杰·麦克伦尼

小约翰·巴雷特·“杰”·麦克伦尼（John Barrett "Jay" McInerney Jr.，1955年1月13日—），美国作家，出生于哈特福。他的小说包括《灯红酒绿》（Bright Lights, Big City）、《Story of My Life》等，并写作由灯红酒绿改编而成的剧本；并参与电视剧《霓裳情挑》（Gia）的剧本创作。杰同时是《家居与园艺》（House & Garden）杂志的酒类专栏作家。他最近的小说为2006年出版的《The Good Life》。

John Barrett "Jay" McInerney Jr. (born January 13, 1955) is an American novelist, screenwriter, editor, and columnist. 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 was 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). His most recent novel is titled See You on the Other Side, published in 2026. In April 2010 he began writing as a wine columnist for The Wall Street Journal. In 2009, he published a book of short stories that spanned his entire career, titled How It Ended, which was named one of the 10 best books of the year by Janet Maslin of The New York Times.

Early life and education

McInerney was born in 1955 in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Marilyn Jean (Murphy) and John Barrett McInerney Sr., a corporate executive. He graduated from Williams College in 1976. At Syracuse University, he earned a Master of Arts in English and studied writing with Raymond Carver.

Career

After working as a fact-checker at The New Yorker, McInerney achieved fame with his first published novel, Bright Lights, Big City. Published in 1984, the novel was unique at the time for its depiction of cocaine culture in second-person narrative. The title is taken from a 1961 blues song by Jimmy Reed. The novel 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. Five novels followed: Ransom, Story of My Life, Brightness Falls, The Last of the Savages and Model Behavior.

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 in 1985, was promoted as following McInerney's example. McInerney, Ellis and Janowitz were based in New York City and their lives there were the subject of heavy media coverage.

Ellis used McInerney's character, Alison Poole (Story of My Life), in his novels American Psycho and Glamorama. McInerney revealed that the character of Alison Poole is based upon his former girlfriend, Rielle Hunter, then known as Lisa Druck. He described the character as "cocaine addled," and "sexually voracious" but also treated her with some sympathy. McInerney's roman à clef opened a prescient glimpse into the notorious horse murders scandal, which did not become known to the public until 1992, when Sports Illustrated magazine published a confession from the man who had murdered Lisa Druck's horse at her father's behest, in order to claim the insurance on its life.

McInerney also has a cameo role in Ellis's Lunar Park, attending the Halloween party Bret hosts at his house. It was later revealed that McInerney was not pleased with his representation in the novel.

Throughout his career, McInerney has struggled against the image of himself as both the author and protagonist of Bright Lights, Big City. In 2009, he said in an interview, "Obviously, I'm no longer a 25-year-old bon vivant, but [that] gave me what I always wanted: the opportunity to be a full-time writer. It hasn't been entirely fair to my other books, and I've had to deal with a lot of idiocy on the part of the critics and the cultural commentators." He appeared at Williams College as the commencement speaker for the Class of 2010.