Bright Lights, Big City

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More About This Book

Overview

With the publication of Bright Lights, Big City in 1984, Jay McInerney became a literary sensation, heralded as the voice of a generation. The novel follows a young man, living in Manhattan as if he owned it, through nightclubs, fashion shows, editorial offices, and loft parties as he attempts to outstrip mortality and the recurring approach of dawn. With nothing but goodwill, controlled substances, and wit to sustain him in this anti-quest, he runs until he reaches his reckoning point, where he is forced to acknowledge loss and, possibly, to rediscover his better instincts. This remarkable novel of youth and New York remains one of the most beloved, imitated, and iconic novels in America.

The tragicomedy of a young man in NY, struggling with the reality of his mother's death, alienation and the seductive pull of drugs.

What People Are Saying

Barry Hannah
Jay MacInerney's voice is a lot of us, whether young New Yorkers or not -- coolly accurate but sobbing inside a little. Bright Lights, Big City makes eerie beauty out of that old-dog truth.
Cullen Plintton
The author is one of those rare writers who catches the mood, nuances, and manners of a subculture with humor, finesse, skill, and accuracy. A born stylist and a remarkable discovery!
Tobias Wolff
In its depiction of youth striving mightily to amuse itself, in the exuberance of its language and the antic shamelessness of its tale, Jay MacInerney's novel calls to mind such classics of knight-errantry as The Ginger Man and The Bushwacked Piano. It's a dazzling debut, smart, heartfelt, and very, very funny.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780394726410
  • Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
  • Publication date: 8/28/1984
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 208
  • Sales rank: 113,610
  • Series: Vintage Contemporaries Series
  • Product dimensions: 5.12 (w) x 8.00 (h) x 0.56 (d)

Meet the Author

Jay McInerney
Jay McInerney

The author of seven novels and two collections of essays on wine, Jay McInerney is a regular contributor to New York, The New York Times Book Review, The Independent and Corriere della Sera. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Playboy and Granta. In 2006, Time cited his 1984 debut, Bright Lights, Big City, as one of nine generation-defining novels of the twentieth century. He was the recipient of the 2006 James Beard Foundation’s M.F.K.

Table of Contents

It's Six A.M. Do You Know Where You Are? 1
The Department of Factual Verification 11
The Utility of Fiction 36
A Womb With a View 54
Les Jeux Sont Faits 69
Coma Baby Lives! 80
Pygmies, Ferrets and Dog Chow 99
O Couture! 119
Linguine and Sympathy 128
Sometimes a Vague Notion 145
The Night Shift 160
How It's Going 170

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4
( 14 )

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Sort by: Showing all of 14 Customer Reviews

  • Posted April 17, 2010

    more from this reviewer

    I Also Recommend:

    9780316769488 883904111504

    Best Manhattan Novel I've Read...

    This novel is one I'm sure many people can relate to. Although It's fictional, to some it is a fact. Their life story. This is a great piece of work!

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 22, 2006

    Bright words, small book, great story

    BRIGHT LIGHTS was one of the first ¿New York¿ books I ever read. It wasn¿t the last. It has been said that those flames that burn the brightest fade the most quickly. It has also been argued that an extension of this maxim to literature provides a quick dismissal of all topical, works of and in a moment. Bright Lights, Big City serves as an eloquent riposte to this critique of topicality though it is very much a book about a moment within a subculture within a place (and it rejoices in its rootedness), more importantly it is about a person, and the details which seem to date it provide no more a detriment to its universality than those that Fitzgerald reveled in. Likened to McCrae's 'KATZENJAMMER' this book is a ¿bright¿ spot in the literary firmament.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 17, 2004

    Second Rate

    'Bright Lights, Big City' is simply a second rate 'shocker' type book from McInerney. His first person narrative makes the book seem boring and made for fourth graders. The author babies the true nature of extremely wealthy youth in society. Coming from Connecticut, McInerney doesn't catch the true horror of what bored wealthy kids can do with their lives just to pass time and try to have fun for as long as possible. Jay only wishes he could write a powerful book like Less than Zero or Glamorama.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted March 25, 2004

    Misunderstood and Underappreciated

    This novel is unified, with form matching the content, in ways that most are not. The 2nd-person point-of-view is brilliant, since the narrator feels outside of himself, made distant not because of drugs, not really, not initially, but because of loss and denial. Too often people dismiss McInerney's choice of 2nd as gimmicky and impertinent, like the Coma Baby riff, but the Coma Baby riff isn't gimmicky and impertinent either, since it helps the reader solve the mystery of why the self-destructive narrator is doing cocaine and running from his brother in the first place (and foreshadows his own rebirth). Bright Lights, Big City is a fun, easy read, but it's a smart read, too. Very clever and, at the end, very touching.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 4, 2000

    Jay, you came so close.

    This novel falls just short of the American classics Huck Finn, Sun Also Rises, Gatsby, Holden Caufield, True Grit. MacInerney captured being young in New York in the 80's which means he captured being young and confused for all times. The smell of bread in the beginning brings you to the smell of bread at the end. The people and situations are as true to the rules of reality as fiction can be. And the walk that you and Tad's cousin take through the Village is most fetching indeed. The bricks and wooden Dutch shoes at the end of the book point beautifully to the Dutch sailor's eyes that first contemplated this continent at the end of Gatsby. The only problem I have with the book is it's a little too New Yorker, polished fiction--he never let loose the reins. There's many ways to be wicked but you don't know one little thing about love.

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    Posted October 28, 2008

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