Jay McInerny book party for “Bright, Precious Days”
at the 21 Club in New York. All photos:
©Patrick McMullan/Sean Zanni/PMC.
Last week philanthropist and New York and Hamptons social figure Audrey Gruss hosted a cocktail party at the 21 Club to celebrate the publication of best-selling author Jay McInerney’s most recent book and, well, it was the type of glittery party you’d expect to find in a Jay McInerney novel! The new work from the author of the landmark Bright Lights Big City (a brilliant riff on 80s New York told in the second person) also has the word “bright” in the title (Bright Precious Lights); it also celebrates and looks at the underside of the so-called “New York dream” (different from the American Dream mind you–there are more galas to attend). Bright, Precious Days is McInernery’s third book about world-weary (or rather New York saturated) Corinne and Calloway and it received great reviews in many publications, including the New York Times.
Turing out to congratulate Jay and Anne Hearst McInerney were Patricia Hearst Shaw, Jim Belushi, Bill Bratton and Rikki Klieman, Nicole Miller, Chuck Scarborough, Alina Cho, Alex Papachristidis, Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia, Somers and Jonathan Farkas, Countess Luann de Lesseps and Thomas D’Agostino Jr., Dennis Basso Hunt Slonim, Janna Bullock, and R. Couri Hay,
Additional guests included: Ken Auletta, Ann Barish, Harry Benson, Bill Boggs, Tony Cianci, Bettina Cohn, Will Cotton, Laura Durning, Jill Dergan, George Farias, Richard and Chele Farley, Joanna Goldenstein, Susan Gutfreund, Dana Hammond-Stubgen, Mac Hanger, Richard Howorth, Mary Karr, Chip Kidd, Patricia Kluge, Kristen and Charles Krusen, Debbie Loeffler, Christopher Mason, Grace and Chris Meigher, Bill Moses, Katharina Otto-Bernstein, Hilary and Wilbur Ross, Anna Rothschild, Jane Rothschild, Martine Schaefer, Kim Taipale, Felicia Taylor, Christophe von Hohenberg, Dirk Wittenborn, Lucas Wittmann, Alexandra Wolfe, Victoria Wyman and Bettina Zilkha.
About Bright, Precious Days: It’s is a sexy, cross-generational city saga about Corrine and Russell Calloway, who still are entranced with the idea of New York City and living a certain aspect of its life to the fullest (in a McInerney novel that means plenty of book parties, art openings, galas, TriBeCa lofts and Hamptons summers). And yes, dear reader, there is a cost (beyond all those late Thursday afternoons being stuck on Route 27). Russell, an independent publisher, has great literary taste, but his book company, has less than a great balance sheet. He needs to roll the dice to save his business.His wife Corrine, instead of fast tracking in some glittery career, devotes herself to helping the city’s poor. She and her husband soon discover they’re being priced out of the newly fashionable neighborhood they’ve called home for most of their adult lives, with their children caught in the balance. As the novel unfolds across a period of great change—including the global economic collapse he inherited—the Calloways find themselves and their marriage tested more severely than they ever could have imagined.
