Jay McInerney's "The Business": Narrator, Ego, and Sellout
This essay analyzes Jay McInerney's short story "The Business," focusing on the first-person narrator Martin and the ways in which his inflated self-image shapes every interaction and relationship in the narrative. The paper examines how McInerney uses Martin's credentials, marginalizing attitude toward other characters, and emotional detachment to construct a portrait of intellectual arrogance. It then traces Martin's gradual artistic capitulation to commercial Hollywood pressures, arguing that despite his sense of superiority, his trajectory is entirely unremarkable — he is, in the story's terms, just another person who came to Hollywood with a dream and sold out for success.
- Introduction: Celebrity, Recognition, and McInerney's Personal World: McInerney's story frames celebrity's dual nature
- The Narrator's Self-Image and Intellectual Credentials: Martin's credentials reveal intellectual arrogance
- Relationships as Reflections of Ego: Narrator marginalizes aunt and unnamed subjects
- Emotional Detachment and the Cheating Girlfriend: Narrator suppresses grief over girlfriend's betrayal
- Artistic Compromise and the Hollywood Machine: Producers force commercial rewrites; narrator complies
- Conclusion: An Ordinary Sellout: Narrator proves no different from others he scorned
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What makes this paper effective
- The essay builds its argument incrementally, moving from the narrator's stated credentials to his interpersonal behavior to his ultimate artistic capitulation, creating a coherent arc of character analysis.
- It uses close reading effectively — unpacking the narrator's poststructuralism reference to reveal intellectual pretension, and citing specific moments like the drunk fantasy about his ex-girlfriend to locate suppressed emotion.
- The concluding metaphor ("just another ant making his path in the business") ties the essay's central claim together with economy and force.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates character analysis through selective textual evidence. Rather than summarizing plot, it identifies specific details — what the narrator notices about the man he interviews (a cigarette, green teeth), how he describes his aunt — and reads those choices as expressions of the narrator's psychology. This is an effective model for literary close reading at the undergraduate level.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens by situating McInerney within the theme of celebrity before introducing the narrator. It then moves through three analytical lenses — intellectual self-presentation, relational marginalization, and emotional suppression — before arriving at the narrator's commercial compromise. The conclusion reframes the entire analysis with a single ironic observation: the narrator's story is not unique at all.
Introduction: Celebrity, Recognition, and McInerney's Personal World
Jay McInerney is a writer who has had to deal with the pros and cons of being a renowned figure. Anyone who has achieved some measure of recognition — whether for positive reasons such as being an excellent writer, or for notorious reasons such as appearing drunk and disheveled on a reality television program — will find that recognition can cut both ways. There is the welcome kind of attention, such as talk shows or interviews where you are questioned about your interests and work. There is also the negative attention associated with celebrity, such as the intrusions of paparazzi. In his short story "The Business," McInerney brings the reader into his personal world of celebrity and explores what it is like for people who are even more instantly recognizable than he is.
Works Cited
McInerney, Jay. "The Business." How It Ended: New and Collected Stories. Vintage, 2009, pp. 335–350.
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