Dan's Papers - May 16, 2008 - Jay McInerney

According to The American Heritage Dictionary, a Renaissance man is one who has broad intellectual interests and is accomplished in areas of both the arts and sciences. Since oenology is as much a science as it an art, Jay McInerney, who wrote the very popular "Uncorked" column for House & Garden, qualifies as a Renaissance man extraordinaire.

Any sentient person who can read English or another of the two dozen languages into which the book was translated, knows that the first McInerney novel, gigantic bestseller Bright Lights, Big City is as synonymous with New York as is the Big Apple. In defining an era - the '80s - it interprets a decade that makes the notorious '20s look like a long church picnic.

1979 was the year McInerney arrived in New York and got a job reading unsolicited manuscripts at Random House. After that, The New Yorker hired him as a fact checker and fired him shortly thereafter. It turned out that being a fiction writer at heart, he was a very bad fact checker. Undaunted, McInerney left the city, taking with him the inspiration for Jamie Conway (Jamie/Jay) his most famous protagonist. When he returned to New York after studying for several years under the late short story master Raymond Carver, he brought his novel.

McInerney also wrote the screenplay for the movie version of Bright Lights, Big City, starring Michael J. Fox, a beloved but far less dashing figure than the author himself. Since then - 1988 - he's written a number of other scripts and one movie for HBO. It was Gia, which recounted the spectacular career spiral of a drug addicted super model who died of AIDS. Memorable enough already but made more so by providing Angelina Jolie with her first star turn.

McInerney emerged unscathed from the tumultuous time he chronicled and has written six more novels and a collection of short stories called How It Ended, scheduled for publication in January 2009 by Knopf. Aside from the monthly wine column that ran in House & Garden (RIP), McInerney's work has appeared in many magazines including Esquire, New York, The New Yorker, The Guardian in the UK and as a sign of his popularity - Corriere della Serra, where his articles are regularly translated into Italian.

Unlike Dorian Gray, McInerney's hair is turning gray. Otherwise he looks much the same as he looked 30 years ago when he first set foot in Manhattan. His blue eyes and quick grin instantly summon up the word 'boyish.'

Publishers, readers and critics have always considered his work seriously, but he's taken his hits (drugs, divorces, high drama) and being a celebrated author and charming boulevardier, it's been difficult for him to avoid a potentially blinding tabloid limelight. At 52, however, he has not retreated but rather, has embraced a less public lifestyle. He may have been influenced by his marriage a year ago to Anne Hearst. As a granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst and the sister of Patty Hearst, she is a person who knows the value of privacy. The other perhaps even more powerful element in the moderation of Jay McInerney is fatherhood.

Both Hearst (who feels that Water Mill is home) and McInerney have been coming out east for years, mostly in summer - but now they split their time between Manhattan and the East End because McInerney's children, 13-year-old twins, Maisie and Barrett, have moved to East Hampton with their mother, artist Helen Bransford. The extended family does not by any means stop with Maisie, Barrett, Helen, Jay, Anne and Anne's two older children Randy and Amanda. At Ashgrove Farm, the Hearst/McInerney residence, there's Einstein the emu, Lulu the wallaby, Orlando the parrot, Lily, Bella and Bean, the dogs. The llama died, but miniature donkeys are in the offing. Ashgrove is maintained in the spirit of what was once the largest private zoo in America at William Randolph Hearst's incomparable San Simeon.

A few miles further east at the Bransford/McInerney residence, the menagerie includes Tillie, Buddie and Meatsie, the cats, plus Pinkie the baby pig and Forkie the senior pig. Forkie's adventures evading the staff at the Carlyle Hotel when he lived with McInerney and Bransford are fictionalized in Swine Not?, a new novel illustrated by Bransford and written by Jimmy Buffett.

On a rainy Saturday afternoon at Ashgrove Farm, McInerney, the paterfamilias who looks like a grad student, said that one of the determining factors in moving the children up from Nashville was the multi-faceted appeal of the Ross School. Since the twins first enrolled in fifth grade, the school has confirmed McInerney and Bransford's hopes. Its diversity. Its challenging curriculum. Its balance between educational adventurousness and academic fundamentals. And its campus where the facilities are more impressive than many colleges.

This year, McInerney and Hearst - who is known for her dedicated participation on behalf of organizations like Best Buddies (the Special Olympics) and Riverkeeper - agreed to chair the annual Ross School event, which raises money for the Stephen J. Ross Scholarship Fund. To that end they were instrumental in arranging, through the Vered Galley in East Hampton, for a piece by John Chamberlain to be sold in a silent auction. Also, for the auction, they supplied a Harry Winston watch, a case of Silver Oak Cabernet Sauvignon and the most original item, which will probably be the most coveted - a character in the current novel to be named after the highest bidder (what price immortality?) for that privilege.

So now, McInerney, who once expended an awful lot of energy in the pursuit of A) wine B) women and C) song, is at work on his seventh novel. He A) appreciates wine more B) having left bachelorhood behind permanently, is devoted to his wife and as for C) music, nothing much has changed except instead of going out to a club (where his name is still always at the door) to see CHIC featuring Nile Rogers, he gets on the phone and asks his old friend Nile to bring the funky disco band out and play for The Starlight Ball - the kids' school fundraiser

The fifth annual Starlight Ball will be held Saturday, May 17 at 6 p.m. at the Ross School. For more information, call Jennifer Rockford at 631-907-5171 or jrockford@ross.org.