Model Behavior [Paperback]

Jay McInerney (Author)

Book Description

Series: Vintage Contemporaries | Publication Date: March 14, 2000

"A Great Gatsby for the end of the century." -- The Baltimore Sun

Jay McInerney's first novel, Bright Lights, Big City, helped bring about a revolution in contemporary fiction in trade paperback. But more importantly, its publication brought us a major writer of great literary talent and incisive perception.

In his latest novel, Model Behavior, McInerney offers us the portrait of a doubting devotee of the city where vocation, career, and ambition (which only occassionally coincide) run head-on with friendship and love--or merely desire. We see Conor McKnight's well-earned ennui fast becoming anxiety as he tries to protect himself from the harrowing fate that unfolds before his bleary eyes. McInerney is at the peak of his craft in what is sure to become a classic at the end of the century.

This edition contains only the novel Model Behavior, and not the additional seven stories which were published in the original hardcover.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Readers familiar with Jay McInerney's Bright Lights Big City may feel a sense of déjà vu when reading Model Behavior. Once again our hero is a small cog in the glamorous Manhattan media machine. Yet although the players may look the same, the rules of the game have changed--their ambitions and expectations are not the same as they were a decade or more ago. Connor McKnight is not brought low by drugs and other symbols of 1980s-style excess; instead, his relationship is destroyed by premillennial ennui and the numbing effects of his career as a celebrity journalist (celebrity being to the '90s what cocaine was to the '80s). The fact that all these shiny happy people really aren't happy at all is hardly news, but McInerney is both a chronicler and a satirist of this glitzy corner of the world, and his astute wit saves the novel from being as shallow as its subjects. This is not poisonous satire à la Martin Amis but a more affectionate (yet equally effective) mocking of modern pretensions, such as P.G. Wodehouse in Hugo Boss. McInerney's comic timing is best demonstrated in one of the longest scenes, a Thanksgiving dinner that ends in chaos when Connor's father exposes himself to the turkey-munching patrons of a tony Manhattan eatery. While the author's sixth book may not be very far removed from his first, that isn't necessarily a criticism. Like a botanist who studies only pondweed, McInerney has narrowed his focus to perfect it. Model Behavior, and the seven stories collected with it, demonstrate that no one else can render this peculiar little social set as accurately, or as artfully as McInerney. --Simon Leake --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

The protagonists of these witty stories tend to be outsiders, never quite at home in their seemingly glamorous milieus: a young New York movie reviewer who hopes to sell screenplays in Hollywood; a famous actor who visits his wife at a mental institution; an aspiring writer who becomes a crackhead and lives among Manhattan's transvestite hookers. Connor McKnight, the hero of the first-person novel from which the collection takes its title, is no exception to this rule. He abandons his study of Zen and Japanese literature to write for a celebrity magazine in Manhattan and live with a model. At the same time, his best friend, Jeremy Green, a brooding, self-consciously Jewish short-story writer, becomes an unwilling socialite and fears jeopardizing his artistic reputation. Always scrupulous in demonstrating the comparative in-ness of his out-crowd, McInerney impresses here with his trenchant humor and keen eye for detail, as he vengefully skewers the New York literary scene and other, equally unforgiving cliques. (In a typical exchange, Jeremy asks whether Christopher Lehmann-Haupt is Jewish, then complains, "What's-her-fucking-name hates everybody except Anne fucking Tyler and Amy fucking Tan. I don't stand a chance. Wrong initials, wrong sex.") Although the novel ends abruptly and the seven stories, which span McInerny's career, seem tacked on, there is no question but that the aging 1980s wunderkind follows the scene of his early glory (Bright Lights, Big City) with a more savage, jaundiced eye. Say what you will, McInerny has few peers in chronicling a certain segment of contemporary society that he loves and hates at the same time.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Contemporaries Ed edition (March 14, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679749535
• ISBN-13: 978-0679749530
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.4 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (43 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #791,847 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jay McInerney is the author of Bright Lights, Big City, Ransom, Story of My Life, Brightness Falls, The Last of the Savages, Model Behaviour, How It Ended and The Good Life. He lives in New York and Nashville.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars There's no there there..., March 9, 2002

By 

Robert Wellen (CHICAGO, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Model Behavior (Paperback)

Many of the reviewers compare this to Bright Lights, Big City, but I only saw the movie. And this book, like the movie, was mediocore. There are indeed some hilarious and well observed moments--I won't dispute that McInerney is a talented word smith--and those are numerous (the thanksgiving dinner, the very last chapter, etc). But this book never quite feels like a story--more odd observations and bizarre plot twists. The email stalker? Why? The best satires also tell a good story, this one fails at times. As the old saying goes, There is no "there" there. As it attempts to prove how shallow the world is (was in the late 1990s), it is victim of its own shallowness. I was really disappointed. Several reviews here adore it, but not me. The author even attempts to mock himself the book. He attempts to make fun of literary critics who have trashed him--he metions himself in a review of the fictional Jeremy Green's book. It was supposed to be funny I guess, but it struck me as too much. The very last chapter had a style and wit about it, I just wish the rest of the book had that feel more often. In the end, it was just sort of blah--like the white t-shirt on the cover.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars tedious, July 11, 2001

By 

"boysjeep" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Model Behavior (Paperback)

As other reviewers have mentioned, this is basically a 90's version of Bright Lights, Big City. Again, we have the protagonist who's trying to realize big dreams but lacks the determination to make them come true, and we also have the used-to-be-sweet-and-is-now-a-cold model wife. Furthermore, the style of writing, which seemed hip and clever when I read Bright Lights at age 17, now seems tedious and too-clever-for-its-own-good at age 30. I'm not sure if this is because I'm now older or if perhaps Bright Lights' style has been imitated so much that it's now almost a cliche.

The only part of the book that really came alive was the dinner scene at the restaurant when the hero's father has a tantrum at the table and drops his pants. It showed just what a good writer McInerney can be, and unfortunately it showed just how mediocre the rest of the book is.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Don't Write "Model Behavior" Off Your List!, March 15, 2000

By 

Julia Gordon (St. Louis, Mo) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Model Behavior: A Novel and Stories (Hardcover)

I just had to go back and read the Amazon reviews on "Model Behavior: A Novel and 7 Stories" after having finished the book this weekend. Like all good stories, the novel sticks in your head and plays with your memories for days afterward. It's written in a lively, original style and I was lacking for nothing except, occasionally a dictionary! (What a vocabulary!) Out of the seven short stories following, I especially enjoyed "The Business," which, like all McInerney's best work, is smart, funny, and surprising. Read it.