Jay McInerney's works document the urban world of New York and provide a peek into the glitzy, sometimes overly consumerist existence about which average Americans know little. Although he is often categorized with other chroniclers of the New York scene such as Bret Easton Ellis and Tama Janowitz, younger writers known as the literary "brat pack," McInerney resists the label. As he explained to Ron Hogan in a 1996 interview, "I was the first writer in that bunch. . . . I never particularly felt I was part of a group." He added, "Really, I just see my career as a succession of books, each one of which has been an attempt to do something different, maybe a bit more ambitious than the book before it."

John Barrett McInerney Jr. was born on 13 January 1955 in Hartford, Connecticut, to John Barrett McInerney, an international sales executive for Scott Paper, and Marilyn Jean (Murphy...