51 pages • 1-hour read
I Regret Almost Everything
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of suicidal ideation and chronic illness.
Search for Meaning and Purpose
Keith McNally’s first person narrative account traces his constant quest for a meaningful life and a purposeful sense of self. As the title I Regret Almost Everything suggests, McNally’s search for fulfillment has not been a neat, linear trajectory. Rather, his relational, vocational, and personal journeys have been a meandering series of “stops and starts.” Each choice he made to find contentment has led him to revelations about who he wants to be and questions about where he is going. In his confessional memoir, McNally uses his stroke and attempted suicide as turning points in his life. He identifies these medical emergencies as experiences that compelled him to reflect on his past and to make sense of the choices he’s made and what these choices say about his restless, searching spirit.
McNally’s vulnerable tone throughout the memoir invites the reader in, allowing her to identify with his ongoing search for a purposeful life. From a young age, McNally admits that he was desperate to escape his working-class roots in East London. His difficult childhood and familiarity with economic disadvantage convinced him that to find fulfillment, he must make money and establish a name for himself. Over the years, this attempt to solidify his success did not always bring him immediate happiness. McNally dabbled in acting, filmmaking, art collecting, world travel, cycling, and renovating before finding his footing as a restaurateur. By detailing all of these pastimes and jobs on the page, McNally enacts his constant longing to live a life that feels meaningful to him. His reflections on what gives a life purpose in the memoir’s final chapter provide insight into his evolving outlook on his own journey:
For forty years I pretentiously imagined I had a ‘higher’ calling. But not that night. Not now. I may not be a playwright, but who’s to say that even if I did possess the talent to write plays that I’d be able to affect—even in the most superficial way—as many people as my restaurants appear to have done for nearly half a century? (303).
Despite McNally’s seemingly blatant success in the restaurant industry, opening and operating restaurants didn’t always give him an immediate sense of gratification. This is why he opened business after business, traveled from place to place, and moved between marriages, vocations, continents, projects, and cities for years. Nothing felt good enough. In the above retrospective passage, however, McNally has come to terms with his own experience. He’s finally able to claim the work he’s done and to acknowledge the purpose it’s given him and the meaning it has offered others. This tonal shift in the closing passages of the memoir enacts McNally’s altered perspective, proving that he’s finally settled into his life’s meaning.
Complexity of Family Relationships
Throughout the memoir, McNally details the intricacies of his family dynamics to suggest that challenges in marital and parental relationships are universal. Just as McNally doesn’t shy away from excavating the vulnerable facets of his mental health journey, he also openly shares the most harrowing and heartbreaking aspects of his family relationships on the page. Embracing this vulnerable and honest tone endears McNally to the reader, and renders his story more relatable. McNally doesn’t break the fourth wall, but his willingness to admit his mistakes, frustrations, and hurt implies through subtext that every individual’s familial challenges will consistently usher them toward change.
McNally’s marriages and friendships with Lynn and Alina were two of the most defining relationships of McNally’s life. Although neither marriage lasted, McNally avoids disparaging his wives in his memoir—a decision that implies that he still values his relationships with Lynn and Alina, past and present. With Lynn, McNally was immediately attracted to “her complete lack of guile” and admired her simultaneous “aspirations to paint” and decision “to exchange a noble life in academia for a lowbrow one in restaurants” (94). Just five years after meeting and working together, the two would marry and start a family together. Lynn proved to be not only an excellent spouse, but a remarkable business partner—she and McNally opened several restaurants together, the majority of which Lynn operated nearly independently. With Alina, McNally was also immediately attracted to her personality and their relationship developed with similar rapidity. However, over the years, McNally would have to learn how to balance his sustained friendship with Lynn and his marital responsibilities to Alina. He details many of the conflicts he navigated between his first and second wives and their children. Instead of affecting a self-pitying tone, these family anecdotes rather offer an accurate, unmasked depiction of family life—its joys and frustrations.
The same is true of how McNally renders his relationships with his children. Instead of satisfying cultural expectations and asserting that each time he became a father he felt changed, McNally holds that fatherhood is complicated and requires adjustment and care. “When each of [his] five kids was born,” McNally felt as if “a stranger had entered the house” (294). He holds that his children all “mean the world to [him] now,” but simultaneously admits that it took him years to “truly connect with them” (294). This raw and honest tone reiterates McNally’s subtextual quest for authenticity, and reinforces his overarching belief that all family relationships are complicated. Although a loving father, parenting his five children has required McNally to change just as his marriages compelled him to self-reflect over the years. In these ways, McNally conveys the universal beauty and melancholy brought about via family ties.
Challenges of the Restaurant Industry
McNally’s meandering vocational trajectory in New York, New York conveys the psychological and emotional effects of working in an intense, high-paced industry. While I Regret Almost Everything incorporates anecdotes from McNally’s childhood through adulthood, the memoir primarily focuses on McNally’s attempts to establish himself in the restaurant field. McNally didn’t plan to become a restaurateur, but rather fell into the work by happenstance. The seeming serendipity of his first bussing, serving, and dishwashing jobs opened him to new realms of experience—ultimately leading him to a career defined by constant challenges, conflicts, and rewards.
As McNally developed his reputation as one of New York’s most influential restaurateurs, he learned constant lessons about what he was capable of, how he liked to express himself, and what gave him purpose. McNally argues that because “[n]o one likes failure” he found it difficult to remain mentally assured each time he encountered economic, entrepreneurial, logistical, or interpersonal conflicts in his work (212). At the same time, these conflicts helped McNally to make sense of his deep love for the hospitality industry, and how this passion related to his identity. As a young man, McNally’s determination to open and maintain successful restaurants was in large part inspired by his desperation to prove himself to others. Over the years, he discovered that the restaurant industry offered him endless opportunities to reach other people, offer them comfort, and satisfy their needs:
After spending over forty years in the business, I still don’t know what makes a restaurant successful. I know what makes one successful for me though. It’s a restaurant that’s conducive to engagement, where the customer can fully connect with their dinner companion. […] The saddest sight in the world to me is seeing a married couple sitting opposite each other in silence. It reminds me of my parents (170).
McNally’s reflective tone captures his lifelong attempt to create spaces that feel welcoming, gratifying, and connective. Despite all of the complications he encountered while opening over a dozen restaurants, McNally holds that what has worked for his businesses is particular to him. This notion implies that McNally navigated the industry according to his distinct personality and vision—taking risks along the way. The above passage also implies that McNally’s ability to succeed in such a competitive industry was inspired by his desire to overcome challenges from his childhood. By creating joyful, comforting, down-to-earth spaces in an industry that often values class over community, McNally created his place as a New York restaurateur. Therefore, McNally’s journey toward success in the restaurant industry can be applied to any vocation: If the individual stays true to themselves and is willing to take chances, they might carve out a space for themselves in their chosen field—no matter how impossible it might seem.
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