JAY McINERNEY

-JMcI : I’ve been writing stories even since I can remember, since I was a child, and when I was in high school, I started to write poetry, and then in university I discovered many novelists and short stories writers : James Joyce, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and I became interested in fiction. In America, the short story form is more an art form than in France, we have the sense of it, even if maybe one of the first great short story writer was Maupassant, but after Maupassant is not such a tradition here. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, people like Raymond Carver made an art form of the short story. I started to write stories, and my first published story was in this magazine called ‘The Paris review’. After that story have been published, I felt like I wanted to tell more of stories, which became a novel, which was a fortunate thing for me and was my first novel, ‘Bright lights, big city’. After that, when I wrote short stories, they became longer and longer and then became a novel, but in the nineties I kind of returned to the short stories, and all of theses stories of this book were written during the nineties, in between novels and so on, and it was maybe twenty stories but ten are here today, that I wanted to preserve.

-You traveled a lot as a child, with your parents, and later, you spent two years in Japan : what influence

did it have on your discovery of books, and later on your writings ?

-JMcI : Well, it did inlfuence a lot, because, when I was a child, I was moving a lot, and it takes a long time to make friends. So, I spent a long time reading, because, I’ve been in long periods of time without any friends, so I would escape into books, and that was the biggest influence on my reading. I just kind of fell in love with storytelling and books.

-And apart from the writers you first mentioned, was it other very influential in terms of reader and writer ?

-JMcI : Well, many, many : everyday I had a different list ! Fitzgerald was very influential for me, but also the beats were. The beats were very interesting for me because they introduced new subjects matters in America like sex and drugs and jazz and they broke the rules and opened literature to this new kind of experience. It took a long time for their writings to be absorbed into the culture I think, and even when I published my first novel, there were many critics who felt that rock’n’roll songs lyrics shouldn’t be in a serious novel as well as drugs, but Kerouac, Burroughs were very liberating for me. I also really was very influenced by Hunter Thompson’s book called ‘Fear and loathing in Las Vegas’, which was really an amazing book : I don’t know if it’s a novel, or non fiction, who knows what it is, but it was so crazy, the prose was so wild and he just seemed to break all the rules, and for me that was very liberating, that book. Another writer who influenced me at one time was Celine, for the same reasons, I mean that Celine and Thompson are very similar in some ways, even if I don’t like his politics, but his prose was, even if I read it in translation of course, full of an incredible energy and he didn’t seemed to have art, but he did, he was so powerful, the way that he spoke of types of experiences was almost taboo, we haven’t seen it in literature before. I should read him again, that has been a long time ! I love Celine. But that’s just some of the writers I admire. When I was twenty one, twenty two, the writer who was influential for me was Raymond Carver, short stories writer, and he became kind of my mentor, we became friends, he became my teacher for several years.

-About the new book : this title, ‘How it ended’, can it be considered as personal, artistic, political state of affairs ?

-JMcI : Well, I love the French title very much (‘La fin de tout’, meaning ‘The end of it all’, ndlr), it’s a bit different from the English title, but now I do feel that it’s the end of a certain purity, in particular in New York now, after September 2001, I feel that the time that I was writing about is far in the past. It’s difficult to say the way that we have changed, but we have changed, and the 80’s and the 90’s are very far behind us. I think the 60’s and 70’s were kind if mixed up together and I think it’s like 80’s and 90’s, but life in New York is gonna be somewhere different now, things changed after September 11. Of course, things changes, decades changes, centuries changes but you never now the moment when it seems like a new consciousness, a new state of affairs is beginning and I think it’s now, in New York at least : we’re experiencing a shift in the zeitgeist.

-New York is very present in your books : an important character ?

-JMcI : Yes, it’s my home, the place that I choose to live. Some people are given a home, some people are born somewhere, grew up there and they feel connections to that place, but for me I never felt a connection to any place until I went to New York, and there I felt that this was my place, it felt to me like the center of the world, and I think it inspires me as a writer, the people’s energy there, over the greed, the bad behavior, the glamour and the squalor, all of this is powerful subject I think.

-And do you have the feeling that, in a way through your books, you’re doing the same thing that Martin

Scorcese with his movies, sort of writing a kind of story of New York through the time?

-JMcI : I hope so and I think so : for me, one of the greatest writer is Balzac, and sometimes, when I read Balzac about Paris and the 19th century, it seems very similar in some ways to New York. We don’t have the class system, nor the aristocracy, but the same kind of social claming and struggle to become rich. I love the way he wrote this history of Paris over time, these characters comes and go, and I tried to do something like that.

-Did you have this same idea, for your books, like the ‘Human comedy’, to do a kind of fresque like that ?

-JMcI : Yes, now I do, and my new book, that I’m writing now, has the same characters as my earlier novels, some are coming back. I never really did that before, but now I think that I try to write the history of New York in a certain way. New York is too big, nobody can write THE history, but other writers write about other parts of New York, like Paul Auster, Jonathan Franzen, Brett Easton Ellis, but it’s such a big place, we all have our different New York places. That’s also writers I admire today.

-This book, ‘How it ended’, has been published in English in 2000 : did you, like many people did in the last century, hope something from the new millenium, some kind of magic of something else, exceptional ?

-JMcI : I always thought that decades ended, not on time, when they suppose to end, and centuries do the same : the only thing I was expecting was the computers to crash ! But for Americans, the change was 2001. We couldn’t know before, but I felt that there would be a time, not January first 2001 but there would be some moment when we would’d say that now we’ve shifted, now we’ve changed, and for us in America now we have our date. People talk about when the sixties ended, some people said Altamont ended the sixties, or maybe sixties lasted into the seventies, I don’t know, but this title seems especially interesting to me now, I didn’t know at the time. Ten years from now, we’ll have the sense of what this decade was, it’s not exactly clear right now, some very big changes are taking place. In America, politically, it has become very very difficult : the Clinton years were very calm in a way, there was prosperity, no major war, it was a tranquil time, but now, the politics is becoming more heavy, more serious. In good times, Americans don’t think that much about politics, but this is not a good time where there is a war, a bad economy, and we have a right wing government which tries to change the nature of America, which makes some of us very angry, so I think it’s gonna be a very strange decade !

-Next year, there will be elections ?

-JMcI : Yes, next year. Six months ago, it looked like the middle class Americans would reelect Bush, even if every knows he didn’t win the election last time, it’s an important point to remember, he didn’t win, really, I don’t think. Now, people like me would never vote for Bush but the people we have to wonder about is the people in the middle, the clerks and factory workers and all the people are perhaps somewhere less educated, these are the people who are really the majority, and six months ago, Bush was kind of a hero, but now, because the economy is bad and Iraq is resembling to Vietnam and American soldiers have been killed every day, I think the people who might support Bush are starting to become skeptical, and so I’m happy to say that I think it’s possible that we’ll have a change next year, maybe a democratic president, and this will make a big difference, not just for us, but for the world, and I think these people now, in Washington, they don’t care about international opinion and they don’t care about treaties and about U.N, and so it’s not just a problem for us, unfortunately, it’s a problem for you too ! But I’m very hopeful that Bush will lose his support. I don’t think that Bush is evil himself, but the people who influence him are evil, because he’s not very smart, and not very educated but I think he has people around him who are right wing ideologues, and these people are influencing him. His father was less dangerous, he was a man of some culture, international experience and he was a more sophisticated man. He grew up in a small town in Texas, a terrible place called Midland, Texas, and he’s really kind of a cowboy. We think so too. European people forget that there’s a lot of Americans who feels the same way.

-We don’t know each other that much, and it’s difficult for each people to know the exact situation from each other, because we only read information in papers and on tv, and sometimes it’s pretty surrealistic...

-JMcI : It’s true, and it’s some people in America believe that all French are against us ! I don’t know people like that but there are lots of them, I suppose. But there’s something to remember, New York is a different country almost, and most Americans hate New York ; they think that we're crazy, atheists, radicals and loud, greedy, that we have no manners : some of this may be true, but New York is a unique part of United States.

-Talking about politics, what do you think of the recent election of Arnold Schwarzenegger in California ?

-JMcI : Well, I don’t think anybody knows him except as an actor : this is to me the frightening thing. He may be ok, but the elect someone who have no political record, no positions, it’s possible that an actor could also be a good politician, but we don’t know that about Arnold Scharzenegger. This election was short, like two months, and he didn’t speak very much, and it’s terrible to say but there’s something very American about this, just like voting for an image instead. The other thing to say about Scharzenegger is it was democracy, the people in California this is what they wanted, but I think it shows our worst qualities as Americans : it’s a joke, and at least, he’s not president, he’s just in California. So, for me, as a New Yorker, I can laugh about it. He can’t hurt you in Europe.

-Only in cinema theaters ! And it’s the third time that it happen : Ronald Reagan, and Clint Eastwood too, but only mayor of his city...

-JMcI : Yes. Unfortunately, the power of the images and the cult of celebrity has become our great national religion, the catholic church used to have saints, but I think now we have movie stars ! They are the new icons, and I suppose that’s very logical in Schwarzenegger coming along and being elected, it’s a logical extension of things that are happening in United States. Sad but true. That’s what my books are kind of about, the cult of celebrity, this guy is a celebrity journalists and he’s writing about people who really have no contents, no opinion, no intellect, they’re two dimensional icons, as they say, and this is the people that we think about : we think about Ben Affleck or Jennifer Lopez : who cares, really ? But everybody seems to care. And we seem to feel that they are friends !

-What do you think of Michael Moore ?

-JMcI : I like Michael Moore very much except that I had a very big argument with him one year ago, a big fight with him because he supported Ralph Nader for president, and Ralph Nader received many votes that would have gone to Al Gore. And if Ralph Nader had not been in this election, then Georges Bush wouldn’t be president, because Ralph Nader received 3% of the votes, and all of those votes would have gone to Al Gore. Michael Moore was saying that he was standing up for principal, and I said :’well, you might have stand up for principal but now we this crazy republican who wants to end abortion, to give the rich back their taxes, and al’. In general, it’s a great figure, but I had a tactical disagreement. But we’re lucky to have Michael Moore, he’s a great left wing spokesman, and he’s a very unusual figure in America. I admire him, and I think that he has in general a useful influence in American political debate.

-Let’s go back to your book : what is for you the common point, the link between all those short stories ?

-JMcI : Short stories, unlike novels, always, or often, about lonely individuals, this social backdrop is not so evident and most of these characters are looking for something to define themselves, whether it’s love or political stories, like the man who works with a politician, he wants to have a hero that he can look up to and embody his ideals. Most of these people are romantics, but most of the stories are about lost, and failure. They’re all seekers and most of them end up being disappointed. But I think that most of my characters keep hope, maybe the next time, unlike Houellebecq or Brett Easton Ellis, they have a part of optimism, they have some beliefs that they will find what they’re looking for. They’re not nihilist, even if the stories are dark, but the characters are not nihilist, not cynical, and I think that’s the difference from some of my contemporaries. Brett (Easton Ellis, ndlr) is a good friend of mine, I admire his work but to me it’s very different from me. And also, we have different approaches as writers : I think I try to seduce my readers, Ellis tries to alienate his readers ! A different kind of approach ! I like ‘American psycho’ a lot, it was a great book and it is a brilliant idea. I think it’s one of the greatest writer of my group in my time. I’m fortunate that there has been some other good, in the nineties, there were also some good new writers to emerge ; for a while I felt he was the only other young writer whose work I particularly respected, now there’s a new generation of very interesting writers like Jonathan Franzen, Jeffrey Eugenides, ‘Middlesex’ is a great book. I think that American fiction is in good shape : the country is in bad shape, but the literature is in good shape !

-Look at the Californian music : if everyone is happy and lazy, the music is crap, and the contrary is right too, and it’s also true for cinema or books..

-JMcI : It’s true !

-Could we say that the main character that we see in ‘Glamour attitude’ and ‘Bright light, big city’, could be a Patrick Bateman’s cousin, but less extreme ?

-JMcI : My main characters are basically romantics, they have beliefs. I like his imagination, but it’s not my field, it’s outside my experience, and all those characters, my characters, reflect some aspect of my experience and my beliefs, as they all have beliefs of some kind, unlike Bateman : they believe in art, in literature, in love...

-As Bateman only believes in bad musicand good clothes !

-JMcI : Yes ! that’s right !

-To finish, as we’re a musical site, what are your musical tastes, past and present ?

-JMcI : I’ve always had a passion for the blues, the blues from Chicago and the blues from the Mississipi delta, and also, when I arrived in New York, I was very found to that new scene with the Ramones, Blondie, Television, those punk bands, and The Sex Pistols, Elvis Costello. I’m not a music specialist, but I’ve always been a rock’n’roll fan. Recently, I discovered The Strokes, The Rapture, The White Stripes, and I like a lot Eminem too. I’m more Nine Inch Nails than Manson, I think that Trent Reznor is more talented as a writer and composer. I like jazz too, but blues and rock are my main cup of tea.

Interview made in Paris.

Thanks to Marie Laure for her help.