McInerney tried to remedy the matter in The Last of the Savages (his counterculture novel) by telling the story through a peripheral narrator à la Nick Carraway in Gatsby. Unfortunately, this character was contrived as little more than a stick-figure foil for the wild-man protagonist, the all-too-aptly named Will Savage, and the result is a leaden potboiler that can hardly be connected to the author of Bright Lights, Big City.