Jay McInerney is back, and it’s no good.
His latest novel, “See You on the Other Side,” was panned by the New York Times this week.
Dwight Garner wrote: “It depressed me to so thoroughly dislike this novel.”
He wasn’t so depressed that he didn’t eviscerate it.
The novel, published Tuesday, is a sales stiff. On Amazon, it’s sitting at number 1,399 on the best seller list.
(UPDATE WEDS 4/22: “See You on the Other Side” is now number 3,145.)
Knopf paid for the book and allowed Gary Fisketjon, whom they fired a few years ago for all kinds of misbehavior, to edit it.
Was there no way out of this thing?
According to Garner, the book is just long lists of expensive products and celebrity names used to prop up nothing much at all. McInerney is trapped in the 1980s, when his “Bright Lights, Big City” was a huge success.
But it’s 40 years later, and now everyone has what people in the 80s drooled over. Fashion labels are not a big deal. You want Frette sheets? They’re on Gilt.com. Louis Vuitton and Prada are on the subway. No one cares about these people.
And that’s what McInerney doesn’t get. How could he? He married an heiress years ago, and lives in a bubble on the Upper East Side. That he’s even mentioning Black Lives Matter in the novel is hilarious. According to Garner, the main character, Russell, orders food from Jean-Georges while his wife is in the hospital dying of cancer. Without a hint of irony.
For me, the irony is that 40 years ago next month, Fisketjon and a bunch of jackals took over the solid, highly respected Atlantic Monthly Press, where I worked. They wrecked the place immediately. Every night at 5pm, while the rest of us worked, the duo entertained people in a corner office with “cocktails.” My lasting image of McInerney, red nosed, looking in the marketing office aghast about lowly we seemed. He actually held a martini glass daintily in one hand. I’ve never forgotten he was wearing silk trousers that flapped about his ankles.
I sure hope we don’t see him on the other side of anything.
