On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever

Time marches on, both for Jay McInerney, who is never going to escape the aura of  1984’s Bright Lights, Big City, and for his characters, golden couple Russell and Corrine Calloway. They first appeared in his 1992 fourth novel, Brightness Falls, set against the the financial turmoil of the late 1980s, and returned in 2006’s The Good Life, coping with the aftermath of 9/11. Now, McInerney picks up their story in Bright, Precious Days (Knopf, digital galley), chronicling the years 2006-2008, when Art and Love again collide with Power and Money.

Although the Calloways have always seen themselves as belonging to the first category, they’ve hung around enough with those in the second that lines have blurred. Literary editor and publisher Russell rues that they can’t afford to buy the $6 million Tribeca loft that’s going condo on them, while Corrine, who works part-time for a non-profit food bank, has to wear one of two or three same-old-things to the charity galas they attend with friends’ tickets. Then there are the 11-year-old twins’ private school fees, and the borrowed summer house in the Hamptons is on the market.

That sounds a bit snarky, and I don’t mean to be, at least not much. The Calloways may be older — in their 50s — but they’re not especially wiser, and I still enjoy their company, despite and because of their flaws, as well as the voyeuristic appeal of their glittery New York life. Russell’s feeling overshadowed by the hot young writer he’s edited and mentored, while Corrine is again attracted to her former lover, multimillionaire Luke, who first showed up in The Good Life. Corrine’s younger sister Hilary pops up in unexpected places, detonating one family secret and covering up another. Everyone misses writer Jeff Pierce, who succumbed to drugs a long, long time ago, but whose reputation is being resurrected by a new generation.

The story may feel soapy and the writing a bit cliched, but on the whole it’s still engaging.  There’s substance as well as style, wit and wistfulness, irony and nostalgia. McInerney goes Tom Wolfe every now and then, what with the ladies who lunch and gossip, and does Fitzgerald too, with Russell’s yearnings and Corrine remembering what it was like to be 22. The title Bright, Precious Days suits the book. In the end I liked it, so much so that I asked for a copy for my upcoming birthday. Yep, time marches on, but some books I want to hold on to.