Model Behavior: A Novel and 7 Stories

With five novels over the past 14 years, Jay McInerney has demonstrated time and again 'his talent for capturing the nuances and idiosyncrasies of our culture' ( "San Francisco Chronicle" ), and nowhere is this more apparent than in "Model Behavior, " in which he returns to the locale of "Bright Lights, Big City," "Story of My Life," and "Brightness Falls": the restless isle of Manhattan, where neither wishes nor even dreams ever sleep. Connor McKnight -- former acolyte of film, Zen and Japanese literature -- is not unaware that these avocations are wildly remote from his present occupation (fledgling celebrity journalist). Moreover, his longtime girlfriend, the fashion model Philomena, suddenly seems curiously remote herself -- and soon enough appears to have decamped, avec diaphragm, for the other coast. Then there's the sister with whom he shared a flamboyantly addled childhood, and who now matches her brilliance for theoretical abstraction with a compassion for world suffering so acute that her own well-being is imperiled. These and other anxieties, Connor finds, can scarcely be assuaged by his trio of flirting obsessions -- a gorgeous stripper, a screenplay-in-progress in his drawer, the notion of a meaningful future -- or by his principal ally and best friend, a monkishly neurotic, militantly vegetarian writer whose sanity balances precisely on the publication of his new story collection and on the fate of his Irish terrier.So now, as Thanksgiving and Christmas bear down upon him, not to mention a female admirer who's stalking him by e-mail, Connor gropes his hapless, hilarious way toward not so much salvation as self-preservation, favoring the right things as he isrelentlessly pursued by all the wrong, bad, ill-advised or plain unlucky. "Model Behavior" is McInerney at full tilt -- while the seven stories included trace the arc of his career and, in their exploration of the varieties of delusion, fame and experience, display anew his rare ability to comprehend and re-create the manic flux of our society.

Review :
"McInerney in full command of his gifts...With their bold, clean characterizations, their emphatic ironies and their disciplined adherence to sound storytelling principles [the stories] remind one of, well, Fitzgerald and also of Hemingway--of classic stories like 'Babylon Revisited' and 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.' They are models of the form" --A. O. Scott on the 7 stories in "The New York Times Book Review "His portraiture is quick, vivid, and often very funny...He has an effortless knack for the cadences of dialogue...It would take a roomful of M. F. A.'s a thousand years to produce a thumbnail sketch as sarcastically sharp as [his] precis of his protagonist's family history" --A. O. Scott reviewing the novel in "The New York Times Book Review "Smart, funny, sexy and well observed" --Philip Watson, "Esquire "Clever, funny and moving...A "Great Gatsby for the end of the century: quietly tragic, a comically rueful guide...with emotional and moral weight" --Ken Tucker "The Baltimore Sun "His sixth novel, "Model Behavior, does for the Nineties what "Bright Lights, Big City did for the Eighties. It is just as stylish, just as sharp, not quite as sad; if anything, funnier" --Tim De Lisle "The Independent on Sunday, London "Splendidly adventurous [and] made all the more fascinating by the maturity of his outlook...McInerney is making far more serious comments about not simply New York values, but American ones in general" -- Frank Egerton, "Financial Times "Jay McInerney has developed into one of the sharpest social observers writing contemporary fiction" --"Seattle Times "High comedy and low living...Afrighteningly evocative idea of the temptations of indulging an addictive, self-obsessed personality...McInerney demonstrates compassion as well as contempt for these spectacularly dysfunctional figures" --David Harspool "Times Literary Supplement, London ""Model Behavior is what you might call meta-McInerney...Swift and amusing, the tone of it is just right...An astute social observer of the cruelties of modern New York, he is also capable of great tenderness" --Gail Caldwell, "Boston Globe "His sixth novel and accompanying stories are sheer delights" --"Library Journal "Lines that drip with wit and scenes that percolate with hilarity. McInerney is most powerful when he writes of things that both attract and repel him...His magic is that he is a writer who continues to experiment" -Gina Vivinetto "St. Petersburg Times