Born in Hartford CT, where my dad, Barry, works as a salesman for Scott Paper Company
Live in Oxshot, Surrey, UK. My father works for Bowater-Scott as director of marketing. Write my first poems & stories here, including one that opened with the immortal lines,; Old King John was a dreamy lad, he went swimming in the sea, he got bitten by a crab
Briefly return to Pennsylvania. See The Beatles on Ed Sullivan.
Live in West Vancouver, Canada; Dad works for MacMillan Blodel, another paper company. Heavy into The Hardy Boys; Jack London.
Move to Pittsfield, Mass. Read Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood in eighth grade at Taconic High School, which inpires me to write poetry.
Enter Williams College
Take over the leadership of the Williams Action Coalition, successor to the SDS
Meet Gary Fisketjon, who has transferred to Williams. Have a fight in the Purple Pub after he throws a cigarette in my pitcher of beer, an act probably inspired by a simmering rivalry over a Wellesley transfer student
Read James Joyce's "Ulysses" with professor Don Gifford. Start writing fiction. I cause a major controversy when I invite Angela Davis, the former fugitive Black Panther & communist, to speak on campus on behalf of the Williams Action Coalition
Read Raymond Carver's Will You Please be Quiet Please. Pass it along to Gary, now my best friend, who would later become Ray's editor
Graduate Williams College magna cum laude with degree in Philosophy
Set off with Gary in my 66 Volkswagen Beetle for a two month cross country trip
Work as a reporter for the Hunterdon County Democrat, a weekly newspaper based in Flemington, New Jersey
Begin Princeton-in-Asia Fellowship at Institute for International Studies in Fujinomiya, Japan
Teach English, work for Time Life books in Kyoto, study Karate, meet Linda Rossiter, a model from Tacoma, Washington
Arrive in Manhattan with Linda, whose modeling career takes off while I try to find gigs as a free-lance writer
Hired as fact checker at The New Yorker. Marry Linda
Fired from The New Yorker. Linda flies to Italy for fall fashion shows & fails to return, having fallen in love with a photographer. I meet Raymond Carver in New York & initiate a correspondence. He suggests I come study with him in Syracuse. Linda files for divorce
Begin graduate creative writing program at Syracuse studying under Raymond Carver & Tobias Wolff. My mother, Marilyn, dies of cancer
Publish my first short story, It's Six A.M. Do You Know Where You Are?” in the Paris Review
Write the first draft of Bright Lights, Big City in six weeks
Bright Lights, Big City is accepted for publication by Random House. The advance is a whopping $7500. Check for half arrives just in time to save Christmas
Marry Merry Reymond, a graduate student in Philosophy at Syracuse in Salem, Mass
Bright Lights, Big City is published; I do my first public reading, at Three Lives bookstore in Greenwich Village, with Raymond Carver
Film rights to BLBC acquired by United Artists; meet Bret Easton Ellis, who is publishing a novel called Less Than Zero the following spring
Ransom, my second novel, is published in the U.S.
Bright Lights is published in the UK. I spend a week in London promoting the book. Meet Julian Barnes — who will become one of my best friends-as well as Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Hanif Kureshi & Ian McEwan
Separate from Merry; meet Marla Hanson, the model whose face was slashed at the behest of her former landlord, after she spurned his advances
At Yaddo, the writer's colony, where I play tennis with David Foster Wallace, nearly kill Mona Simpson in my new Porsche, & write
United Artists Production of BLBC starring Michael J. Fox & Keifer Sutherland, with a screenplay by me, is released. Story of My Life is published. My friend & mentor Raymond Carver dies at his home in Port Angeles, Washington
Named Literary Lion by New York Public Library, snort coke in the bathroom with my fellow honoree Hunter Thompson. We talk long into the night
Marry Helen Bransford, of New York & Nashville, Tennessee
Publish Brightness Falls, buy a farm in Franklin, Tennessee where I live part time for the next five years while maintaining my apartment in New York
Twins, Barrett & Maisie, are born in Nashville, three months premature
My father dies of an aneurism
Begin writing a wine column for Conde Nast's House & Garden magazine
Publish The Last of the Savages
Release of the HBO movie Gia, starring Angeline Jolie, with screenplay by me
Publish Model Behavior; separation from Helen, meet Jeanine Pepler, a film executive from Capetown, South Africa
Publish Bacchus & Me, a collection of essays about wine with Lyons Press
I watch the World Trade Towers fall from the window of my fifteenth floor apartment in Chelsea. Work as a volunteer at the Bowling Green Soup Kitchen near Ground Zero in the weeks after the attacks
Begin work on The Good Life. It takes me a long time to figure out what I was doing. Struggle with depression & writer's block. Engaged to Jeanine
Finish The Good Life; Jeanine & I part ways & she moves out
Helen moves with the kids from Nashville, Tennessee to East Hampton, New York. Start dating Anne Hearst, granddaughter of William Randolph Hearst
Publish The Good Life, which hits the New York Times Best Seller list
Marry Anne
The Good Life wins the Grand Prix Literaire at the Deauville Film Festival
Publish How it Ended, a collection of stories. Reviewed on the cover of the Times Book Review it is also named one of the ten best books of the year by Janet Maslin in the New York Times
First appearance as Jeremiah Harris —a recurring character based on me— in Gossip Girl
Producer Josh Schwartz options rights for a remake of Bright Lights, Big City, & writes a screenplay; MGM goes into bankruptcy, stalling the project
Start writing a wine column for the Wall Street Journal, Begin the sequel to The Good Life
Deliver the Williams College Commencement Speech about faking your way to authenticity
Receive La Medaille de la Ville de Paris from mayor of Paris
May 8th, 2012, published THE JUICE: Vinous Veritas
Narrate a BBC documentary on the letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald entitled 'Sincerely, F. Scott Fitzgerald'
Inducted into the Confrérie des Chevaliers de Tastevin, a drinking club for Burgundy nuts.
Moved my wine column from WSJ to T+C - reunited with old friend friend Jay Fielden
August 2016: Published Bright, Precious Days
Named along with Laurie Anderson an Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres at the French Consulate in New York. That summer I also won the Fitzgerald Literary Prize at the Hotel de Belle Rives in Juan Les Pins. Beat Joyce Carol Oates (2024) and Richard Ford (2025) by seven and eight years.
Grove Atlantic publishes Wine Reads, an anthology of essays on wine which I edited
Hunkered down in the Hamptons for the pandemic. In the summer I begin working on the fourth novel of the Calloway series and a memoir, tentatively titled Save Me But Not Yet. Work on both for the next three years.
First of serial appearances on The Beat on MSNBC with Ari Melber, talking about Bright Lights and the 80s economy.
In February I undergo brain surgery for a subdural hematoma and then in May return to New York hospital for open heart surgery, getting a quadruple bypass and a pacemaker as a bonus. On the plus side, finish See You on the Other Side just a couple of weeks after brain surgery. It's accepted by Knopf in September. Continue work on memoir. And--my twins turn thirty.
On April 14th, See You on the Other Side is published.
