Novelist · Screenwriter · Wine Connoisseur
Novelist · Screenwriter · Wine Connoisseur
Photo by David Howells
FROM NEW YORK TO THE WORLD
JAY McINERNEY is the author of thirteen books, most recently See You on the Other Side. (2026). His other novels are Bright Lights, Big City, Ransom, Story of My Life, Brightness Falls, The Last of the Savages, Model Behavior and The Good Life, which received the Grand Prix Littéraire at the Deauville Film Festival in 2007, and Bright Precious Days. (2016). His short story collection How It Ended was named one of the 10 best books of the year by The New York Times. McInerney’s work has appeared in New York, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Review of Books.
He writes a monthly wine column for Town & Country and was previously the wine columnist for The Wall Street Journal and House and Garden. Many of those columns were collected in Bacchus and Me A Hedonist in the Cellar. In 2006 McInerney won the James Beard MFK Fisher Award for Distinguished Writing. His new wine book, The Juice: Vinous Veritas was published in 2012. McInerney’s screen credits include the screenplay for Gia (1998) starring Angelina Jolie and Bright Lights, Big City (1988), starring Michael J. Fox. In 1989 McInerney was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library.
A literary library
NOTES FROM THE CELLAR
This wine critic gig began as a form of moonlighting. On my passport it says I’m a novelist., and my previous books haa all been works of fiction. I’ve had daydreams about accepting the Pulitzer Prize for fiction since I was seventeen; until recently I never really imagined myself standing in a cellar of Chateau Lafite at ten in the morning tasting the new vintage out of barrel, let alone publishing a book about wine.
It all started about twenty years ago with a phone call from Dominique Browning, an old friend who’d recently been given the mandate of resurecting House and Garden, the venerable Conde Nast shelter journal. In her wisdom, which runs pretty deep, Dominique decided that in the new post-tuna casserole America, she wanted to cover wine as well as food, couches and nasturtiums. And apparently she decided that it would be fun to hire an enthusiast who was not necessarily a specialist. Those assembled at one of the early staff meetings liked the idea. However, when the concept was fleshed out with my name, I’m told that eyebrows were raised, while jaws and even pins were dropped. The feeling seems to have been that I had made my name, such as it was, by writing about people who abused controlled substances and ravaged their nasal passages. (See Bright Lights, Big City, Vintage, 1984) What the hell did I know about wine?
NOTES ON WRITING & CULTURE
This wine critic gig began as a form of moonlighting. On my passport it says I’m a novelist., and my previous books haa all been works of fiction. I’ve had daydreams about accepting the Pulitzer…
A novel is never really finished until the final set of galleys are turned in to the publisher, but I finished a third draft of my latest in June and finalized the details of a…
More of my friends seemed distressed than impressed when I quit drinking for August. The feeling seemed to be that I was letting the team down at the height of the season. “Why the hell…
Discover Jay’s Media appearences.
