Status Update

There’s a moment in Jay McInerney’s new novel, “Bright, Precious Days” (Knopf), when one of its principals, a book editor in his early fifties, comes to feel that he is a failure: “How was it that after working so hard and by many measures succeeding and even excelling in his chosen field, he couldn’t afford to save this house that meant so much to his family? Their neighbors seemed to manage, thousands of people no smarter than he was—less so, most of them—except perhaps in their understanding of the mechanics of acquisition.”