Watch Web Exclusive Video with Jay McInerney on George Plimpton
In 1982 The Paris Review was the first magazine to publish a short story by Jay McInerney. “It’s Six A.M. Do You Know Where You Are?” shared the fiction pages with works by Michael Cunningham, Lamar Herrin, Norman Mailer, Barbara Milton and Craig Nova.
In this film outtake from Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself, McInerney recalls getting a phone call from The Paris Review editor George Plimpton, “out of the blue,” in 1981. McInerney had sent a story to The Paris Review, and George asked if there was other writing he could look at. Overnight, McInerney wrote “It’s Six A.M. Do You Know Where You Are?,” which sparked Bright Lights, Big City, his iconic novel about a young man adrift the drug-fueled haze of New York City’s nightlife.
McInerney says that Plimpton “liked to tell people that he had saved me from becoming a pharmacist.”
