Keith McNally
“I Regret Almost Everything”
We read memoirs seeking some kind of narrative, a straight-through storyline for our own lives. When I lived in New York, my favorite restaurant hangouts were Odeon, Lucky Strike, and Balthazar.
They were all created by Keith McNally. On Instagram, most of us glorify our successes, leaving out the mundane and gruesome that we’ve all had to slog through. The title of this book says it all, but he clarifies that a bit, saying, “To live is to err, surely? I believe a life without regrets would be a nightmare and certainly not one I'd like to live.”
From the NY Times Book Review;
“Keith McNally’s memoir, “I Regret Almost Everything,” is driven by his dislikes, as so many good books are.” An actress he has an affair with is drawn to him because he “tells it like it is,” and he does. He talks here about his “failures” with equal transparency and humor as well. If you’ve ever tried to do anything in this life, been married or had children, you will have walked through the fire. To quote a Leonard Cohen song;
“... Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in...”
I remember a therapist saying to me “Don't make this all about you.” What else would it be about? Everything that happens we see through our eyes only. Everything is filtered through our own distorted lens. Objectivity doesn't exist. Compassion and empathy do exist, of course. McNally’s book walks me back through my own failures and successes.
My long-time friend owns restaurants and hotels in Colorado Springs. We were talking about red wine and the next night he brought several bottles of wine worth a few thousand dollars each. He brought a decanter and the perfect wine glasses. They were good, certainly better than the Boone's Farm apple wine that we drank in college, but I felt that I had had equally good wine for twenty dollars, especially in Portugal and Argentina.
Mr. McNally tells a story about a young couple ordering an $18 bottle of wine one night at Balthazar and four Wall Street gentlemen ordering a several-thousand-dollar French wine. They were both served in a decanter and got mixed up so that the young couple got the expensive wine and the four men the inexpensive wine. Everyone seemed to be happy about what they got, though Keith was called to come in from home and make good on the mistakes.
McNally doesn't care for pretense. He grew up in a working-class home and so did I. I've walked in some "lofty circles" because of the music business, but "salt of the earth" is where I am most at home.
"What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" asks Mary Oliver. Mr. McNally (he doesn't like his name "Keith") is living his life to the fullest, the good, the bad, and all points in between.
Lucky Strike, Odeon & One Fifth....those were my places. When you were there, I always felt that I was at the center of the world, and that anything could happen. Not necessarily to me. Though maybe.