has excited my imagination ever since I set foot here. But after the 80s, I needed a little bit of a break.
What about the city excites your imagination?
So many fascinating people are drawn to New York. It’s the world capital of ambition and creativity. People come here from all over the world to pursue their dreams, whether they are dreams of fame, power, artistic achievement or financial gain. I love it because I never know what I’m going to encounter when I turn a corner. To me the sidewalks are teeming with characters I want to write about and the streets are littered with stories I want to tell.
Before we begin talking about the five titles you’ve chosen, I wanted to ask – do you think New York has a distinct literary tradition?
It wasn’t until the early 20th century that we began to develop a distinct New York literary tradition. A lot of American fiction is concerned with the hinterlands. Henry James did some writing about New York – Washington Square,of course – but he famously rejected the United States as being too uncivilised for literary fiction. It was only through his friend Edith Wharton that New York began to find a voice for itself.
Let’s begin with Wharton’s 1905 bestseller. The House of Mirth depicts the manners and morals of turn-of-the-century New York society. Please introduce this classic to those who haven’t read it.
The House of Mirth doesn’t take place entirely in New York but it begins and ends there. Lily Bart, the heroine of The House of Mirth, was born on a higher rung of the social ladder than where she ends up. She is a compelling and tragic figure. The novel was very much concerned with the high society of the day, which was centred in New York – the famous 400 who fit in Mrs Astor’s ballroom. But even though it is concerned with a caste system that no longer exactly exists, The House of Mirth still resonates with readers.
With Wharton, it’s all so well wrought. You can feel the fabric of late 19th century New York and the social claustrophobia that existed behind the heavy drapes of its drawing rooms. But I wonder, why are readers so attracted to stories about the injustices of the upper class when we value social fluidity so highly?
Americans are always fascinated with the wealthy. It’s a bit of an illusion to imagine ours to be a classless society, as novelists like Wharton made brilliantly clear.
Let’s move forward to the New York of 1949. You’ve said that our cultural landscape would have been different had JD Salinger not come along. Please explain.
Catcher in the Rye injected a fresh idiom into American literature. This happened several times in our literary history. Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn and Ernest Hemingwayin The Sun Also Rises did the same – they brought the contemporary spoken language into literature. When Salinger invented Holden Caulfield he gave his voice such freshness and vibrancy. Salinger also almost invented the concept of teenage angst – Salinger’s was the first voice of the youthquake that transformed our society in the 50s, 60s and 70s.
Woody Allen told me that he occasionally reread The Catcher in the Rye because it “resonated” with his fantasies about the city. What does the novelcapture about mid-century Manhattan that makes it so memorable for so many?
That makes perfect sense to me, because it often seems that in Woody Allen’s movies he’s trying to preserve the New York of the immediate post-war years. Reading Catcher in the Rye made me want to live in New York City and go to the bars where Holden went and walk in his fictional steps through Central Park. For all of its satire, Catcher in the Rye is a very romantic portrait of New York.
But mostly a portrait of mid-to-uptown. Now let’s head downtown and to the New York of the 1950s that Dawn Powell captures in The Wicked Pavilion. Please tell us about the novel and its author.
The Wicked Pavilion wonderfully reinforced my romantic notions of the bohemian life in Greenwich Village during the mid-20th century. Even while she satirises these writers, artists, models and hangers-on, Powell makes you want to be there, with them, at the Café Julien. I find it a very romantic vision of downtown.
You mention that the book describes how its characters cross paths at the fictional Café Julien. How important are bars, cafes and restaurants to the life and literature of the city? And what are the Café Juliens or Odeons of our age.
You mention the Odeon – that was a real gathering place for a tribe, akin to the one that Powell portrays, in the 80s.
Jay McInerney is the author of 10 books. Time cited his best-selling debut, Bright Lights, Big City as one of nine generation-defining novels of the 20th century. A graduate of Williams College, McInerney writes about travel, culture and wine for numerous publications including Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Review of Books. His most recent short story collection, How It Ended, was named one of the 10 best books of 2009 byThe New York Times
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