Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney

 

Author: Jay McInerney

Title: Bright Lights, Big City

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Published: 1984

Pages: 192

Genre: Contemporary Fiction 

     You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might become clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, it might not. So begins our nameless hero's trawl through the brightly lit streets of Manhattan, sampling all this wonderland has to offer yet suspecting that tomorrow's hangover may be caused by more than simple excess.

     This was a book that I had been meaning to read for quite some time. Like I first heard about it on an episode Of CSI: NY when it was still airing, so at least eight years ago at a minimum. But hey I guess that's what to be read piles are for. You get around to them when the time is right. It was also part of my subscription ebook service so I figure that if it stunk I wasn't about to lose anything by reading it. Sometimes this electronic world we seem to find ourselves living in now has its benefits. It also strikes me this has become one of those cult books talked about in the background. Partys where people like to one-up each other over a mid-range bottle of wine. And no doubt took a year out after high school to go find themselves more than likely by taking a whistle-stop tour of Europe. But maybe that is just me being way too judgmental. I should probably shut up now and actually talk about the book right?

     Let just say that I didn't really know a great deal about this book going into it. So first of the bat, it was a shock to find myself being talked at. As any of you are probably be aware the whole second-person narrative is something that is very hard to pull off. Maybe this is in part as whilst not nonexistent it is a rarity in the literary world. Personally, I find it hard to become at ease with this narrative style as I read. Always being slightly put off-kilter by the whole proceedings. I would say that Mclnerney does a fairly good job here but it still hasn't really won me over to the style. I feel in part it works here due to its setting in time. It strikes me the eighties were a very ego-driven decade. Here our hero seems to be swept up in a current that he can neither stop nor get out of even if he wanted to. His need to escape the problems within his life becomes overpowering. Much like many before him, the answer seems to be to head down a rabbit hole of self-destruction.  

     Now obviously, drug-taking becomes a major part of this book. Our heroes' penchant for cocaine in toilet stalls is hardly hidden. And at times it feels like we have taken a hit of benzedrine straight to the brain as we race along everything in a peripheral vision becomes a blur. We are, dictated our life back to us at such a pace we can never really catch a breath before we are off again. Never get a chance to stop and process what has just happened. This is of course the entire point, much like our hero we are caught up in this undertow just hoping to survive and make it out the other side. For me it felt like the great weight our lead was carrying was being placed on my own shoulders. And as the music fills our ears and the drugs take hold of our bodies you can almost feel like you are drowning alongside him. 

     It's one of those books you could make a great many comparisons to the works of the beat generation. There are moments when it feels this could slip seamlessly into books like On The Road had it been set in the eighties. But that is not always such a good thing as those books come with their own set of problems. Our hero becomes so wrapped up within himself that his self-destructive attitude can only lead to a massive crash. This is no doubt a theme that can be found in every generation of fiction from the ninety-twenties onwards.  And whilst the book is an enjoyable read I couldn't help but be reminded of how when it comes to certain points within these pages we have also moved on as a society. It strikes me for a great many looking back at the eighties come with rose-tinted glasses. The East great hurrah before it all comes crashing down into global problems.  But all decades have their casualties. And the hedonistic lifestyle that our hero is pulled into came with its fair share. 

     For such a short book I was left with a great many conflicting emotions when it comes to Mclnerney's book. I can safely say that it serves as a bookmark for a time and place that has slipped by the wayside. And whilst I did enjoy it I never seem to find the great highs that so many others seemed to have picked out from pages. Despite what our lead does to himself he is not completely unlikable and you do find yourself hoping that at some point he will pull his head out of his own butt and turn it all around. I think books like this work at certain points in your life and maybe for me, I've moved on from that. But I have no doubt this is a book that will still be talked about in another ten, twenty, or thirty years' time.