McInerney revealed that the character of Alison Poole is based upon his former girlfriend, Rielle Hunter, then known as Lisa Druck. McInerney, Ellis and Janowitz were based in New York City and their lives there were regular literary themes, chronicled by New York media.Įllis used McInerney's character, Alison Poole ( Story of My Life), in his novels American Psycho and Glamorama.

Ellis's Less Than Zero, published in 1985, was promoted as following McInerney's example. Five novels followed in rapid succession: Ransom, Story of My Life, Brightness Falls, The Last of the Savages and Model Behavior.Īfter the success of Bright Lights, Big City, publishers started looking for similar works about young people in urban settings. 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. The novel established McInerney's reputation as part of a new generation of writers. The title is taken from a 1961 blues song by Jimmy Reed. Published in 1984, the novel was unique at the time for its depiction of cocaine culture in second-person narrative. At Syracuse University, he earned a Master of Arts in English and studied writing with Raymond Carver.Īfter working as a fact-checker at The New Yorker, McInerney achieved fame with his first published novel, Bright Lights, Big City. He graduated from Williams College in 1976. McInerney was born in 1955 in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Marilyn Jean (Murphy) and John Barrett McInerney, Sr., a corporate executive. 4.4 Critical studies and reviews of McInerney's work.In 2009, he published a book of short stories which 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. From April 2010 he was a wine columnist for The Wall Street Journal. His most recent novel is titled Bright, Precious Days, published in 2016. 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). 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. His novels include Bright Lights, Big City, Ransom, Story of My Life, Brightness Falls, and The Last of the Savages. ( / ˈ m æ k ɪ n ɜːr n i/ born January 13, 1955) is an American novelist, screenwriter, editor, and columnist.

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