Author

Bio

Joe McGinniss Jr. was born in 1970. He graduated from Swarthmore College and lives in Washington, DC with his wife and son. This is his first novel.

Q & A

The Delivery Man is set in Las Vegas. Why?

Something about that city struck a chord with me. It was so stark, so empty and so vibrant -- but in the most twisted kind of way.

There was this wonderful book called The Real Las Vegas by David Littlejohn and a bunch of Berkeley journalism students who wrote pieces about all aspects of life there -- the people -- the history -- the labor movement -- the development -- the African-American and Latino experiences. It's a fascinating place so full of contradictions and dangers and the most basic aspirations: prosperity by any means. A house, a safe street and thick green lawn and no rain or Midwest winters. So you have these people coming as a last resort or today, from Central America and Mexico as a first attempt at "the American Dream" i.e., the ability to earn enough money so that you can take care of your family, become middle class then become a good consumer of all that our economy and culture has to offer. That's Las Vegas -- the fastest growing city in America. So I knew I had to set my story there. It had to be about a kid who grew up in this multicultural, transient, rootless capital of consumption. That's Chase. The ultimate kid from nowhere who has a sense of what he should want but no clue how to get it or how to keep it if he does stumble into it.

How do you pull off an authentic depiction of the city while avoiding all of the typical cliches?

There's an inherent advantage that anyone looking at a subject from the outside in has - I was in an ideal position to discern what's real and what's not about how the city is portrayed in the culture at large.

I completed hours of research about growing up in Las Vegas - including interviewing numerous teens and young people. There is also some wonderful work, including the Littlejohn book and one by the late Hal Rothman (The Grit Beneath The Glitter). Additionally, I wrote some stories for the Las Vegas Weekly to get closer to the place. I drove around and around for hours when I'd go out there - videotaping neighborhoods, eavesdropping on conversations across the city - in Green Valley and Summerlin and North Las Vegas. I'd write down everything as it happened. I saw a bumpersticker on a pickup truck "Hell Was Full So I Came Back." That made into the book. I feel like in some way that place is in me now. I don't mind it either. I like the chip on the shoulder, no respect, underdog quality that a lot of Las Vegans possess.

Most people have an idea of Las Vegas as being a sort of transient city, a place people go to stay a weekend, gamble, and then go home. But your characters are natives and, in some ways, seem almost trapped there. What is it, do you think, that roots them so irrevocably to the city?

So from all of the stories and research and from all of these interviews with Las Vegas residents it became apparent that as a result of the negative impact of the sex industry and the Strip and the culture of consumption - as well as the shift work done by so many parents at casinos and restaurants - dysfunction abounds. The place seems on edge - as though built on a faultline - always teetering on the verge of collapse or ruin or some kind of brutality or exploitation.

In 2003 there was a report of affluent Las Vegas teenagers who called themselves the 311 Boyz and drove around their master planned gated communities beating people up at random, videotaping it for sport. That story seemed to crystallize something in my mind - this vibe I get from the real lives of many people there - that there's something missing, something unresolved beneath the glittery surface of things, some deep-rooted conflict within many of the people living there, both collectively and individually.

Most of the characters in the story suffer from a paralyzing lack of self-esteem. Chase and Michele and Bailey and Rachel may have an idea of what a better life might look and feel like but like their hometown, they are trying to build something from nothing. And unlike developers in Las Vegas, the characters in The Delivery Man may lack the resources to pull it off. In this story - the place is one of low expectations and perhaps remains the safest or easiest road for the characters to travel. At least their failure to develop, mature and grow won't stand out.

There's mass denial too. The residents who insist that Vegas is no different from any other American city. But with so many desperate people, with so many people from somewhere else, with so many people moving on, passing through, and with a local economy based on selling sex and gambling and behaving your worst without apology, denial only gets you so far. And the truth of a place and its people and its ethic shows itself. As a novelist - I get to take whatever aspect of that I discover and run with it - without apology but with great respect for the people who call Las Vegas home.

In writing about the MySpace generation and in making the characters part of a teenage call girl ring you've shone a spotlight on our current culture of sexualization, is this part of a larger cultural critique?

While Vegas is a particularly dangerous place for young people, nowadays, a lot of those dangers are available to anyone - thanks to the Internet and the coarsening of popular culture. Teenage girls and sex and aimlessness and consumption sell. And the age doesn't seem to matter. Abercrombie and Fitch were selling thongs for kids. Like 10 and 11 year olds! Corporations sell preteen sexual imagery for profit.

As well, the Internet, and specifically MySpace and Craigslist, have made acting out so much easier. You can post an ad for free and get 10 responses within an hour. Back in the day -- you'd have to find a pimp or sign on with some agency or walk the street to do that. Today, now, you can post an ad, use a faceless picture and find yourself in a hotel suite within an hour. Scary stuff. And in Las Vegas -- even pre-Internet boom - my research uncovered wealthy teeanagers in Summerlin (a safer more affluent section of the city) who considered prostitution around the holidays for extra cash. There you can just hang out at the casino. But now you don't even need to do that. Just hit MySpace or Craigslist and watch out.

The sense of generational angst in The Delivery Man is spot-on. How did you manage to achieve that?

Read the on-line diaries of teenagers detailing every emotion and action - there's very little a parent or a teacher or a friend can't learn about this generation that isn't available on-line and in their own works and images. I zeroed in on Las Vegas in my searches and read - hour after hour.

To be young, blonde and a not-to-bright partygirl has sort of been the m.o. for pop culture the past few years. We've elevated superficiality to levels of national significance. Too many young people today don't seem engaged. Pop culture has become news. MTV Sweet Sixteen celebrating the most outrageously extravagant birthday parties -- it's all one message: consumption, materialism, celebrity and being noticed are all that seem to matter for huge segments of the population. Look at Myspace and Facebook. People cry out - I am here! I matter! But what do they actually do? Other than post pictures of themselves at parties in various states of sobriety and undress? They have 1,000 friends. And? Too many young people seem to crave attention simply for attention's sake but don't end up doing anything worthy of that attention. So when teenage girls in a place like Las Vegas find themselves recruited by an escort agency run by a sexy youngish Michele that promises tons of money, amazing parties, the coolest people, the best times, the line is blurred these days - at least in this book.

Unlike novels like Less Than Zero or Twelve, your characters are not necessarily children of privilege. Was it a conscious decision to portray characters from different economic backgrounds?

It's what I know best. It's what I'd rather read. And my very simple rule is to try to write what I like to read. Publishers will never lack for yet another account of some Manhattanite or prep schooler finding their way in the world. America is obsessed with wealth and status. Publishing is a business so I understand the need to give the readers what they want. So stories about children of wealth and parents of wealth and twentysomethings of wealth will always find a home. I don't have much to add to that genre.There are so many people living so many lives that don't get tracked by certain self-appointed arbiters of culture. And that's too bad. And that's another reason I love Vegas it's home to working class kids and twentysomethings, children of divorce, immigrants from El Salvador, some in the upper middle class but without a wealthy lineage - no family money. Not the glamorized Upper West Side "lost generation" or coked out Beverly Hills kids. And then there's Julia - Chase's All-American girl. She's a superstar, earning her MBA at Stanford. She's working class and African-American and not from Vegas and simply blows Chase and his friends away with her maturity and ambition.

Most first novels are assumed to be at least partly autobiographical. Is Chase the character who most closely resembles you? And in what way?

The notion of having a foot in two different worlds - as does Chase, the main character - is something I know first hand. I grew up with my mother, and she's a registered nurse. I grew up on the edge of a nice college town, with a highway in the backyard. My mother worked middle shifts at the hospital, and her working-class, Pittsfield, Mass roots sometimes set the tone in our house. The saying at home was "times are tough." She helped get a union for the nurses at her hospital and convinced the gas station across the street from our house to turn their glowing white sign away from our dining room window so the glare wouldn't spill all over our table at dinner. She's tough and strong and stubborn. She raised me and my sisters after my fatherand she divorced not long after I was born. At the same time, I knew I had a father who was wildly successful as a writer [Joe McGinniss, author of The Selling of the President 1968, Fatal Vision, Never Enough and others].

And so I had this weird balance-my father's stories and all the stuff he was doing and it was always really cool; and the day-to-day life I was living. Chase is very similar because he's got a foot in two very different worlds and always has. Growing up, before his father left, Chase and his mother and sister live in a nice home with a pool and views of the Las Vegas Strip from their backyard. When his mother hits a rough patch and must sell the house, they move to a street in the shadow of the Strip, yellow lawns and chain linked fences. So yes, I've pulled some elements from my own experiences.

As you mention, your father is a well established writer ... did he encourage you to write?

Absolutely not. If he had, I likely wouldn't have tried. In fact, when I was completing a master's degree in public policy and writing what I thought was a novel in the mornings before class -- I'd be dodging emails from him warning me away from writing. In fact, a couple lines of his about writing stick in my mind to this day: "I must hold up an orange flag and warn you, 'Bridge Out Ahead.' The odds on your getting even a small piece of what you need so desperately are long as long could be. It's a bitch of a life. The hide of an alligator is not enough." Pretty sage advice at the time. This was six years ago! He was right until he was wrong. And he was only wrong because I had the support of my wife and a stubborness that wouldn't let me quit -- not necessarily because I was sure I could do it, more so because there was nothing else that gave one ounce of the satisfaction that trying to write fiction gave me.

Who are your favorite writers and who has influenced you?

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates is simply the best book I've ever read. Anything by the following authors: Joan Didion, Roland Merullo, Bret Easton Ellis, A.M. Homes ... John O'Hara and Richard Wright. Also Russell Banks, Ryan Harty. A writer by the name of Richard Lange has a wonderful book of short stories recently published; Denis Jonson (Jesus's Son is one of my favorite short story collections) and Raymond Carver. Beyond the obvious - their brilliance and insight ,there is something about the aaccessibility of their work that appeals to me. It's hard enough these days to get anyone to read a novel, much less one by some unknown that runs four hundred pages. I respect the writer who respects the reader and is true to their material, the world they want you to inhabit. I think Didion and Carver and O'Hara and Yates and some younger writers like Harty and Lange do that exceedingly well and I'll read anything they write because they've earned my trust.