Life > February 14, 2008
Novel truly depicts a post-9/11 world
Author gives an elegant portrayal of the human condition
By By Meg Smith | Staff writer
In his 2006 novel The Good Life, Jay McInerney vacillates between creating a serious literary work and pure, guilty entertainment. In that respect, his tale of a New York City man and woman who embark on an adulterous affair after 9/11 is frustrating and satisfying by turns.
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McInerney burst on the literary scene 24 years ago with the largely autobiographical best-seller Bright Lights, Big City about a young man drifting through the glitz and shallow glamour of 1980s Manhattan.
His following six novels continue to reflect his changing scenery over the years.
His characters grow up with him, in years if not in maturity.
The Good Life follows Russell and Corrine Calloway, two characters from his earlier novel, Brightness Falls, and their interactions with a new couple, Luke and Sasha.
Russell and Corrine, who live a glamorous life as TriBeCa intelligentsia, aging yuppies, have grown apart but keep up pretences of a happy family for their young twins and for the history they have together.
On the Upper East Side we have Luke, who has suddenly decided to take a possible permanent sabbatical from the world of investment banking in order to pursue a more meaningful existence.
He finds himself growing more and more contemptuous of the vapid world of high society Sasha, his wife inhabits.
She already has introduced this world to their teenage daughter, who is wading into a dangerous scene of alcohol, drugs, sex and status.
The novel’s characters are undeniably varyingly self-indulgent and narcissistic, and McInerney can’t quite decide whether this is cool or contemptible.
Russell, a prominent book editor, enjoys the fact that he can casually mention that “Salman” (Rushdie) is coming to dinner.Shallow Sasha borrows ball gowns from “Oscar” (de la Renta).
But at the same time McInerney is condemning his characters for such vanity.
He is gleefully engaged in strewing his novel with insider references of his own.
The fact that Russell works for Random House, the company that published The Good Life, is never stated explicitly, just hinted at ad nauseam.
Other name-dropping seems just as pointless.
Someone not intimately acquainted with New York and unable to conjure up images to go with names like Balthazar, Twenty-One, West Broadway, Gay and Nan might just toss the book aside.
Others might revel in the privileged world McInerney expertly depicts. Then comes 9/11, and New York is torn apart.
McInerney perfectly evokes the post-9/11 atmosphere, full of desperate, “stunned and needy” New Yorkers trying to make sense of a new, fragile world in which it seemed nothing could remain the same.
He shows the generosity and new appreciation for human relationships the tragedy inspired in previously jaded New Yorkers.
McInerney also exposes the way in which individuals fell short.
Socialites vie for the most prominent role in Ground Zero soup kitchens, getting the coveted spot through connections.
Luke’s wife Sasha asks him if he can procure a special pass to the ravaged site as a favor to her affluent, curious friends.
Luke and Corrine begin volunteering at Ground Zero at night, feeding the rescue workers who try in vain to find survivors.
The atmosphere the calamity has created allows their interactions an intimacy and urgency.
They fall easily into an affair that gives them both new hope and anxiety for their future.
The plot — two people disenchanted with their current lives re-examine their priorities and goals and fall in love during a time of crisis — may be cliché and predictable.
The psychological depth McInerney imbues it with is not.
He gets New York City reeling from 9/11 absolutely right.
He makes each character, sketched with authentic flaws and neuroses, understandable and sympathetic.
The author sensitively draws Corrine’s failing relationship with her husband with a richness of detail that makes the reader feel acutely the loss their divorce would be without distracting from her burgeoning love for Luke. Certain moments between Luke and Corrine misstep into mawkish conventionality that might be found in an airport romance novel.
Even such moments, however, enrich the novel, underlining the vulnerability of these characters attempting to form a life that transcends the mundane and conventional. The Good Life undoubtedly could have benefited from a greater helping of the writer’s vast talent for irony.
The novel is saved by an elegance and sensitivity of psychological rendering that allows the reader a memorable glimpse into the complex and captivating human condition.