Big City, Bright Lights

"Bright Lights, Big City", a brilliant product of the 80s era of superficiality and excess, is a portrayal of a yuppie news reporter living in near-total denial. Strangely, the second-person technique manages to effectively create a bond of sympathy between reader and hero, as we are drawn into the conflicts and misfortunes that beset the nameless reporter. The novel, which is idiosyncratically told in the second-person, relates the episodes that transpire in the bustling nighlife of Manhattan, from the nightclubs to the high-rise apartment blocks, as the oppressed protagonist recovers from one cocaine orgy to another, as he copes with the trauma of losing his prestiguous job out of negligence, to concealing the fact that his model wife has left him, to the death of his mother. Though the novel is inevitably tragic - an odyssey of escapism and frailty, - it is redeemed by its wit and sophistication. Very funny in places.

This book is basically about the nightlife and career of a heartbroken young man let loose in NYC. I felt the focus on his job was a little overdone. That said, it is a quick read and the main character is fairly likable despite his vapid existence and questionable behaviors. We get the justification for the character's pain and thus behavior a little late in the book. I was also left feeling that nothing earth shattering really happened and the ending left something to be desired. But I'm not sure I could dream up a better ending either so...

With Bright Lights, Big City publication in 1984, Jay McInerney became heralded as the voice of a generation that suffered from addiction and dysfunctional relationships. The novel follows for a few days the life of a young man, living in Manhattan's nightclub and party life- trying to bury in alcohol and other drugs the pain of a wife that left him for another man and dissatisfaction with an editorial job in a major magazine. 1980's New York City is portrayed as a big, glitzy, empty place, but still strangely appealing to a restless young man looking for action. With nothing but controlled substances, and wit to sustain him in this anti-quest, he runs until he reaches a moment of clarity, where he accepts his losses and plans to move on with life with a clean slate. After a two day binge, the novel ends with the main character down at the docks, trading his sunglasses for some fresh baked bread. The bread possibly representing the Staff of Life, the values of the heartland, as well as some sort of resurrection--in a fundamental sense, he is taking communion. This remarkable novel of youth in 1980's New York is a most beloved and iconic novel. Shortly after reading this novel, I published my own (Out of Numbness) narrating my experiences with addiction and recovery.

Bright Lights, Big City is timeless book that will be remembered for generations to come as Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" and Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." McInerney uses the second person narrative to put one in the shoes of the protagonist and does a superb job doing so. This work is pure art. Some call this book a guiltly pleasure but I beg to differ. The wit and irony in this book are paralelled by few authors such as Flannery O' Connor. The book is art. The symbolism is subtle and not shoved down the reader' throat. It is one of the greatest novels of our time. It is soon to be one of the books that high school students learn in English class if there are not teachers who do it already. People not from New York seem to be anti-BLBC but this book could have taken place anywhere. A must read for it's style, wit, and,realism. This book not only teaches, but entertains.

This is a very sensitively and humanely written novel about a young New Yorker who must deal with several great losses: of his beautiful fashion model wife who abandons him when she moves to France, of his job as a magazine editor, and of his mother. At first I find him self-indulgent and silly, but as I get to know and understand him better, he turns out to be merely sad. Hence, his increased bar hopping and abuse of cocaine.

He acts as if he does not care about the loss of his job through carelessness and indifference. He becomes increasingly depressed and comes close to developing a nervous breakdown. The search for his wife is sadly pathetic. I developed a real empathy for this young man and came to realize that under similar circumstances, he could be you, me--any of us. By the conclusion of the book, through meeting someone new and a cathartic experience, he finally confronts the painful memories of his mother's death. He sees that he "will have to go slowly...and learn everything all over again." He is on his way to recovery.

In a second person voice Jay McInerney does the near-impossible and writes the great all-american novel for his generation. This is a style which is strange at first, but draws you into the story just the same. If any writer has done more to capture the pulse and spirit of the 80's then I can't figure who that might be. Using a young yuppie writer's struggles with love, career, family and cocaine he speeds the reader through several manic chapters until low and behold, the book is over and you're wanting more. The manic pace is what makes this book work so well. The movie starring Michael J. Fox and Phoebe Cates follows the book well and wins points as a good book-to-film movie (unlike so many others). The paradox here is how a writer can say so much in so few pages. It's also the only book I know of where the first chapter could serve as a great short story all on its own. Prepare for an entertaining and wild ride, you may just recognize some people you know....

The first thirty pages in Jay McInerney's novel Bright Lights, Big City are intense. It's six in the morning, the main character is wandering high on coke through a club and his only friend is no where in sight. When he finally leaves disorientated and without enough cab fare to get home, he is hit with the crippling morning sunlight and the painful realization that he left his shades at home. Picture a comic reel where a man stumbles towards the light at the end of a dark tunnel dodging bald women, men in drag and tiny Bolivian soldiers and you will get a sense of how this story begins. The writing style grabbed me from the first page. The novel is written in the second person so as the reader you are the main character, "all messed up with no place to go" (10) reacting to life with a smart mouth.
I love the prose in this novel, especially in the sense that I find the main character's disheartened quips entertaining. My favorite passage so far is, "GRANNY CRUSHED BY NUT WHILE WIMPS WATCH" (13) where the main character furiously debates whether or not to help an old woman in distress. It intrigued me to realize that most of the scenes I was chuckling at were painfully unfunny. He laughs about his blow problem, the feelings he still has for his estranged wife and the job he hates; this seems like foreshadowing to me. I sympathize with the main character because I get the feeling that all the terrible things he jokes about will eventually happen and then life will hit him harder than he can imagine. I like that and I look forward to observing how he recovers, if he does at all. Either way, I'm hooked.

Once in a while, a book surfaces that can deliver a stronger message than most novels, yet retain a contemporary sense. This book is one of the few. As our narrator wanders around from party to party, we eventually find that he is not lost, and not ever wandering, but running. This narrator is a little boy in a big city, and he took life on too fast and he lost control. Also the fact that he is obviously depressed is not helping him. People who hate this book, hate it because they cannot see how this man is unsatisfied with his life. wake up, that is the point OUR NARRATOR CAN NOT SEE WHY HE IS NOT SATISFIED WITH HIS LIFE. Our main man has an empty space inside him, and the whole novel he tries to fill it, unsuccessfully. Eventually he wakes up to the world, and the smell of fresh baked bread, but no more shall be said. Read it. The 2nd person is interesting, and I honestly dont know what to make of it. But nonetheless it is a fantastic book. And I think everyone can find a peice of this character inside him/her...oh wait, maybee that is why it is in the 2nd person...

You first heard about this book in a creative writing workshop, and you made a mental note to eventually get your hands on it and read it. You order it from the library; for some reason the book wasn't on the shelf, perhaps someone nicked it. You end up ordering it on inter-library loan to the dismay of booksellers. You read it cover to cover, and then, like an addict, you read it again since it's on interlibrary loan, and it won't be handy unless you go whole hog and place another the storeian order.

You reflect on the advantages of writing in the second person. You think, it's not a bad way of getting inside someone's head. Of course, you know that you're not exactly the un-named character. You wonder if the un-named character is actually Jay McInerney. Perhaps the quantity of cocaine used has been exaggerated. It's tricky writing second person fiction. You almost forget what you're doing and write and word that is homonymous with eye.

You know what is special about this book? The geography of New York, especially references to the World Trade Centre...and the familiar interior monologues dealing with one's hopes and dreams for the future...newlywed stuff. You might not have been exposed to this party lifestyle if you were like me, a systems analyst, who had to go into work every day. But it's not bad to see how the other half live...Cheers.

"Bright Lights, Big City" is a good novel, but not quite the masterpiece some people say it is. BLBC is often funny and never boring, and shows that second-person narration can be quite effective. The hero was dumped by his wife who pursued a modeling career, and his party habits (which include lots of cocaine) are preventing him from being competent at his job, which becomes less and less important to him. Reading this novel, I wish there would have been more of Tad Allagash, one of the hero's friends, who unfortunately is much more interesting than the hero himself. I thought too much time was spent on the hero obsessing over his ex-wife, time that could have been spent on the hero's and Tad's fast-living New York lifestyle. Even so, there is much to be admired. Anyone who has ever had a cocaine habit will identify with these characters, and the ending of the book is an emotional powerhouse, all the more amazing because of its simplicity. Even though it is far from perfect, reading "Bright Lights, Big City" is time well spent.

Well, contrary to the stereotype, here's a pretty anti-Bright Lights review from a New Yorker. I found the book a mildly amusing, but very shallowly rendered, portrait of a very specific time, place, profession, and lifestyle. McInerey seems undecided about exactly what he is undertaking. At times the book is straight satire, at times real tragedy. And the genres blend like oil and water in BLBC, each undermining the other and leaving the book without foundation. Admittedly, there are very moving passages (very late in the book), where McInerey seems to have decided which direction he'd like to take, but by then the damage is done. His use of the second-person makes the story feel partially formed. While he doesn't use the POV poorly, it is inherently flawed in that the reader is invited to bring more of him or herself into the novel, only to find a clash with the story told. Because of this it feels more a novelty device than a means of rendering the protagonist an everyman.
The final flaw of the book is the target of its criticism. One review claimed that the book was dead on satire of "the MBA set" (or something to this effect), missing the point entirely that it is not the MBA set being satirized. Rather, there are a hodge-podge of targets: Ivy League literati, ad men, models, designers, Rastas, Hasidim, Greek diner owners and Greek gigolos--all told about half of New York. Thus McInerey's barbs seem thrown wild as buckshot at a skeetshoot and come across as one-liners about 1980s stereotypes. For a much better, and better focused, work of 80s satire, see Ellis's American Psycho (which -is- aimed at the MBA set and which uses deliberate, stylized, shallow representation).
Not a timeless book.
Frankly, I'm a little surprised it outlived its decade of origin.

In this supposedly zeitgeist novel of the '80's we see a protagonist who incorporates the essence of that decade: hedonism, urbanity, wealth, cocaine-fuelled nightlife in a competitive social minefield. Coming to think of it, not alot has changed really. Speaking in the second person singular, the writer is following himself around New York as though singing an extended version of "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" by David Bowie.

The structure is innovative and the tone is innane and babbling at times, which reflects our coke-head heroes mentality perfectly. Anything to drown out the sorrow beneath. From his rash decisions to the reasons behind his nihilistic spiral, all questions are answered slowly.
It may seem like I am slating this book but I am not. He is describing a character who is a complete mess. It would be criminal to give cerebral insights and flowery desciptions about such a sullen, defunct lifestyle. Yet pity grows for him as his unfortunate past is revealed. For anyone who has lost someone close to them, his passage of loss is a touching and painful reminder.
It was once described as the Trainspotting of the '80s. Perhaps in an obvious drugs/dilemmas/adventures kind of way, but this novel is more about one man who is a heretic of a scene rather than of how or why a scene works. He is not from a poor background, he is not unemployed, he is not living in a dreary council estate in middle fof Sotland. It is too personal to be considered a social commentary and its singular tragedy surpasses even those of Welsh's protagonists.
So overall, not a fantastic book, not something to bring on holidays, not something to cheer you up, not essentially something to learn from, as the heroes coping mechanisms leave a lot to be desired. A tale of self-indulgent decadence and why. Certainly a book to read at some time in your life. It has its time.

You are intrigued by the second-person perspective for a chapter or so, but then, there are still many chapters to come. There are not excessively many of those chapters, which rates among the precious few good things to be said about this book. You quickly get to the point where you have to admit that you have, in fact, read more annoying books than "Bright Lights, Big City" ... albeit, mercifully, not very often.
So much for the facts, now to find out just what it is that makes you feel this way. The book attempts to ingratiate itself to you and to make you sympathize with the protagonist. But why should you? If anything, you sympathize with his supermodel bimbo wife. She would have required an angel's patience in addition to her angelic physique to stick with this loser. Not that his failings automatically make for a bad story, many great novels are about losers. But this one is so patently trying to make more of its hero than you or anyone else can conceivably see in him, even when cutting him some generous slack. This also goes for his oh-so-cool sidekick Allagash. Why McInerney is so visibly proud of this character, yet fails to develop it in any credible way, is anyone's guess, and definitely one at which you balked.
As for the plot, the only surprising twist to its utter predictability is that his employer's highly commendable decision to fire him took so long.
So that leaves you with the language, the elaborate facade of studied suaveness and supposedly with-it lingo behind which can be found .... well, nothing, really.

A brilliant first novel. The use of 2nd-person point of view works perfectly with the story, its themes, and tone, putting the narrator at arm's length from himself, detached and seeing the world from outside. Some might call this gimmicky. It isn't at all. The drug use, the loss of self and identity, it's all a study of one big downward spiral, that won't let up till the character has inevitably reached the bottom, and finally begins to resurface. "Bright Lights, Big City" may be a thin book, but it packs more punch in its writing and subject matter than ten or twenty of your typical books put together. It's a brilliant, insightful read -- clever throughout, and often touching. Can't recommend it enough.

This book is truly great. It moves along so quickly, and although it was written the year after I was born, I still feel like it does the best job of capturing a lot of the ideas and feelings of the current generation. The feeling of not knowing what you want, of not knowing what it is you're supposed to do with your life. Although, I have to admit that the ending is a bit weak, everything leading up to that is superb. The way the narrator (a 2nd person YOU) is constantly doing battle with what he wants to do and what his friends want him to do and what he needs to do. Overall, it's a great short novel, and I'd definitely recommend it.

Believe it or not, my College Professor for English Composition 201 was the roommate of Jay McInerney, the author of this book, when they both lived in New York City! I was forced to read this for that class and in the course, found out a bit about the author and his life before the book. On page 109, the incident about releasing the ferret into Clara's office was about an incident that actually happened to my professor, in fact, I have seen the scars on his hand! He tells me that ferrets have VERY sharp, hard teeth. Both my professor (to protect his privacy he will remain nameless) and Jay McInerney worked for a magazine in the Department of Factual Verification.
But to get to my review, I must say this was not one of my favorite books. Like my review of Saul Bellow's "Seize the Day", I found this book to be depressing. Also, both characters have drug addictions, are separated from their wives, have lost or are losing their jobs and have major issues with their parents.
However, the interesting aspect of this book is that it is told from "second person perspective" meaning that the author never gives a name to the main character, his is simply known as "You". An example: "You are both in high spirits. You have decided that you are better off without that p***-ant job, that it is a good thing you got out when you did." The book is almost as if it is about the reader, as if the book is talking to the reader. I like that it is an interesting new twist on story telling.
The basic plot is that You is a fact checker for a magazine in New York City, he slacks off in his job and is about to be fired for submitting an article that he didn't check. You is a cocaine addict and is fueled on by his incidious friend Tad Allagash, an incurable player. You was married to Amanda, a midwest girl-turned model who went to Paris and never came back. You is struggling with his life in general, he once wanted to be a writer but all ambition is gone. You also has Mom issues, she died of cancer before he ever got to know her and he has regretted it ever since. You also feels trapped, his is at times overcome with the desire to escape his life, jump out a window and fly away. His apartment is unkempt, he parties too much, forgets too many things and cannot get over Amanda in order to have a healthy relationship. Also, there are references throughout the book to an article about a pregnant mother in a coma and speculation as to whether she will live long enough to extract the child alive. This is an allusion to You, he still feels as if he cannot cut the cord that ties him to his mother, he is caught between life and death, existence and nonexistence.
To live, You must overcome his problem of settling for cheap imitations, his love for women who are never coming back, his reliance on drugs as an escape from life and surpass the shock of his mother's death. You also must find a way to trade his fast-paced, empty life for reality, we see allusions to this in the end. Altogether, this is not a bad book. But, it had a rather depressing effect on me and is full of the seediness of life in New York in the 1980's.

I never understood why critics always want to trash Mc Inerney when his work is so obviously good. This is the book that made me desperate to write in the 2nd person and failed miserably! The characters are both hilarious and tragic and the scenes with the main character at his job as a fact checker seriously made me want to jump out of a window. You can feel this guy's pain in a gripping, terrible way and can understand why he does what he does and becomes a cocaine cripple. The writing is fantastic and evokes a world that truly doesn't exist anymore- New York in the mid 80s. The ending struck me as odd on the 1st read but then I loved it. I've become a real fan of all of Mc Inerney's books and can only imagine that people were jealous of him when he published- that such a young guy could write such an interesting, gripping book. Writers always want to talk trash about other writers it seems and critics love to talk trash about authors. It's their job, unfortunately. But Mc Inerney and Ellis and Jamowitz got all this criticism when I would have given them praise. Read Bright Lights Big City- I dare you to not like it! And also- if you ever wanted to hang out in Manhattan circa 1986, this book might make you want to stay right where you are.

Short book that goes by quickly.
Well-crafted but curiously hollow story of a yuppie trying to make it in New York's tough publishing world. Characters ring true, but few were sympathetic.
I liked it well enough, at about the same intellectual level that I enjoy reading Vanity Fair magazine. So if you are looking for an entertaining read that will not make you worry about important issues, I would say, "go ahead and read it."

Jay McInerney gave me a book, Bright Lights, Big City, where I was the protagonist via second-person narrative but decided to throw me into a mess of destructive drug use and jaded commentary. Aggravated, I pushed through the party-ridden, self-pitying beggining and got to know myself.

As it turns out, I've been slumming with coke buddies and slacking off at work, because my life has ran away from me. My wife of one year, whom I brought from the trailor to the city, has left me for her modeling career. I hate my job. I wanted to be a writer when I came to New York, not some slave checking facts for a stuffy magazine. Add to this boring day job an equally boring nightlife of repetetive bathroom stalls with the same drug and new bimbos, and I begin to see why I'm feeling so down. I think about my wife and what happened, but there's never any resolution. So, how am I going to figure this mess out?

Reading through my darkest hour, I came to some conclusions. Eventually, I drop the jaded tones in exchange for some beautiful thoughts. My optimism comes honestly when I'm not expecting it and keeps me going. There are a few people around me who care, and with their help, I might just sort myself out. Bright Lights, Big City is a candid view of me at a spiritual traffic jam, a pile up, really. I want to just float away from the city and forget my troubles, but my life hasn't disappeared yet, so there's a chance of me catching up with it.

The funniest book I've read since DeLillo's White Noise, Bright Lights Big City made my week. McInerny may be talking about the eighties, but he impressively manages to tackle dated subjects with fresh humor and style. However, the jokes don't keep the story unemotional. The nameless lead character starts out cold and distant, but by the end of the book I felt as though I was him. "Vicky" may insist that one person cannot truly know what it is like to be another person, but McInerny brings us so close to his hero that he allows his readers to accomplish this feat. As for the style of the book-- just as I was getting annoyed with the use of the second-person narrative I began to love it; the text reaches out to us and becomes personal and immediate by the end of the first chapter. "You" is the most human character I've come across since Holden back in high school. I can't wait to read more by this talented writer. Sad, sensitive, and hopeful, grave and hilarious, Bright Lights Big City is proof that underneath the suits, sarcasm, and drugs, yuppies are people too.

Bright lights, big city...Where skin-deep is the mode, your traditional domestic values are not going to take root and flourish. -Jay McInerney
It seems hard to account for the visceral loathing that Jay McInerney provoked in critics after publishing this best-selling first novel. Here's a typical comment from Weekly Wire:
Hot young actor Ethan Hawke's first novel, The Hottest State, is mostly reminiscent of what used to pass for literary writing in the 1980s: a first person narrative of a vapid young man living in New York City, told without allusion, metaphor or self-reference. Essentially, the kind of airport-novel-taken-as-art for which Jay McInerney and Brett Easton Ellis were once praised, and then later reviled.
Bad enough to be hammered like that, but to be lumped with the truly awful Bret Easton Ellis? Ouch! Perhaps it was simply the jealousy that authors always seem to feel towards successful fellow writers. Perhaps it was a generational thing; who was this punk kid to replace Hemingway's wine drenched Paris with a coke sprinkled New York? And, of course, his own generation was hardly going to defend an author who told them that they were all shallow and wasting their lives. Whatever the cause, the literary establishment has been so aggressively dismissive of him and this novel that liking it feels almost like a guilty pleasure. But I do like it very much.
The book is unusual in that it is written in the second person, which, combined with the tone, makes the whole thing read, appropriately, like an admonishment. It opens in a Manhattan night spot with the line: "You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning." But, of course, that is exactly the type of person that the nameless protagonist of the novel has become, hopping from night club to night club, looking for cocaine and women, with "no goal higher than pursuit of pleasure." He alternately avoids and seeks out his friend Tad Allagash (Tad calls the hero Coach, so we will too) because Tad represents the worst of his own personal tendencies, but is also a ready source of drugs. Coach is well on his way to blowing his job at a magazine that is a hilarious put on of the The New Yorker, with burned out writers haunting the hallways. Eventually he is fired after turning in an error filled piece on France that he was supposed to be fact checking. We also discover that his wife Amanda has recently abandoned him to pursue her modeling career. Coach has taken to wandering by a department store window that has a dress dummy modeled after her. Over the course of several days of avoiding responsibilities and the brother who is trying to contact him, abusing coke & booze at every waking moment, the remainder of Coach's life collapses around him.
McInerney's portrait of these young New Yorkers is truly devastating; they are all surface with no depth. Coach remains friendly with Tad because:
Just now you want to stay at the surface of things, and Tad is a figure skater who never considers the sharks under the ice. You have friends who actually care about you and speak the language of the inner self. You have avoided them of late. Your soul is as disheveled as your apartment, and until you clean up a little you don't want to invite anyone inside.
Coach had doubts about marrying Amanda because:
You did not feel that you could open quite all of your depths to her, or fathom hers, and sometimes you feared she didn't have any depths.
Meanwhile, he finds himself asking, "when did she become a mannequin?", because she is little different than her fiberglass doppelganger in the store display. When he meets her in a nightclub at the end of the novel, she is with an impossibly handsome young man who she claims is her fiancé, but he turns out to be an escort. The woman Coach is dancing with that night turns out to be transsexual. Noone is real, like the neon lighting in which their lives unfold everything is artificial; at best they are playing roles, at worst they are truly empty at the core (they have become the "Men without Chests" that C.S. Lewis warned of). Coach himself frames the episodes in his life as chapters from a novel, complete with titles. It's as if he is incapable of handling reality and must make a fiction of his own life, must turn himself into a literary construct.
Finally, as he hits bottom, Coach begins to rebound. His brother catches up to him and they discuss the loss of their Mother, who sickened and died a year earlier. Coach is, at last, able to confront his own sense of loss. He calls an old girlfriend and tells her: "I was just thinking that we have a responsibility to the dead--the living, I mean." The novel ends with him down at the docks, trading his sunglasses for some fresh baked bread. Hard to avoid pedantry here, but the bread pretty obviously represents the Staff of Life, the values of the heartland and the pleasures of hearth and home, as well as a means of resurrection--in the most fundamental sense, he is taking communion. Coach's decision to abandon the bright lights (he won't need the sunglasses anymore) and turn back towards the basics is a triumphal moment in modern fiction.
In an era when "white bread" has become pejorative, an author who has his hero saved by a bread roll is obviously trying to communicate something. It would be a shame if those same shallow folk whom the book is aimed at were to succeed in dismissing it as no more than a "drug book". It is a really fine novel and one of the few significant social fictions, along with Bonfire of the Vanities and Love Always (Ann Beattie), to emerge from the 80's.
GRADE: A

I liked this book because it does an entertaining job of telling me what one man's view of 1980s Manhattan was in a way that was witty and kept me turning the pages. I don't know if its the 'seminal' book of the 80s, nor if the nameless main character is the new Gregor Samsa (from Kafka's 'Metamorphosis'). What I do know is that it was an interesting read that left me with no regrets - either for reading it or for missing both the 1980s and Manhattan - and thats good enough for me. You can read this and have fun.

"Bright Lights, Big City" is notable only for its second-person narrative, a device that would have been interesting in the hands of a more skilled author; with McInerney, however, it comes off as little more than a cute trick. This book somehow manages the feat of reflecting the shallowness of 80s yuppie culture without offering a single perceptive observation about it. Indeed, this may be the only book ever written specifically for shallow yuppies who have never read a book and will never read another one. The main character's "rebirth" at the end is trite beyond belief. (He walks past a bakery and smells bread. It smells "wholesome," so he trades in a yuppie status symbol for a loaf and eats it, thus saving his soul. Get it?) The great modern American novel about a young man at war with himself in the Big City remains "The Catcher in the Rye." This book isn't a tenth of Salinger's masterpiece.

Great novel. Three main things I'll point out: amazing portrait of NYC in the Eighties. Two, really concise at only 182 pages - draws reader in on the first page and does NOT waste the reader's time. Three, best thing I've ever written in the second-person POV. I'm re-examining it as I finish my first book, The Case of the Cleantech Con Artist: A True Vegas Tale.

This novel reads much like an entertaining article in a magazine; it's light, with little insight into the human condition or, more specifically, into the psyches of the central characters. The word surface has a gloss, which is pleasant enough, but which falls far short of sustaining repeated readings. It is disposable literature, masquerading as something more permanent.
*
The protagonist identifies himself swiftly as enjoying an elite, Ivy League, background, with an accompanying modest cushion of wealth. His talents and, more desperately, his potential are hailed as grand and admirable. His interest in literature, in particular, is implicitly cited as rescuing and validating his moral worth. All this is somewhat tiresome and self-satisfied, and does recall the basic scenario of Catcher in the Rye (for better or for worse). Unlike in that alleged classic, here the author feels obliged to explain the protagonist's lack of direction, and he does so clumsily, resorting to a poorly realised appeal to grief.
*
The minor characters fair still less well. Amanda, the prodigal model cum wife, is empty and vacuous - no attempt is made into fathoming how or why this might be so. Similarly, Tad, an accomplice in drugs and clubbing, is rendered flatly. The surface might well be amusing, or even alluring, but in a novel one could expect more than what could be provided in the space of a thirty second television commercial (and that's all that's offered).
*
The eighties in New York might have been interesting in some sense, but the source of that interest remains opaque after reading this ultimately rather dull book.

i was given this book to read while on vacation...perfect book. i read it in a few days and kept me wanting to read more...which again was perfect bc i was on the beach all day!
back to the book...
i never lived in the 80s (only 30) but live in NYC so this was an interesting look back through his eyes. loved the style it was written in as well.

This is a book I would definatly recommend to anyone who feels ready to read something orginal and unique. The book itself is manipulated so that the main character is you, the reader. It reads just like a film noir from the 50's and it really puts many things from our modern day world into perspective. I loved it.

Even over 20 years later, the observations he makes and the social commentary ring true. Even the places he talks about are still around and are as vapid as they were in 1984. This novel is a glossy, yet gritty, snapshot of the bull-market hey-day when pop-culture was fun yet superficial, people wore designer jeans and cruised around town in limos doing coke. But ultimately the book leaves you feeling as empty as the characters described, which may or may not be the point. There's no real story here, only descriptions of the main character's state and observations about New York City that anyone who lives here more than a couple years develops. Ultimately it's like a typical 80s song-fun, sometimes witty, yet disposable.

I loved this book.
In fact last year after reading it ... I read the entire library I could find of Jay McIrney ... now I can understand some people not liking its narrative style ... but if thats the case dont buy it in the first place.
If you like interesting writing about the over-educated and under-employed with prestige jobs that pay no money read this book.
It gives you a idea that although glamorous ... life is not easy as a twentysomething in the big city.

this book caught my attention from the very first chapter and held it steadily throughout. the conversational tone of the book makes it a quick read as well. quick note: dont watch the movie, not nearly as good

In my English II honors course that I am currently taking part in, we hold monthly book clubs. My group chose McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City. I loved the second person narrative. This book, was hard for us to relate to. It was, however, insightful and I enjoyed being in the place of the character. It entangles you in every emotion and leaves you satisfied at its closure. It is a book that you should read at least once in your life!

A man named Jay McInerney wrote Bright Light, Big City. The book is about 200 pages long. It is about a young man that moves to New York With a great life and pretty much as soon as he gets to New York his life goes down hill. It seems that the best thing to happen to him since he got there was meeting his wife thew model who leaves him when he talkes her on a vacation to Europe. But when he decides to leave , his wife says that she is leaving him and she stays in Europe. Personally i think that the book has its good and bad parts, but the book overall is not good in my opinion. But as i said before , it has its good and bad parts. The yuoug man's life is just stripped away from him as soon as he gets to New york. and he paid for being there by having turned to drugs for redemption but in the real deal , he was just pushing himself deeper into the darkness. To tell the truth , i wouldn't recomend thius book to anyone. it's just a book that tries to get to your heart by making you feel sympothy for the main character. that's why i think this book is not good and why it got one star from me.

It should be read, if only for the technical skill used in creating it.
The fact that I found it tragically hilarious and reminiscent of certain friends was also a plus. A useful antidote to the "Friends" vision of New York City life.

WAY overrated lit. The style is 100% hard boiled "detective" Mickey Spillane tripe with a degree of erudition available to anyone with a college degree OR a dictionary AND thesaurus. The CATCHER IN THE RYE for the Elaine's crowd. In terms of canonical lit the book will die on the vine.

Meh, nothing over-the-top or outrageous about this. Actually, pretty boring and bland. Too bad, because it could have been a really great novel. Instead it's just an okay read. This is a borrow not buy kind of book.

This is an iconic American novel? Seriously? In that case, fans of this book must be used to reading mediocre crap. "Bright Lights, Big City" is about depressed, shallow, pathetic yuppies embracing drugs and sex in New York City during the 1980s. The second person narrative is interesting, and the author does a good job of portraying the unnamed narrator's sense of desperation and hopelessness. However, that's all that the book really delivers. There's nothing groundbreaking here, and there's nothing likable about any of the characters in the book. The ending is very cliche, and for the life of me I just do not understand why so many people rave about this stupid book! It is no "Catcher in the Rye," that's for sure. Skip this one.

On the 20th Anniversary of Jay McInerney's novel Bright Lights Big City, Sh-K-Boom Records will release on CD Paul Scott Goodman's rock and roll opera of Bright Lights Big City. The recording features Patrick Wilson, Jesse L. Martin, Sherie Rene Scott, Eden Espinosa and more! Visit Sh-K-Boom.com for more information and to buy!

I was actually surprised that the 3rd person narration wasn't annoying. By the second chapter I forgot all about it--but it does little to put you in the shoes of the (anti)hero. I wish there was more about his family background at the start of the novel because the end is sad, but felt a little cheap as it wasn't pre-seeded. That was the only point that I felt he became likeable. Still, I didn't really feel empathy for him: not in regards for his wife or his job anyway. I prefer Bret Easton Ellis.

Nicole Trilivas (Author of Pretty Girls Make Graves: a pretty girl's ugly story told in borrowed voices)