The Delivery Man, is Joe McGinniss Jr.'s first novel, published 15 January 2008.

Plot summary

The story follows the lives of childhood friends who've been negatively affected in different ways from their years growing up in Las Vegas off the strip. When we meet the main characters – Chase, Michele and Bailey – they are now in their twenties and the story focuses on their lifestyle, illegal professions and their caustic influence on the generation right behind. The story is told from the perspective of Chase, an aspiring painter just out of college, who had left Las Vegas to study art in New York where he met Julia, an MBA student who represents the promise of a life outside of Las Vegas. After returning to Las Vegas to finish school and finding work as a high school art teacher, Chase struggles to break free of his old life and his old friends, who are entrenched in the Las Vegas life of excess. Plot summary from the Willamette Week in Portland, OR, "A sympathetic look at the life of drug-using, self-destructing hookers and hustlers sounds like an uphill battle, but the simple truth about these characters is that they aren’t hookers or hustlers. They are aspiring painters, film directors and grad students. Although they inevitably prostitute themselves, they seldom talk about it, because they are ashamed or because they don’t understand what’s happening in their lives. All they want is comfort, to live in the Sun King suite on the 22nd floor of the Palace and order room service. But before they know it, prostitution isn’t even paying the bills; one by one, they go into debt with their own bodies."

Major themes

The novel projects a dark perspective on the culture of Las Vegas, and also on the values inherent in the so-called 'MySpace Generation.' McGinniss based many of the anecdotes in the story on actual interviews he conducted with youth living in Las Vegas. In a tip of the hat to Bret Easton Ellis' Less than Zero, Joe McGinniss, Jr. in his debut effort The Delivery Man, starts off the novel with these three words: Find Yourself Here. A literary echo of the signifier from Less than Zero: Disappear Here. It sets the stage for parallels between the moral nihilism of 1980s Los Angeles youth culture and the spiritual hollowness to be found among denizens of present-day Las Vegas. The New York Times Sunday Book Review highlights this theme:

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

According to Variety film rights were sold at auction six months prior to publication and ultimately acquired by Ryan Howe and Thom Mount (The Deer Hunter, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Natural Born Killers) of Whitsett Hill Entertainment. Be True Productions’ John Domo ("Big Fish" ) and Braxton Pope ("The Trust") are set to produce, with Highland Film Group's Arianne Fraser and Delphine Perrier exec producing alongside Molly Hassell. However, this film has yet to come to fruition.

Reviews

Amongst the reviews the reaction is largely positive as can be seen in the New York Times Sunday Book Review which named the book a "NY Times Editor's Choice" in January 2008. The "San Francisco Chronicle" review. A positive reception is apparent in the "Time Out New York" review. and the "LA Times" in its review seeks to understand the authors motivation and stylistic approach. The national monthly magazines "Marie Claire" and "Penthouse" give the novel exceedingly positive reviews, with Penthouse going so far as to call it, "that rare first novel that could well become a classic."

Author

Joe McGinniss Jr. was born in 1970, the son of American writer Joe McGinniss, who is known for achieving early success at the age of 26 with the New York Times bestseller The Selling of the President (1968). McGinniss Jr. had published short fiction in Las Vegas Weekly. The Delivery Man is his first novel.

Footnotes