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Writer Jay McInerney Snuck Champagne Into ICU Ahead of Brain Surgery: Report

Novelist Jay McInerney is recovering from emergency brain surgery—a procedure that irritatingly clashed with a very tough-to-get dinner reservation, he told friends.

Jay McInerney, the novelist and fixture of Manhattan’s ‘80s downtown scene, is in recovery from emergency brain surgery, detailing his journey along the way in an email to friends obtained by Page Six on Tuesday. Apologizing for having “disappeared during recent weeks,” McInerney, Town & Country’s longtime wine critic, explained that his doctors found two subdural hematomas near his brain after he’d woken up from a fainting spell to find he’d covered his apartment in blood. When his CAT scan results came back, the hospital called to tell him to go straight to the emergency room—which would have conflicted with his dinner plans that evening, he explained. “I felt fine and Roscioli was a bitch to get into,” he said, explaining that eventually agreed to go and that a nurse confiscated a bottle of expensive champagne he’d attempted to smuggle into the hospital. “... I reluctantly hied my way to [the ER] and subsequently the Intensive Care Unit where the nurse confiscated the half bottle of Krug that had somehow found its way into my overnight bag, though not before I managed to sneak a glass.” The hematomas have since been excised, according to McInerney’s social media accounts, and he is “back in the saddle” and at work on the next draft of his new novel.