Mister Noble Rot meets the ‘hedonist in the Words by Dan Keeling cellar’ Jay McInerney Photos by Alex Lockett There’s a theory that when someone becomes seriously brand of amorality and excess, he writes prose as famous their image is indelibly frozen on to the collective precise as a fine Burgundy, another of his passions consciousness. For Jay McInerney – novelist, writer and one about which he has written extensively. If and avid bon vivant – this happened sometime during fame first took him inside ’80s Manhattan’s art and 1984 when his zeitgeist-defining debut Bright Lights, music scenes, his wine-writing career has broadened Big City and hedonistic antics established his reputation his cross-section of friends and potential subject as the hard-partying bad boy of modern American matter, from real-estate developers and political literature. Innovatively written in the second person, this journalists to astronomers and the notorious, now dark-humoured tale of 20-something disillusionment in incarcerated, wine-forger Rudy Kurniawan. “I thought Manhattan has a degree of self-reference about it as its Rudy would be interesting to write about, but he was protagonist stumbles from one vacuous liaison to nervous about being scrutinised. Happily, I never fell another, and gets fired from his job as a fact-checker for under the spell,” says McInerney. The New Yorker (as McInerney once was). So enduring is We meet for Cornas and pizza at a restaurant the novel’s shadow that less-assured authors might rue that boasts one of Manhattan’s most sainted wine ever having written it. But no one-hit wonder, McInerney lists, Pasquale Jones, a short walk from the Greenwich went on to publish Story of My Life (1988), which to my Village apartment McInerney shares with his fourth mind is even better, written from the perspective of its wife, publishing heiress Anne Hearst. Youthful and 21-year-old anti-heroine, whose narcissistic lifestyle unjaded, he is convivial company: I imagine him, in seems prophetic of social-media culture. another life, sat at the bar of a Galway pub, telling Born in 1955 in Hartford, Connecticut, stories in the accent his ancestral surname suggests. McInerney grew up following his father’s marketing Although I’m an outsider 20 years his junior, I relate to job around the USA, before settling down at high his fascination with New York, and how it has changed, school in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His passion for whether through themes such as middle-class families literature burgeoning, he moved to Manhattan in the struggling to raise kids there (as in his most recent late 1970s, where almost all of his novels are set, and novel, Bright, Precious Days), or his depictions of its studied writing under Raymond Carver at Syracuse often outrageous wine collectors’ scene. Some say University. A master of characterisation, and an McInerney accords ’80s Manhattan a semi-mythical unflinching observer of the Big Apple’s particular status; I say, has anywhere ever sounded so much fun?

36 Noble Rot 37 Noble Rot Dan Keeling Does writing fiction and non-fiction have DK You once wrote that Condrieu was your favourite much in common? white wine. Is that still true?

Jay McInerney I’ve always tried to write about wine JM For certain purposes. I find it a decadent pleasure, as a novelist, from the point of view of talking about the I really do. I don’t think it makes a great apéritif, but people, but also about the aesthetics of wine tasting. sometimes I think of it as winter wine. It’s rich, heavier I try to imagine what a wine tastes like not from a strictly and breaks all the rules of fine white wine. It’s low in literal point of view, but from a more metaphorical, acid. It doesn’t age very well, yet I just find it so analogical point of view. When I was writing early on decadently pleasurable. My favourite is André Perret about Chardonnays, it was the heyday of ‘Coteau de Chéry’. Some Condrieus can get a little too Pamela Anderson. So when you say that a Marcassin heavy and rich. You know, La Doriane by Guigal is Chardonnay reminds you of Pamela Anderson and sometimes a little bit too much – like stripper’s tits. How a Chablis of Kate Moss – remember, this was 1996 – much flesh do you need? [Laughs] people say, “Oh, I think I know what he means.” I’ve never been one for technical training – I don’t DK How do you feel about the rise of natural ? really go in for talking about brix and malolactic fermentation or literal flavour descriptors. It’s like JM I like natural wines if they’re good. If you go over to Robert Parker’s notes about Côte-Rôtie – you’ve got Brooklyn, it’s a whole different world in terms of the wine raspberries and bacon and violets, and I sort of lists; instead of revering Coche-Dury, people talk about know what he means, but at the same time, it sounds Ganevat as the ultimate white wine. I recently had a nonsensical to the average person. So, I look for more 2000 Thierry Allemand Cornas ‘Sans Soufre’, which is figurative ways to write about wine as a storyteller, unquestionably natural, and it was one of the best wines and as an inventor of similes and metaphors. I’ve had this year. That said, I think an awful lot of what appears on some natural wine lists is unpleasant. There’s DK Did Parker take himself too seriously? a sort of bastion of natural wine in Manhattan right now called Frenchette – it’s a very fashionable and JM Yeah, but he had to. I think Parker created controversial restaurant in Tribeca that has 100% a revolution, and all revolutionaries are serious. natural wine on its list and a kind of ‘our way or the high For me, I never could’ve learned so much about way’ attitude that upsets a lot of people. First of all wine so quickly if it weren’t for Parker – he cut through because they’re dogmatic, and they won’t let you bring so much bullshit. Whether you loved him or hated him, wine. And they serve it in these stubby glasses, which I he was the most important force in all of wine. I mean, find kind of disrespectful [see ‘Glass Half Full’, p11, for the Bordelais changed their style of winemaking more]. I’m able to navigate that list because there are a because of him – not necessarily for the better, but few makers I like on it, whereas I want to drink 80% of a they did. They pandered to his palate, and so did the list like the one here at Pasquale Jones. Châteauneuf-du-Pape producers; all of those ‘special cuvées’, that was all Parker’s doing. I’m an DK Is Manhattan slowly turning into a big shopping admirer of Parker, but it was a godsend to Burgundy mall where only the few can afford to live? that Faiveley sued him and kicked him out of Burgundy or he’d have exerted a Parker-ising effect there, too. JM That's a good question. I think it’s still setting the Burgundy is everything that Parker isn’t, but if he standards at the high end, but Manhattan real estate hadn’t withdrawn from covering it, it would be was crazy until recently, and driving young people and different today. the middle classes out toward the Boroughs. There’s actually a downturn right now in real estate, and I’m DK Do you think the rise of celebrity sommeliers, interested to see how that shakes out in the long run. which happened much more in America than in Britain, But a lot of the innovation has gone to Brooklyn. On the is related to the demise of Parker’s influence? other hand, it’s interesting that the best restaurant to open in Brooklyn in recent years is called Brooklyn JM Yes, and interestingly enough, the sommelier palate Fare. It recently moved into Manhattan, so maybe that’s tends to be the exact opposite of his – high acid, more an indication that if you have a three-star restaurant, balance, lower-alcohol wines. It’s really interesting the Manhattan is still the ideal. I made my career writing way that all happened as Parker was receding, and about Manhattan, and I don’t want to write it off, but it’s suddenly you have young sommeliers setting the tone certainly much more expensive and less diverse than it for wine fashion. I can’t say enough good things about was when I arrived. Of course, when I first came here, New York sommelier culture. It’s just incredible: 15 years it was in danger of going down the toilet with all the ago, the idea of a little restaurant like this having two crime and the corruption and the filth. It was really Top: Interview juice sommeliers on the floor would be mind-boggling, and dicey. In 1979/1980, it was kind of a toss of the coin Left to right: Noble Rot's Mark Andrew, now it’s kind of the rule. whether it was just going to keep going downhill and Dan Keeling and Jay McInerney, Pasquale Jones, NYC, 4 October 2019

38 Noble Rot 39 Noble Rot Jay McInerney, Little Italy, NYC, 4 October 2019 the ’80s were the golden period. It was the best of times and the worst of times

become a place that people fled from. As it turns out, morning trying to sell me one of his paintings, because it went in the other direction. I only avoided being he needed to score. He originally wanted $800, then mugged because I outran muggers three times, but $600, but at that time you could take only $200 out everybody else I knew got mugged. I had a Volkswa- of the ATM machine. As a result, I never bought the gen that was stolen three times, and the third time it painting – which could’ve been my nest egg today. never came back. Your apartment was inevitably broken into. There was a heroin epidemic when I first DK If that was Manhattan 40 years ago, where do came here that was responsible for a lot of crime. Later, you think it’s going to be 20 years from now? there was the crack epidemic. Now, you could fall asleep on the sidewalk and your wallet would still JM I’ve seen a number of recessions since I was here, be in your pocket when you woke up. and I kind of feel like we’re due one now – I think we almost need one. Real-estate prices have become so DK But it was such a great time for creativity… crazy that if you ask any restaurateur, the big problem with opening a restaurant is affording rents. There’s JM To my mind, the ‘80s were the golden period, still a great deal of life here – people raising families, despite the high crime and the AIDS epidemic. It was going to the local school – but it’s become increasingly the best of times and the worst of times, because you difficult and it makes me sad. If I were 21 now, I don’t had those things going on, and yet in terms of music think I’d be able to come to Manhattan. I mean, and art, it was an incredibly creative period. Painting even certain areas of Brooklyn have become really was practically reinvented in Manhattan in the late expensive. When I first came here, there were so ‘70s/early ‘80s. Conceptual art had almost wiped many marginal areas, like where we are now. out the idea that painting was even legitimate until Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat from the DK What was the one area where you’d never go? street level, and Julian Schnabel and Eric Fischl from a slightly more academic perspective, made it legitimate JM Anything east of First Avenue in the East Village was again. We all know that with punk rock there’s this sort really dangerous. At night you’d be very foolish to go of /New York divorce, but there’s no question there. There were some clubs there, like The Pyramid that a lot of it was born in New York – and then came Club and Save the Robots. So, we’d go, but it was the new wave scene. When I got here in 1979, you scary. Save the Robots was an after-hours club, so it could still go to CBGB and see Talking Heads, Blondie would open about two in the morning, and usually by and the Ramones. then your judgement was pretty impaired. At that time I wasn’t drinking much wine, mostly vodka and cocaine. DK What’s the best gig you’ve ever seen? DK Did you feel stereotyped as some kind of coke- JM The Clash at Bonds might’ve been the best. I also snorting-model-dating-rat-pack-author after breaking saw Talking Heads debuting Remain in Light at Radio through with Bright Lights, Big City? City Music Hall in 1980, and that was one of the greatest concerts I ever went to, too. They played the JM Oh yes, it was a pain in the ass. But you could say whole album – which is a masterpiece – on the day that the good news was that people were handing me it came out. It was kind of controversial, too, because drugs all the time. It was also the bad news, but it was they’d had a very minimalist, stripped-down sound until amazing how many people wanted to do drugs with me they got together with Brian Eno. With the art scene, as a sort of badge of authenticity. For years, if I ever had Haring and Basquiat used to come to parties at my a cold, the interviewer would inevitably say that I went apartment. Basquiat came over one night at one in the to the bathroom several times and was very congested.

41 Noble Rot But for a long time I resented how hard it was to get DK So you’re pessimistic about its future? disappointed suitor, and she had 280 stitches, and DK Out of everyone you met, who could go away from that, until I decided, hey, most people don’t she became this sort of heroine for saying she still loved the hardest? even have one book like that. It also gave me a career, JM What I’m optimistic about is that global warming New York. And she asked me to stop doing blow, and I’ve continued to make my living as a writer, mostly has given a lot of lesser appellations the ability to so I did. But I couldn’t understand why I was getting JM Do you remember the film director Abel Ferrara? as a novelist, but also screenplays and journalism, so make much better wines, whether we’re talking so drunk, and I finally figured out that you can’t drink He was a fucking maniac – he scared the shit out of me. I’ve come to terms with it. Marsannay or Saint-Romain. I think there are a lot a litre of vodka without counterbalancing it with a gram He made Bad Lieutenant and a bunch of other cult of younger growers operating out of these areas who, of cocaine, or else you fall down. I mean, it’s common movies. I never really hung out with Keith Richards, DK How did you go about writing from the perspective for the foreseeable future, will make the Burgundy sense. [Laughs] who would’ve put me under the table. of a 21-year-old girl in Story of My Life? I thought that experience accessible. But if I were much younger, was impressive. I’d concentrate much more on the Jura. The Jura is like DK Is there a better city to get high in than New York? DK Did you ever meet any Sopranos-type characters? Brooklyn. There are people making Burgundian-style JM Strangely enough, Story of My Life is Julian wines there, aside from the traditional oxidative stuff. JM Mmm, it was great. It was a great love affair for me. JM I knew a few. There was a wonderful bar called Barnes’ [McInerney’s good friend and fellow novelist] When one asset becomes too pricey, smart people Fortunately, heroin wasn’t my thing, painkillers aren’t my Marylou’s not far from here that was a melting pot favourite book of mine – not what I would have look elsewhere. thing, benzos aren’t, but cocaine was. The first time I tried for many years. Jack Nicholson was one of the guessed he would have picked. I was dating this girl for it, I thought: Ahh, yeah, this is what you’re supposed to owners with the son of a mobster, and during the a couple of months back in the mid-’80s, and I ended DK What’s the most you’ve ever spent on a bottle? feel like. [Laughs.] And I loved it – it just made me feel evening it morphed into a club where mobsters, up hanging out a lot with her and her friends, and they socially confident, sexually powerful and gregarious. restaurant workers and certain Hollywood people were playing Truth or Dare and snorting coke and JM I’d be embarrassed to say! I will tell you what it went. I remember spending a good part of one night talking. Eventually, the language itself just created the was, though – 1961 Jaboulet Hermitage ‘La Chapelle’. DK You went from aspiring to famous novelist quite talking to this guy who was the underboss of the book. The way they talked was so fascinating that I just I bought it five years ago and haven’t opened it yet. It’s quickly. What are the best and worst things about fame? Gambino crime family. I saw him about a week later mimicked that speech and it propelled the book along. one of those iconic wines that I haven’t had. That’s one and went up and put my hand on his shoulder to say It was so much fun to write. It was like putting on a pair of the reasons I bought what seemed the perfect bottle JM The best thing was doors were all open to you. hello, and instantly these guys grabbed me and threw of Manolo Blahnik heels and going to the office and with the perfect provenance. Everybody wanted to meet me, and beautiful girls who me up against the wall, because they didn’t know sitting down to write. One of the things I was very never would have looked at me before were suddenly if I was going after him. pleased about was that 80% of the fans of that book DK Which one domaine or château has given you very interested. I got to meet some of the most interesting were women. Back in 1988, I didn’t get a whole lot of most pleasure? people of the time like Jagger, Bowie, Basquiat and DK If 24-year-old Jay could see 64-year-old Jay, shit for cultural appropriation, which I might do today. Haring. I was part of the scene. But the downside was could he have imagined he’d be into Burgundy and That’s one of the things I find very disturbing about the JM In Bordeaux, I think that the greatest-performing that, as a writer, the stereotype of me as a sort of Thierry Allemand Cornas? current climate. The whole point of fiction is for the properties of the last 100 years are La Mission club-going, coke-snorting party boy didn’t really help writer and the reader to enter unfamiliar realms of Haut-Brion and Haut-Brion, without question. It’s, me in the literary world. There were a lot of people who JM The 24-year-old Jay assumed that he would die experience and put themselves in someone else’s like, every since the ‘20s. Everybody knows felt I was having too much fun and thought it was their young, like most of his idols – Dylan Thomas, Scott shoes. The idea that a white man can only write about about the ‘55 La Mission, which is unbelievable. business to bring me down. I mean, as a Brit, you should Fitzgerald – and could never envision life beyond 39. other white men is so limiting, yet that seems to be I think the ‘61 is one of the greatest First Growths. understand that impulse. [Laughs] These are bonus years for Jay. [Laughs] where we’re going. For me, that’s my left-bank Bordeaux. I wouldn’t say ‘go-to’, because it’s a special occasion. And for years Dan Keeling and Jay McInerney DK As a Burgundy lover, how do you feel about the I bought a lot of Domaine Dujac because I really like wines becoming so sought after and expensive? the whole-cluster house style. That was my gateway drug to Burgundy. The first vintage I bought was ‘90, JM It’s actually very similar to what we were just saying then I bought ‘91, which at the time was considered about Manhattan. For much of its existence, Manhattan a shit vintage, but has now become one of my has been the most interesting city in the world, yet the all-time favourite Burgundy . escalation of real-estate prices has led to a kind of a brain and talent drain. I think Burgundy is in danger DK When did you calm down on the substances, and of something very similar. It used to be that ordinary how much wine do you consume? mortals could occasionally buy a bottle of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti because the price differential JM I certainly drink a bottle, a bottle and a half a day, between that and a De Montille wasn’t that extreme. and calmed down on substances five or six years ago. Now, the average person can’t experience DRC or It ceases being your friend at a certain point, probably Armand Rousseau wines at all. So, again, I feel lucky long before you realise. I now can’t think of anything that I discovered it when I did, because it’s becoming worse than pacing the length of my apartment at two such a rarefied experience, a kind of a trophy-hunting thirty in the morning, trying to think of who I could call, experience for international money. I wonder whether text or proposition. [Laughs] the Burgundian peasant vineyard culture can survive the real-estate valuations, the taxation on the estate, DK It sounds like you gave it a good whack. Have there and the participation of relatives who don’t necessarily been periods when you’ve abstained? care about the reputation of the domaines and the terroir. Many domaines will be under tremendous JM Definitely. The first time I stopped for a while I was pressure to sell. Maybe I’m a dinosaur in loving dating this girl named Marla Hanson, who is a model Manhattan and Burgundy. and very famous. Her face had been slashed by a

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