The majestic tawdriness of L’Affaire Edwards had us scrambling for literary precedents – The Scarlet Letter?, Silas Marner? – but, amid the swirl of rumors, we almost overlooked The McInerney Connection. Luckily, our trusted fellow readers at The New York Times were there with the scoop: In the mid-1980s, John Edwards’ apparent paramour, Rielle Hunter – then known (somewhat less mellifluously) as Lisa Druck – ran with New York’s literary Brat Pack. Indeed, Jay McInerney based a book on her. Mr. McInerney told the Times that his 1988 novel, Story of My Life,
was narrated in the first person from the point of view of an ostensibly jaded, cocaine-addled sexually voracious 20-year-old who was, shall we say, inspired by Lisa…
This revelation was apparently enough to vault Story of My Life into Amazon’s Top 500 books.
In an impressive feat of commitment and/or masochism, Peter Miller of the Freebird Books and Goods blog actually sat down this weekend and read Story of My Life in its entirety. His findings are fascinating and suggestive. Of an older conquest, for example, Lisa/Rielle/”Allison” tells us, “I never thought he was very good-looking, but you could tell he thought he was. He believed it so much he could actually sell other people on the idea.” And: “He seemed older and sophisticated and we had great sex, so why not?”
