Full Transcript
Doug Shafer:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Taste. Uh, we have had some wonderful guests: famous, successful winemakers, chefs, restaurateurs, professional athletes all here on The Taste. Today is our first famous, accomplished novelist, and part-time wine writer, and full-time wine lover, Jay McInerney. Jay, welcome.
Jay McInerney:
Thanks, Doug. Good to hear your voice. It's been a while.
Doug Shafer:
It has been a while, and, uh, again, I'm, I'm sorry we can't do this in person, so we'll have to find a time later to share a bottle of wine.
Jay McInerney:
Soon.
Doug Shafer:
Soon, I hope.
Jay McInerney:
Soon I'll be, I'll be returning to Napa.
Doug Shafer:
Good.
Jay McInerney:
Can't, I can't wait.
Doug Shafer:
Well, speaking of returning to Napa, the first time we met... I was thinking about this last night... I think it was you and Lora Zarubin, from House and Garden, were in Napa doing some research, and Annette joined us, my wife. We had dinner at Redd, in Yountville.
Jay McInerney:
Oh, that's right.
Doug Shafer:
And we, remember? And we drank a lot of wine. That was a good time.
Jay McInerney:
We drank a lot of wine, including, it seems to me, a '78.
Doug Shafer:
God, good memory. I wondered if you remembered that.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah, yeah.
Doug Shafer:
That was the first, Dad's first wine. We popped one of those.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah, it was... Yeah. And it was very good. It was very special, obviously. We'd given the, the history. But, uh, yes, I, I do remember that.
Doug Shafer:
That was a fun night.
Jay McInerney:
That was, uh, that was something. It was back in my, my very first, uh, wine-writing incarnation, uh-
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
... for House and Garden. I think it was 19... 1996-
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
... when I started that column at the request of, of then-editor-in-chief, Dominic Brown. I think it was a close friend of mine, and knew that I was a wine nut.
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
And that I liked to bore my friends talking about wine, and she thought maybe I could do it in print. Uh, (laughing) and she asked me to, to do a column, which was, initially I found very daunting because, you know, much as I loved wine I, I, you know, I had no formal education in wine appreciation and I, uh, you know, I wasn't even sure what malolactic fermentation was at the time of that (laughing). But... she said what she was looking for is passion and, and somebody who could, who could write, and, uh... and I think, you know, some of the, some of the skills I had developed as a novelist were, were, were transferable, you know?
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
And I loved, I loved to write about the people who make, make wine, and, I decided that metaphors and similes, uh, you know, comparing a wine to an, an actress, or a car, or a poem, or a pop song, uh, could sometimes be just as effective as, as literal taste descriptions, you know.
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
I'm not a huge fan of the, the piling-on of flavor descriptors. So, uh-
Doug Shafer:
(Laughing) Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
... So, anyway, I, I, I, I, I went for it and I said, "Oh, I'll do it for six months," and then, years later, I was still, I was still at it until the magazine folded ... in, uh, I believe 2007.
Doug Shafer:
But, I wanna go back farther than that. I'm gonna take you way back. I want, I wanna... 'cause, you know, you and I have talked about wine many times through the years, but I don't, I want to know more about you. Where'd you grow up, where were you born, family, where did it start, man?
Jay McInerney:
(Laughing) Well, I was, I was, um, the... my, my father was a bit of a corporate gypsy. He worked for Scott Paper Company as a director of marketing-
Doug Shafer:
Hmm.
Jay McInerney:
... uh, which entailed, uh, moving between different markets. I grew up, uh... I think I, I think I attended 14 different schools by the time I, I got into high school.
Doug Shafer:
Oh, wow.
Jay McInerney:
I was born in Hartford, but it seems kind of irrelevant since I certainly don't remember that. Um, my family's from New England and, uh, we used to spend summers on Cape Cod, which was one of the few consistent, uh-
Doug Shafer:
Hmm.
Jay McInerney:
... locations in my life, and, um, we lived in Vancouver, Canada; in, uh, Geneva; in London; and kind of all over the States while I was growing up.
Doug Shafer:
That's, and this is, like, this is before, before graduating from high school.
Jay McInerney:
Yes, yeah.
Doug Shafer:
Gee, that must have been crazy. What was that like?
Jay McInerney:
Yeah. It wa-, well, it was kind of unsettling.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
I mean, on the one hand it, on the one hand I think it made... it made me, probably in the short run, very insecure and neurotic (laughing), but I think in the, in the longer run it made me, uh, very comfortable with new situations and, uh-
Doug Shafer:
Hmm.
Jay McInerney:
... with mee- meeting new people and I can't really wish for a, a different background, but there were certainly, certainly times when, you know, chan- changing schools and being the new kid in school, um, is not something I would-
Doug Shafer:
Oh man, yeah. Well, especially, you know, multiple, 14 times, you know.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah, yeah. I was, uh, yes. I was always the new kid.
Doug Shafer:
(Laughing) Always the new kid. So-
Jay McInerney:
Yeah. So I, I, I developed survival skills.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah. Well, you have to. So, quick question.
Jay McInerney:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Doug Shafer:
With becoming a novelist and a writer, did, was that happening when you were a kid?
Jay McInerney:
You know, I, I was a, I was a big reader, um-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
... and, uh, I spent, you know, probably spent an inordinate amount of time alone since, uh, it, it inevitably took, took a while to make friends-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
... and, uh... But I loved reading, and the first things I remember reading were the Hardy Boy Mysteries-
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
... I don't know if you're familiar with those.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah, I am. I know those.
Jay McInerney:
Uh, when I le-, when I was... I moved to England when I was six years old and developed a big interest in English history. Later we moved to Vancouver. I became a big fan of the novels of Jack London.
Doug Shafer:
Okay.
Jay McInerney:
You know, set in the West, and Alaska, and the Yukon, and so on.
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
And, somewhere along the line I started writing stories.
Doug Shafer:
Okay.
Jay McInerney:
Uh, inevitably they were imitations of whatever I was reading at the time (laughing), but it became writing became a, uh, outlet, and, and eventually passion. When I was in highschool I discovered poetry, initially, through the work of Dylan Thomas, who's, uh-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
... the perfect poet for the adolescent sen- sensibilities.
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
So, he's so purple, and passionate, and florid, and, his language really approaches the condition of, of music, I think, and, um, the, the first thing I remember reading of his was A Child's Christmas in Wales, which is a wonderful piece of writing. Uh, I guess originally it was a radio play, and, um-
Doug Shafer:
Hmm.
Jay McInerney:
... and I just decided then and there that I was going to be a writer, and I never really changed ambitions after that. For a number of years I was a, I thought, I thought of myself as a poet, which made my father cry-
Doug Shafer:
Well (laughing)-
Jay McInerney:
... writing that stuff. I wasn't meant to be a poet.
Doug Shafer:
Well, Jay, I would argue that all writers are poets.
Jay McInerney:
I think, I think all wri-, all writers aspire to be poets.
Doug Shafer:
There you go.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah, yeah. But, uh-
Doug Shafer:
So, do you still, do you have any original poetry? That's what I want to know.
Jay McInerney:
Oh gosh, yeah.
Doug Shafer:
God (laughing).
Jay McInerney:
I, I, I do have, I do have a lot of poetry. I'm not sure that I would want to expose too much of it to the world. I do remember that my first, my first poem, um, which I wrote when I was five or six and living in England was, as I said, I had an interest in English history, and the, the first few lines went, "Old King John was a dreamy lad. He went swimming in the sea, he got bitten by a crab."
Doug Shafer:
(Laughing) At six years old? I love it.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah, and it, and it, and the poem went on to... Sadly, they could not remove the crab from the king, and so they had to bury them both there on the beach.
Doug Shafer:
Oh (laughing).
Jay McInerney:
I have no idea where that idea came from. But, that was my first poetic production, and I think they, they got better from there, but, uh, maybe not so good that I decided to become a professional poet. I did publish a few poems when I was in college and grad school.
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
But, uh-
Doug Shafer:
Nice.
Jay McInerney:
But, happily for my readership and my bank balance, I eventually decided to write fiction instead.
Doug Shafer:
Right, right.
Jay McInerney:
Well, it's a somewhat more popular medium. It's a sort of a ridiculous ambition, really, and, uh, uh, it's an unlikely vocation. At least, unlikely in the sense that not that many people really succeed in supporting themselves as, as writers of fiction, let alone poetry. But, but fortunately, um, when you're young you're, you're bold and ignorant, and so I boldly set forth on this path and, and, and, and, and improbably was eventually successful at it (laughing).
Doug Shafer:
Oh, it's great. You have been, very, very. So, switching back to wine, and... was wine in the household growing up?
Jay McInerney:
You know, wine was a little bit in the household.
Doug Shafer:
Okay.
Jay McInerney:
Um, I remember Korbel.
Doug Shafer:
Okay.
Jay McInerney:
For special occasions, my, my parents would break out the Korbel sparkling wine-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
(Laughing) And, uh, we would have, we would have, you know, the occasional bottle of Paul Masson would appear on the table. But my parents were, my parents were really the cocktail generation, you know. Um, whiskey sours, and old-fashioneds, and there was a brief period where they were drinking stingers, which was pretty disastrous.
Doug Shafer:
Oh, my mom used to-
Jay McInerney:
Apparently-
Doug Shafer:
My folks used to do that.
Jay McInerney:
My parents' friends, they had this stinger period and they were all just, like, trashed. They were staggering around our house doing terrible things, ending up, ending up in bedrooms with the wrong-
Doug Shafer:
With the wrong-
Jay McInerney:
With the wrong person.
Doug Shafer:
Oops (laughing).
Jay McInerney:
But, yeah. Wine wasn't very much a part of my upbringing, and I think that's, uh, I think that's one of the reasons that I was, was attracted to it, because, you know, I first really became aware of wine, um, wine and literature were somewhat intertwined for me because you know, for instance, Hemingway was one of my first, um, literary enthusiasms, and, there's certainly a lot of wine-drinking, particularly in his early novels, you know, in Spain, and in France. And, also another writer that I liked quite a bit was Evelyn Waugh, lot of wine in novels like Brideshead Revisited.
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
Waugh, Waugh was quite a wine connoisseur and a wine snob, and, um... So, for me, wine became associated with, not only with literature, but with, you know, uh, sophisticated taste, with Europe, with a life which was far more glamorous to me than my suburban life.
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
Uh, you know, as much as we moved around the world, we, we always ended up in, you know, one suburb or another. (Laughing) They were all pretty interchangeable and, you know, I couldn't wait to sort of get away from suburban life, from, you know, the, the middle-class, uh, conventions of my upbringing. So-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
... so, so wine was ver-, was very much an aspiration for me and, uh-
Doug Shafer:
Interesting.
Jay McInerney:
... yeah. And when I went off to college, uh, it was, uh, during that, that happy period when the drinking age was 18 instead of 21 (laughing).
Doug Shafer:
I do remember that one, too.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah. So I, um, you know, so I was able to explore, you know, on my limited budget, of course. I was able to explore the world of wine somewhat. I do remember that my, my wine of choice for dates when, when I went to, uh, Williams College was, uh, Chateau Neuf du Pape, which, you know, is a, it's a crowd-pleaser.
Doug Shafer:
It's a crowd-
Jay McInerney:
I mean, yeah. I mean, I was, I, I, I... Remember, I was an East Coast guy, um, really-
Doug Shafer:
Sure.
Jay McInerney:
The wines that we tended to first become familiar with were the, were European ... uh, you know, Chianti and, uh, Chateau du Neuf-
Doug Shafer:
Chateau du Neuf, yeah.
Jay McInerney:
So, I, I, I was, I was, uh, you know, happily drinking wine-
Doug Shafer:
So, you were a wine guy.
Jay McInerney:
... in college.
Doug Shafer:
Okay.
Jay McInerney:
Without, you know, with enthusiasm, but without much sophistication.
Doug Shafer:
Okay, but... I'm with you. So, that's where you and I div- diverge. So, 'cause when I was doing research on you, you and I have some parallels that you don't know about (laughing). So, first of all, we were born the same year, which we aren't gonna mention-
Jay McInerney:
No, don't mention that.
Doug Shafer:
... um, and, uh, I grew up in suburban, and my parents, you know, maybe there was a bottle of Lancers, but it was, it was the cocktail, like you said, and they ended up with Stingers. Yeah, and these guys would go til 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, crazy (laughing). So, I got a similarity there. Uh, growing up in Michigan, it was Boone's Farm in the summer, on the beaches, and if I wanted to impress some gal... 'Cause I read you did, you had the same move-
Jay McInerney:
Ah, yes. Lancers?
Doug Shafer:
No, no, Mateuse, with the bottle.
Jay McInerney:
Oh, Mateuse.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah, that I used to work.
Jay McInerney:
No, the... Yeah. Those, tho-... Yeah, actually, I should mention: Mateuse and Lancers were, were, were two great date-
Doug Shafer:
It was the date, it was the date wine. Yeah. Same, same age.
Jay McInerney:
It was, you know, yeah. Everybody liked them, you know, and the bottles were really cool, and-
Doug Shafer:
Sure.
Jay McInerney:
Yes. My, my very first date ever was a bottle of, uh, I guess Mateuse, uh, at a restaurant in Lenox, Massachusetts, and I thought I was so sophisticated (laughing).
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
So cool, I knew exactly what to order ... or so I thought. You know? Probably, it was probably, it was probably about four or five bucks a bottle, then, at, at the restaurant.
Doug Shafer:
Sure. (Laughing) So-
Jay McInerney:
But, uh, but you know, it's like, it's... wine appreciation is, you know, it's situational, and-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
There, there is, there is a sense in which that was one of the best ones I ever had in my life, because at that moment, in that occasion, with that girl, you know, um, that was just the perfect one to drink ... You know, I've certainly, I've had more e-, more expensive and complex bottles since, but (laughing).
Doug Shafer:
Sure. That's true. It's, you know, the enjoyment of wine, and your... You know, people always say, "What's your favorite wine?" It's like, it's, it has more to do with a situation, like you said, than the actual wine itself.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah.
Doug Shafer:
It's because it's that memory of whatever was going on.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah, the other one... the other one I remember at concerts was Almaden. (Laughing) We, we would get the... we would get these big jugs of Almaden.
Doug Shafer:
Oh, but oh, it was, it was a little bit sweet. Get a headache.
Jay McInerney:
But, you know. Yeah, very sweet, I know. But, yeah, and it seemed to go really well with the sort of cheap cal- the cheap pot that we were smoking-
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
... at the, at the time (laughing).
Doug Shafer:
Oh, we have a lot... Oh, we have a lot in common. Oh my goodness.
Jay McInerney:
Yep. It was pretty bad. It was pretty bad, but it, but it got the job done.
Doug Shafer:
I love it. All right, so here, here's one more parallel.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah.
Doug Shafer:
Um, we both took road trips. You did it after college-
Jay McInerney:
Yeah.
Doug Shafer:
... I did it, I, I taught school for a couple years and after my first year of teaching I did a big road trip for, you know, two or three months. But, uh, it was about the same time. So, tell me about that. You, you, you took a big road trip after school?
Jay McInerney:
Well, after. Yeah. Grad-, I graduated from Williams and, and I wasn't quite sure what the hell I wanted to do with myself and my parents had given me a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle for my, for my graduation.
Doug Shafer:
Nice.
Jay McInerney:
Uh, and, yeah. It was already more than a decade old, but hey, it was transportation. (Laughing) So, um, a friend of mine and I a classmate, uh, jumped in the Volkswagen and decided to do a Kerouac, basically, and drive across country and see, you know, see what we could see, and who we could meet, and ... we probably were on the road for about three months, and eventually... the eventual goal was San Francisco, where, uh, we decided we would try to get newspaper jobs. Um, (laughing) this was, this was right in the sort of middle of the Watergate days, right afterwards, and unfortunately Woodward and Bernstein had made journalism the most popular profession-
Doug Shafer:
Sure, right.
Jay McInerney:
... probably in the country. Even though, you know, there aren't, there are never that many jobs in journalism anyway. But, but that was our eventual goal, but in the meantime we visited every place we could, we had ever wanted to see. We went to, we went to Nashville, you know, looking for Willie Nelson, and, (laughing) uh, we went to, um, you know, Oxford, Mississippi to visit Faulkner's house-
Doug Shafer:
Oh yeah.
Jay McInerney:
... and we went to New Orleans, and, um, we kind of zigzagged around the country, probably, I would say almost three months, sometimes sleeping in the car. When we got to, when we got to Las Vegas, we were pretty much out of money. But, we, we stayed, you know, we sat down at the blackjack tables for eight or nine, eight or nine hours and made, made about 1000 bucks-
Doug Shafer:
Keep (laughing)-
Jay McInerney:
... and were able to keep-
Doug Shafer:
Keep, yeah. Keep going.
Jay McInerney:
That kept, that kept us going for another few weeks. It was a great adventure, but eventually we, we got to San Francisco and nobody, nobody wanted to hire us as reporters, or at, or much of anything else, you know. Ironically, my future wife's family owned one of the papers.
Doug Shafer:
How funny.
Jay McInerney:
(Laughing) The San Francisco, San Francisco Chronicle, but I didn't know that at the time. So, so eventually I drifted back to the East Coast and I did find a, a job at a weekly newspaper in New Jersey. Um, not very, not ver glamorous-
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
But, uh, but it was a start.
Doug Shafer:
Right. And then, and then, uh, very quickly, after that I think you ended up in Japan, but.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah, yeah. I- I, I, I very quickly get tired of, uh, writing about planning board meetings and dog shows, and, uh, and sewer board meetings (laughing). So, I applied for a fellowship, a Princeton fellowship, um, that sent me to Japan, it was just a graduate fellowship to study Japanese culture-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
... and I, at that point I was, I was just at a, at a loss, really.
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
It was, I just wasn't sure what the hell... I knew I wanted to be a writer, but it, it didn't... I, I couldn't quite figure out how to support myself while I... while I try, tried to, uh, to do this. And so, a classmate at Williams had told me that it was really easy to make a lot of money in Japan teaching English a few hours a week-
Doug Shafer:
Huh.
Jay McInerney:
... and, uh, and I was, I was intrigued by the culture, you know. I mean, people like, you know, writers like Allen Watts and Gary Snyder were very much in the air at that time: people writing about Zen Buddhism and Japanese culture, and I was intrigued. Um, so off I went to Japan. I ended up staying there for two years. I completed the Princeton program, I stayed on for another year and taught English and tried to write the Great American Ex-patriate Novel.
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
I studied karate, I studied the language (laughing). You know, it was wonderful, until finally I realized that I was just sort of postponing the start of my real life unless, indeed, I wanted to spend it in Japan. So I returned to New York, or I, or I went to New York-
Doug Shafer:
Okay.
Jay McInerney:
... since I never actually lived there before. But, New York, uh... this was 1979, and I was hearing... I don't know. I was feeling these sort of cultural vibrations from New York: the New Wave music, you know, CBGBs was, happening, um, and also, you know, it seemed like pretty much the literary center of, the United States, you know, where New York was where the publishers were, where the, you know, the Beat generation had pretty much been based there. Writers like Norman Mailer, and Truman Capote, and-
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
Dahl had sort of started out there. It just seemed like the place to go, and in fact, I immediately fell in love with New York and, as someone who'd never really had a hometown, I thought, "Hey, this is it. This is, this is my pl-, this is my place." And I have never changed my mind about that.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
And, and New York became my subject, as well, you know. I mean-
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
You know, Raymond Carver had the Pacific Northwest, and William Faulkner had, you know, Mississippi, and, uh-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
... but, and I'd, but I had never really been anywhere. I had never really lived anywhere long enough to particularly identify, and suddenly I thought, "Hey, why not write about New York?" It just seemed so exciting, you know. I mean, it, it was a really interesting time to get there because on the one hand, it seemed like New York was completely falling apart.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah. I remember that. It was really edgy. I remember that.
Jay McInerney:
Really edgy. I, the city had almost gone bankrupt-
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
... two years before, uh, and it was dirty and dangerous-
Doug Shafer:
And, and crime, yeah.
Jay McInerney:
And everybody, everybody got mugged-
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
... and there was a heroin epidemic at the time. Uh-
Doug Shafer:
And this was your, this was your new home.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah. My Volkswagen, I drove my, I drove my Volkswagen to the city, it was immediately stolen (laughing).
Doug Shafer:
Oh.
Jay McInerney:
But there was so much energy. Um, there was a, there was a real cultural scene that was, co- coalesced around downtown. Basically painting was almost being reinvented.
Doug Shafer:
Huh.
Jay McInerney:
You know, there was a... in the 60s, the 70s, painting had been almost declared dead, um, you know, in favor of, you know, conceptual art, of performance art, and so on and so on. And suddenly these guys like, you know, Basquiat and, uh, Keith Haring, Eric Fischl, guys that I was actually seeing on the street, you know... Julian Schnabel-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
... they were reinventing painting. There was this whole, you know, sort of punk, new wave music scene that was going on at places like CBGBs and the Mud Club, you know.
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
You know, I was a little too late to catch the Talking Heads at CBGBs, um, but, uh, you know, they had sort of moved on to bigger venues. But, I did, I did see, I did see them at the Mud Club. I saw the Ramones, I saw the B52s at these little-... little, little downtown venues, and it was sort of my idea that I wanted to, I wanted to create a kind of literary equivalent to these, uh, to the music and, and art scenes that were, that were flourishing in the midst of this mi-, downtown Manhattan squalor (laughing). I mean, and it was, it was squalor, but it was, it was sort of touch-and-go for a while whether, you know, whether New York was gonna sink into the, into the East River, or whether it was gonna, there was going to be a renaissance, and of course there did turn out to be a renaissance.
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
Certainly culturally, and, uh, economically. Uh, although, you know, we, we did have this terrible, you know, tragedy of, of the AIDS crisis, which developed uh, a few years after I arrived in New York, which really kind of scythed through the artistic community. But, uh, but it was, it wa-, I, to me it was just an incredible time to be there. And eventually I wrote a book about the literary and the nightclub scene, the downtown, uh, music and art scene, called Bright Lights, Big City, and, uh, published it, uh, to increasing acclaim, and-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
At which point, I don't know, within a, within a year or two there was su-, there suddenly was, indeed, a kind of literary equivalent to the music and, and art that I had been admiring as a, as a young man.
Doug Shafer:
Well, you're be-, you're being-
Jay McInerney:
... it was a great time to be young in New York.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah, you're being really modest. It's a fantastic novel, and Bright Light, Big City, I think most everybody is very familiar with it, so, um, you should take a bow. But, um-
Jay McInerney:
It was basically this autobiographical novel about-
Doug Shafer:
Yeah (laughing)-
Jay McInerney:
... the life I, the life that I'd been living for two or three years in, in New York, uh, when I, when I was, uh, working as a fact-checker at The New Yorker, and, uh, and going out to nightclubs at night, and, crawling into The New Yorker office in the morning and doing a fairly bad job of being a fact-checker, to the point that I was eventually fired (laughing). Uh, I, you know. Rightfully so. I think I, I think I earned-
Doug Shafer:
Well this, this makes, this makes for great fiction. You know, I mean, come on.
Jay McInerney:
Well, that's-
Doug Shafer:
You know.
Jay McInerney:
... well that's, you know.
Doug Shafer:
... is it truth or is it fiction?
Jay McInerney:
It's, it's true, you know. Hemingway, Hemingway said that, you know, the worst thing that can happen to you as a writer, or the be-... He said the best thing that can happen to you as a writer is, is the worst thing that happens, so long as it doesn't kill you. In my case, in my case I, um, lost my job at The New Yorker, my mother died of cancer, and my wife left me, uh, all in the space of about se- seven or eight months.
Doug Shafer:
Oh.
Jay McInerney:
So, um, so it was a real trifecta of-
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
... of heartbreak, which, which ended up, I don't know, making, making for, uh, an interesting-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
(Laughing) and heartfelt novel, I think.
Doug Shafer:
Of course.
Jay McInerney:
And, um... yeah. At the, at the time it didn't feel good (laughing).
Doug Shafer:
No. And, and, uh-
Jay McInerney:
It did not feel good.
Doug Shafer:
I think-
Jay McInerney:
It didn’t feel good at all. I mean, on my, um... I mean, um, the, the fact-checking job was never one that was really dear to my heart, but on the other hand, it was The New Yorker, you know?
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
It was, it was, it was prestigious, and it paid, paid fairly well, and, uh, it was, it was very humiliating to get fired. Uh-
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
... and, and, and to tell my mother, who was sick with cancer, that I'd been fired. Um, and, uh, at that time I was dating a woman who was very successful, a fashion model, I'd actually met her in Japan. We went back to New York together.
Doug Shafer:
Hmm.
Jay McInerney:
And her, she had become a successful model, uh, and I, I, you know, my... after a, um, nine glorious months at The New Yorker I was, I was fired and, uh, her career was going up and mine was going nowhere, and... I don't know. I think, I think I thought it would do my mother's heart good if I got married, given, given her health problems and-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
... um, and, and it, and it, it might have, except that within three or four months of getting married my, my wife ran a-, ran off with an Italian fashion photographer, so-
Doug Shafer:
No. No.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah. So that pl-, that plan didn't work out very well.
Doug Shafer:
Oh, man.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah. So it was-
Doug Shafer:
Oh, Jay.
Jay McInerney:
It was... these are, these are the circumstances from which I was like, my novel, Bright Lights, Big City, arose. So after, after losing my job and my wife in New York-
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
... basically, I felt like the city had beaten me. You know.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
(Laughing) I'd been there for two years or so, and I, I just felt, you know, like I'd been whipped out of town, and I, I, um, I applied to, uh, some graduate school programs, but one in particular that I really wanted to attend was the Syracuse University because Raymond Carver was teaching there. And Carver was, at that time, probably the most influential writer in America, and certainly one of my favorites, and I, and I had the good fortune of meeting him through, through my friend, Gary Fisketjon, uh, my road trip buddy- ... who had, who had gone to work for Random House. Carver had come into New York for a reading at Columbia University and, uh, after lunch at Random House he had nothing to do before his reading and my friend, Gary, called me up and said, "Raymond Carver is coming to your, coming to your apartment." (Laughing) "You, we want you to show him around the city." And I was, I thought it was a joke and I just, I just hung up. But, sure enough, my buzzer rang a little bit later and there was this big, big shambling bear of a man, name of Carver, and we ended up hitting it off and sitting around the apartment talking about literature, and his friend, Richard Ford, came by, who was on the verge of becoming a very important writer himself.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah, we stayed in touch after that, and Carver invited me to come to Syracuse, and, and I, I applied, was accepted in the writing program, and that was the, that was the start of my, my wine store phase.
Doug Shafer:
Okay.
Jay McInerney:
Uh, to supplement my, my meager fellowship. I worked, I worked at a, a store called the Westcott Cordial Shop, which, in addition to selling, uh, industrial fortified grape juice to, to guys with bad hygiene, we also sold a, a few real wines (laughing). There was the, you know, there was, there was a few serious bottles on the shelf, and, and also the, uh, the proprietor had a wine library in the, in the store. He had all the, you know, Hugh Johnson books.
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
And so on. So I would sit, sometimes, and read between waiting on these winos and sometimes occasionally getting, occasionally living through a stickup-
Doug Shafer:
Oh no, really?
Jay McInerney:
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Doug Shafer:
Like they pull, they're pulling a gun on you?
Jay McInerney:
Pulling a gun.
Doug Shafer:
Oh, man.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah. It was a, you know, it was a bad... it was actually a bad part of town.
Doug Shafer:
Oh, okay (laughing).
Jay McInerney:
But, um, but I did, yeah. It was a tradition of mine with clerks that we'd take a bottle home every night, uh, since we were paid minimum wage. And you know, it, I started with, uh, I don't know. I started with, what, Yu- Yugoslavian Cabernet when there-
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah. This is, this is when there still was a Yugoslavia, and you know, I worked my up to, like, Freixenet-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
The, you know, the Spanish Cava. But you know, I, I started to develop a bit of a palette-
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
... starting at the bottom. Starting at the bottom, working my way up, and I was actually at the wine store when I got the phone call saying that Bright Lights, Big City had actually been accepted for publication.
Doug Shafer:
Oh. Well, okay, good. Things are turning around.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah, right? Very excited, yeah. So I, I actually brought home the nicest bottle in the store. I figured I would pay for this one. It was, um, it was... I remember it was a 1978 Smith Haut-Lafitte. I think I was partly attracted to the label. It had, uh, the same sort of blue, blue-and-yellow label that it does today. But I, again, that was one of the greatest bottles I ever had in my life, simply-
Doug Shafer:
Very, yeah.
Jay McInerney:
Perhaps, because of the circumstances. The fact that my very first-
Doug Shafer:
Sure.
Jay McInerney:
... novel had been accepted for publication by Random House, it was, you know, great. A great day for me, and-
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
And I... it seemed a great bottle of wine (laughing).
Doug Shafer:
Well, of course it was, and you know, all of a sudden your life's turning around, finally.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah, everything, it's... well, life was turning around.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
I was also at the Westscott Cordial Shop working with the cash register when I, when I get another call from, um, from Paramount, from someone at Paramount Studios, telling me that he had just read my novel and they would like me to fly west and talk about making it into a movie.
Doug Shafer:
Wow.
Jay McInerney:
And, uh, yeah. That was, uh-
Doug Shafer:
That's pretty cool.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah. So there was, there was a pretty big turnaround (laughing).
Doug Shafer:
So that, that, that cordial shop was okay?
Jay McInerney:
It was. It was all right. So I flew the, the, within days of getting this phone call. So, I flew to LA and I, I stayed at a place called the Chateau Marmont-
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
It was recommended to me. They said, uh, "You want to stay at the Chateau Marmont?" And I said, "Is that good?" And they said, "Is it good? Well, John Belushi died there." You know.
Doug Shafer:
(Laughing) Oh no, they actually said that?
Jay McInerney:
And I think, I think, I think given some of the, uh, you know, substance abuse in, in the novel, Bright Lights, Big City, I think they somehow felt this would be the perfect place for me.
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
But, but one reason it was a great place for me is because they had a very limited room service menu. It was a tuna melt and a, you know, a, say, a Reuben sandwich. But, somehow they had this big cellar of... Pa- particularly of old burgundies.
Doug Shafer:
Oh.
Jay McInerney:
There was, like, there was a ton of old Bouchard burgundies from the s-, from the ‘70s, and so I worked my way through that, you know. I would just order a bottle every night, you know, like... You know, it was '78 Corton Charlemagne-
Doug Shafer:
Oh.
Jay McInerney:
... or Montrachet, or, uh... it was-
Doug Shafer:
With a tuna, with a Reuben. That's great.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah, yeah.
Doug Shafer:
That, that's perfect.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah. And then, yeah, and it didn't cost that much-
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
... and the studio was pay-, the studio was paying, so I didn't care (laughing).
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
But, that, that was another little chapter of my wine life. I kept going back to Chateau for a number of years, and then ev- eventually, of course, the stock of burgundy was thoroughly depleted. Uh, I, I, I certainly had a lot to do with that (laughing).
Doug Shafer:
So, at this point, are... So, you're definitely... you're definitely got the wine thing going. So, are you, are you starting to collect wine …
Jay McInerney:
Ah, yes. Well, what... So, Bright Lights was published in 1980... Fall of 1984. I got $7500 for the, for the book.
Doug Shafer:
Uh-huh.
Jay McInerney:
Um, which was, which was pretty good, you know.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
It was, it was about... it was a little bit more than the average advance which, of $5000. Mostly that went to pay off debts and stuff-
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
... but some, but within a few weeks the, the book really started to gain momentum and, and the first printing, um, sold out, and the second hu-, a huge second printing was ordered. And, suddenly, um, I went from poverty to relative prosperity (laughing).
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
Uh, at the exact moment that the 1982 Bordeaux were hitting the American market (laughing).
Doug Shafer:
Good timing.
Jay McInerney:
So, a fair, fair percentage of my earnings went into buying '82 Bordeaux, you know. That was the world-shaking-
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
... vintage, the, you know, the vintage that made Robert Parker. But, uh, but, uh, for me these wines were, even on release, they were, you know, s-, fairly drinkable and opulent and delicious-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
... and believe it or not, I still have, I probably still have one or two of the-
Doug Shafer:
Oh.
Jay McInerney:
... bot-, of the bottles that I bought then, because, of course, you know, Bordeaux can last almost forever-
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
... and, um, and you know, I think the '82 vintage proved that Robert Parker was certainly right about that one.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
That was when I started to go a little nuts (laughing). I just... and, uh, and, and, and obviously, for, for a while, um, I was a Francophile.
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
And Bordeaux, Bordeaux was my thing. I, I really didn't... I didn't know that much about burgundy, despite my depletion of the Chateau Marmont's cellar, and, uh, ohiIt was almost a decade later, really, that I discovered what was happening in California. Specifically in Napa and Sonoma. Um, when my friend, Dominique Browning, called me to offer me this, uh, wine-writing job, um-
Doug Shafer:
Yeah, that was at House and Garden, right?
Jay McInerney:
At House and Garden.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah, but that was, that was, that... didn't that surprise a lot of people? You know, all of a sudden-
Jay McInerney:
Yeah.
Doug Shafer:
I'm just like-
Jay McInerney:
Absol-
Doug Shafer:
McInerery's gonna write about wine?
Jay McInerney:
Absolutely. Everybody thought, everybody thought she was crazy, not least her, her... She had already hired the food editor, named Lora Zarubin.
Doug Shafer:
Right. Good.
Jay McInerney:
Uh, uh, the, the woman-
Doug Shafer:
Your great friend.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah, still my great... still my great friend. Uh, saw her the other night, and, uh... But, she was very suspicious and she said, you know, she, she ba-, she basically said, "What does Jay McInerney know about wine?" You know, "His, his," you know, "His sinu-, you know, his nasal passages are probably destroyed from cocaine, and..." Um, and so we had dinner, you know. So then, we were supposed to have lunch at the Four Seasons, um, so she could check me out.
Doug Shafer:
Check you out.
Jay McInerney:
Unfortunately... Yeah. Unfortunately, I arrived at lunch at the Four Seasons really hung over. I had been, uh, I had been, I had been out with Bret Easton Ellis the night before. So I, I, I don't think I made that good an impression, except that I blind tasted something that she, she ordered, um, and she was somewhat impressed. But, but her caveat was, if I was going to be the wine columnist for House and Garden, I had to go to California and I had to visit Napa and meet the, you know, the people who were - in her mind the most important, and the people who were really changing, uh, the whole scene there, including, for instance, Helen Turley. This was 1996, and, uh, Helen, uh, Turley and John Wetlaufer had - they had just bought their, uh, their vineyard on the Sonoma coast, uh, I think the, I think the year before.
Doug Shafer:
Okay.
Jay McInerney:
Uh, I went, I went and met Helen. My very first wine, professional wine-tasting experience is meeting Helen at the Napa Wine Company, the Gulf Custom-Crush facility.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah, right.
Jay McInerney:
She had this tiny little cubicle there, where she was making, uh, her own Marcassin label from, from purchased grapes. And also, Bryant and Colgin.
Jay McInerney:
So I tasted all of these wines, um, at 10:00 in the morning. Right, you know. At-
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
... at that time I thought it was quite extraordinary to taste wine at 10:00 in the morning. Of course, now I know that that's-
Doug Shafer:
That's what we-
Jay McInerney:
... when the palate is freshest, and that's what we do.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
I didn't know this. Um, but you know, she was pretty skeptical, too, 'cause she, she knew exactly who I was and she just thought, you know, "What the hell is this guy doing here?"
Doug Shafer:
Yeah (laughing).
Jay McInerney:
Uh, and so, she said, she, she quizzed me before we tasted and she, she said-
Doug Shafer:
Oh, wow.
Jay McInerney:
"Oh, you know, what do you know about California Chardonnay?" Um, and I said, "Well, not that much." I said, "I, there's a few I like," and then I said, she said, "Like what?" And I said, "Uh, well, I really like this one called Peter Michael." I, I had no idea, but of course, until, like, the year before, she, she had been the winemaker.
Doug Shafer:
She'd been making it, yeah.
Jay McInerney:
Making, making the Peter Michael Chardonnays.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah (laughing).
Jay McInerney:
And, uh, so she brightened up considerably after that and, uh, and we, we ended up, you know, forming a friendship. I, you know, I, and in the trip I also met her, her brother, Larry - who, who of course is, uh, behind the Turley Zinfandel, which she, she was making at the time.
Doug Shafer:
Yes.
Jay McInerney:
That didn't, uh, that didn't last much longer, but, um, I met, uh, Bart and Daphne Araujo, um-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
It was eye-opening for me because, you know, that, that was, you know, that was a turning point, I think, in, in Napa. It was '95, '96, '97. When people like Helen were, were, you know, kind of, kind of, kind of changing the predominant style-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
... of, of the wines there, and it was, it was a very exciting time. You know, I, I, I... it was either that trip or the next one that I met Bill Harlan-
Jay McInerney:
And you know, I, I found these new, I found these new wines to be very exciting. there's, there's just been several chapters of Napa wine history since, but one of the things I loved was the fact that they were figuring out how to, how to make Cabernet Sauvignon after years of, of, you know, big tannic, uh, wines.
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
They were, they were learning how to tame the tannins of, of Cabernet so that, you know, it was, it was drinkable at a, um, approachable at a much earlier age. And, and also, you know, discovering Zinfandel, I mean, you know, this... It's, it's a wonderful, exuberant, all-American taste sensation, really, and, uh, I just, uh, I just really enjoyed, uh, arriving at that moment, and I subsequently became a regular visitor to Napa, and eventually to Sonoma, as well, and, uh, met you somewhere al-, somewhere along the line.
Doug Shafer:
Somewhere along the line, yeah (laughing).
Jay McInerney:
Yeah.
Doug Shafer:
No, the 90s were super exciting. There was a lot going on, both in the vineyard and the cellar, I, and I, you know-
Jay McInerney:
Yeah.
Doug Shafer:
... I was right in the thick of it.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah.
Doug Shafer:
So it was like, uh, you know, there was new s-, new ideas every other week, just new things to try and play with.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah.
Doug Shafer:
And that was, it was really fun. So, your timing was good, but you, you touched-
Jay McInerney:
Yeah.
Doug Shafer:
... on something earlier. I want to ask you again about... So, you're coming in as a wine, you know, to be a wine writer. I mean-
Jay McInerney:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Doug Shafer:
And you know, knowing you and, and, as I have through the years, but it's like, I'm sure you took a good, you know, look at it and thought about... did you have a, an idea of what you wanted to do, um, as far as, you know, what was your, what was your stamp gonna be?
Jay McInerney:
Well, I think, I think that, uh, at the risk of, of sounding, uh, arrogant, um, I knew that I was a better writer than most of the people writing about wine at that time, you know? It just seemed like, in terms of (laughing), in terms of, uh, incandescent prose, the bar was pretty low in the wine-writing community. But I also felt that, you know, that I would try to just bring some novelistic, uh, skills to the, to the table, you know.
Jay McInerney:
You know, as I said, you know, to, um, you know, I, I've, I'm pretty good at creating metaphors and similes and and also I thought that, you know, I wa-, I wanted to write about the people, I wanted the winemakers to be characters in my, in my, in my essays, and really it was so interesting, particularly at that time in Napa, when everybody... like your father, for instance... everybody there had come from someplace else-
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
... and some other profession, really, at which they had been successful, and then they'd gone to California to make wine. So, you know, there's so many great stories there about transitioning to, to, uh-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
... you, you know. And, and, and everybody, like me, had their sort of, their story about the wine epiphany and the thing that finally made them decide to commit to this, to this path. So, you know, I knew, I knew I was a pretty good storyteller and that I could, uh, and, and I knew that there were so many interesting characters, really, in, in the world of wine. You know, the Eur-, you know, the archetypal European wine story is usually quite different. It's usually somebody who's inherited this tradition, and has to wre- wrestle with whether or not they want to-
Doug Shafer:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jay McInerney:
... go back, go back to the farm, as it were, you know, after, after college or after exploring the world a little bit. But, um, but you know, certainly in California your, you know, your and your dad's stories is, is archetypal-
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
... you know, sort of a change, you know, a sort of radical... It, it, it's almost, you know, it's almost like the, you know, the 19th-century pioneers, you know, pulling up roots and going, going West in a covered wagon while that-
Doug Shafer:
(Laughing) Well, there was.
Jay McInerney:
... there's, there's so many, there's so many of those stories.
Doug Shafer:
It was a country, a Ford Country Squire station wagon with a-
Jay McInerney:
Yeah, yeah.
Doug Shafer:
... with a dog in the back. That's what ours was. It's pretty funny.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah, the, the, the Mondavis were unusual for a-
Doug Shafer:
Yes.
Jay McInerney:
... and, you know, they'd been there for several generations, but, uh, but most of you are, I think most of your peers could, your contemporaries, had, had started somewhere else-
Doug Shafer:
Somewhere else.
Jay McInerney:
And wine, you know, they, they, they came for the love of, of wine, and it's fun, it's fun to write those stories. It really is.
Doug Shafer:
That's great. And then, you... So, so you banged out... You've, you've got how many books? You've got, uh, Bacchus and Me... that was your first one... Adventures in the Wine Cellar.
Jay McInerney:
Oh, I, yeah. So, eventually I, uh-
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
Somebody asked me if, if they could publish my columns-
Doug Shafer:
Okay.
Jay McInerney:
... in a book, in a book, and it was a very small press, and I s-, you know, I called, I called my editor, Garry Fiskejon, who... my Williams road trip buddy who has since become my editor at Random House, and I, and I said, uh, "Is it okay if I do this?" And I think he was relieved that I didn't want him to do it (laughing), and he, and he said, "Sure." Um, but the book ended up selling a lot of copies in hardcover. I mean, you know, like, like, 40-50,000 copies in this tiny, tiny press.
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
So then, uh, Random House sort of set, sat up and took notice and (laughing) ... uh, they bought the, they bought the rights to the paperback and they published the subsequent, uh, collections of my, of my wine writing, and, I like to think that I'm writing for... I, I, I'm not writing... I'm not writing for the specialists, uh - I think I'm wri-, I'm writing for wine enthusiasts who are, you know, a few-
Doug Shafer:
Well, you-
Jay McInerney:
... p-, uh, they're a few chapters behind me in the textbook, basically, and, uh, I like to help people appreciate wine more. I'm, I'm, I'm a lover rather than a fighter, so I, I very seldom write about wine in the, in highly critical fashion that is in a negative fashion.
Doug Shafer:
Sure.
Jay McInerney:
If, you know, if I hate something, then I just-
Doug Shafer:
You just don't write about it.
Jay McInerney:
Don't write about it.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah (laughing). You know, I think the books have filled a, a, a niche, uh, filled a need over the years, although, although I have to say that since, since I started writing about wine, the landscape has changed so much, and now there's an amazing amount of very good wine writing in book form, on the internet, and blogs. Uh, it's, you know, it's been a real renaissance. I think I could retire right now and nobody would, nobody would really notice. But, back in nine-... you know, back in the late 90s there, you had, you had these English critics sort of writing about, you know, the scent of hawthorn blossoms, and you, and you had the Wine Spectator guys, like, writing this really technical stuff about barrels and, you know, and fermentation-
Doug Shafer:
At this point, all these years you're writing wine columns, you're still writing novels, right? I mean, that's-
Jay McInerney:
Yes. Absolutely, yeah.
Doug Shafer:
So you're doing-
Jay McInerney:
I'm, uh-
Doug Shafer:
... how's, what's that like, bouncing back and forth between novels and wine columns?
Jay McInerney:
You know, I, I, I feel like I do it in different moods.
Doug Shafer:
Huh.
Jay McInerney:
The wine writing just feels right some days, and, and the fiction feels right other days, and, I probably shouldn't admit this, but I, I, I can write a wine column when I'm hung over (laughing), but I, but I can't write a good one, I can't write a good short story when I'm hunger over. Not, not, not that I ever get hangovers.
Doug Shafer:
No, no. Me either (laughing).
Jay McInerney:
But it's, yeah. I don't know, it's just different, different muscles. And also, I don't know. It's, it's always fun writing about wine for me. It's a little more, huh. Its' a little more serious, it's a little more daunting, sitting down to start a new chapter of the latest novel. But I am, I'm in the middle of, I don't know, what must be my 10th novel, I think, now.
Doug Shafer:
Wow. That's, that's great.
Jay McInerney:
Ninth or tenth. I really should know this, but yeah. I think it's the 10th novel. And, I mean, I certainly, I have a, I have a new book of wine columns kind of ready to go, but we haven't really organized that yet. It's been a, in case you haven't noticed, a very strange year (laughing).
Doug Shafer:
Well, yeah. I was gonna, yeah, how are you doing? You know something, you know, you had a good run, but your, your luck ran out. Uh, what ha-, you got-
Jay McInerney:
Oh, it's been a terrible year.
Doug Shafer:
... you got screwed. What, what happened in 2019, after Christmas?
Jay McInerney:
Yeah, right after Christmas, uh, my house in, uh, in Bridgehampton, New York burned, uh, almost to the ground-
Doug Shafer:
Oh, Jesus.
Jay McInerney:
... and, uh, we were a-, we were a-, we were actually in it at the time. And fortunately, fortunately, we got out and all our pets got out safely, um-
Doug Shafer:
Good.
Jay McInerney:
But, um, you know, this, this really is our main residence, uh, and, and was, it was really heartbreaking.
Doug Shafer:
Wow.
Jay McInerney:
Uh, you know, I lost a lot of stuff. Uh, fortunately I'd, uh, I didn't lose my book collection.
Doug Shafer:
Oh.
Jay McInerney:
I, I collect first editions, mainly of Hemingway and Fitzgerald, um, all of which are pretty much irreplaceable, as, you know-
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
... they're signed to Dorothy Parker, or, you know, or Hemingway, or whatever. So I was running back in the house getting these books out. (Laughing) The firemen were yelling at me to get out of the house. Um-
Doug Shafer:
Oh.
Jay McInerney:
But, you know. No, first were the pets, then, then the books.
Doug Shafer:
Right.
Jay McInerney:
It was very, very traumatizing. And then, um, then of course this, uh, general catastrophe. Started to unfold in, uh, in March and our, our dog died. It's just-
Doug Shafer:
Just, yeah.
Jay McInerney:
It was a... I... it was a very bad year last year-
Doug Shafer:
Yeah.
Jay McInerney:
... and I'm very, very glad it's over, and, uh, the house is being rebuilt, and in the meantime we're spending some time on the West Coast-
Doug Shafer:
Good.
Jay McInerney:
... which is pretty nice.
Doug Shafer:
Good.
Jay McInerney:
But yeah. We, we, we got a house in Malibu and I'm, I'm spending, spending some time here (laughing).
Doug Shafer:
Well, bring some of those -
Jay McInerney:
Looking out, looking out over the ocean right now.
Doug Shafer:
Look at you. Bring some of those '82 Bordeaux out and I'll, I'll drive down and see you (laughing). That's motivation, baby.
Jay McInerney:
Yeah, that's actually the, the next... Yeah. The next step is, of course, I have to get a, a wine refrigerator installed here. I hope the pandemic is-
Doug Shafer:
No, we're, we're hanging in-
Jay McInerney:
... Hope you didn't do too badly.
Doug Shafer:
Yeah, we're hanging in there. You know, we're, we're growing grapes, we're making wine. Um-
Jay McInerney:
Are you gonna-
Doug Shafer:
... you know, it's just different
Jay McInerney:
... open up? Are you gonna open up the tasting rooms soon, or-
Doug Shafer:
Um, we're revamping it right now. We're kind of re-looking at the whole program, see what we're gonna do, and we're just taking a pause. So, we're working on that right now, so we'll see what happens. But, uh, already people are, you know, reaching out and saying, "Hey, we're gonna do a trade show in the fall. You want to come pour wine, and we're kind of going, "Okay, I'm not sure yet, but." So, I think it's just a... Well, you know. We're, we're all in the same boat and it's just kind of-
Jay McInerney:
Yeah.
Doug Shafer:
... you know, baby, it's baby steps. Like, what are you gonna do?
Jay McInerney:
Well, I hope to be there before too long.
Doug Shafer:
All right.
Jay McInerney:
Uh, maybe even this summer. So, I will-
Doug Shafer:
Good. Let me know, will you?
Jay McInerney:
I will check in with you soon.
Doug Shafer:
All right, man. Jay, thanks so much for taking the time to do this. It's been great talking to you.
Jay McInerney:
My pleasure. Thank you.
Doug Shafer:
All right.
Jay McInerney:
It's great talking to you, Doug.
Doug Shafer:
All right. Be good. See you around. Bye-bye.