McInerney. All Grown Up

What a thirty years it’s been. How It Ended, Jay McInerney’s new collection of short stories, is a compilation of some of the “warm up exercises” he’s written for books over the last three decades. The New York Times calls the book a “synoptic map of McInerney’s literary progress from the 1980s (downtown clubs, New Wave music, cocaine) to the 2000s (Upper East Side lairs, The Sopranos, pastoral detox spas).” McInerney exhibits his inspiration from American literary greats like F. Scott Fitzgerald and John O’Hara. From “In the North-West Frontier Province,” a commentary on our post-terroist culture, to “My Public Service,” about a philandering senator, McInerney’s tales span the recent life of New York City. Writes the Times: “The wit is mordant, the language honed, the status calibration elegantly exact—and it all enriches the fatalistic mood.”