This was the case with his last book, 1998's "Model Behavior," which contained a short novel with the same title that was essentially a reworking of "Bright Lights, Big City." The characters were all older, though not much wiser, and McInerney's signature theme -- the corruption of youthful idealism by the cold reality of affluence -- was present, but otherwise the effort felt phoned in, a bit tired. And 1996's "The Last of the Savages," his last real novel, was ambitious but also meandering and, for a hillbilly aesthete such as me, irritating in its preposterous depictions of Old South gentility colliding head-on with the counterculture. In fact, the last McInerney offering I truly dug was "Brightness Falls," his 1992 response to Tom Wolfe's "The Bonfire of the Vanities."

Here was McInerney, the last Fitzgeraldian, in top form, and painting on a wide canvas. A satire both of '80s Wall Street and of the publishing business (his caricature of Harold Brodkey alone is worth the price of admission), the novel was also richly compassionate. The Boston Globe called it McInerney's "most giving" book, an affectionate verdict for an author who once posed as a Ninja warrior on the cover of Esquire, poised to decapitate his critics, and who was often lumped in with the "cocaine novelists" (as Lev Grossman once put it) of the Reagan years.

Unfortunately, McInerney has thus far failed to live up to the promise of "Brightness Falls." True, it's slightly ridiculous to fault a writer who with "Bright Lights, Big City" did succeed in capturing, in fewer than 200 pages, an entire decade -- a now-vanished but still influential moment -- in the life of America's most vital metropolis. (McInerney himself said that he was lucky to have written that one "zeitgeist" novel.) Still, an impression of wasted days fell upon his fans.

The profiles he contributed to the New Yorker were slickly spun fluff, literate candy of the sort that seemed more at home in W or Vogue. He was obsessed with models. And celebrities. And the social hierarchy. His fawning interview with Julia Roberts drove his second wife to a face-lift. He co-wrote a screenplay, about the premature death from AIDS of supermodel Gia Carangi. Improbably, "Bright Lights, Big City" was made into a musical, which was widely ridiculed. Clearly, Jay Mac had slipped over the edge. Clearly, Jay Mac had shot his wad.

Or had he? If the '90s demonstrated anything, it was that the old notion of becoming a famous novelist had lost much of its shine. What, after all, did an accomplished young writer like McInerney have to look forward to after that initial flush of success? The lunch basket at Yaddo? A career teaching moody collegians the gospel according to Raymond Carver? Getting spiked by Alec Baldwin at second base in the annual East Hampton artists and writers softball game? Yet another lunch with Binky Urban? Day after soul-sucking day at the computer, struggling to fabricate plots, when -- goddamn! -- there was vastly more fun stuff, not to mention snazzier people, to be found outside?

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"