Bright Lights, Big City (novel)

A strong finish (English Original Title: Bright Lights, Big City ) is a novel by Jay McInerney in 1986, which was first published in the original in 1984. The novel served as the basis for the 1988 filmed by James Bridges melodrama Bright Lights, Big City.

Content

The key novel deals with the superficial work and private life of the better-off ( here especially the New York Society) in the 1980s and offers a short but succinct narrative from the perspective of an unnamed narrator, who himself at a major New York society magazine acts as fact- checker and has to check items for their truth regarding places, time, people, etc..

In the course of the novel he leaves his girlfriend, top model Amanda. He spends his glamorous friend Tad Allagash nights in elegant Manhattan discos, takes cocaine. He loses his job, learns to know a girl from the country and gradually loses the confidence of the people in the night clubs, the fashion shows and parties. His credit card is no longer accepted at the vending machine and deprive him of the pleasure in worship and consumption.

Criticism

" A witty farce to the big city life of the eighties. With a keen eye for Curiosities Jay McInerney demonstrates the poses and fashionable rituals of nocturnal city. Behind the comedy, however, lurks the fate of a young man who wants to join the company of people, but no human society vorfindet.Ein key novel of the yuppie generation. Funny, mischievous, and especially precise written. "

"A prototype constructed at that time almost 30 years Jay McInerney with " Bright Lights, Big City ". In ever new, adventurous poorly written attempts he revolves around the existential crisis six in the morning, when the only girl in the nightclub has a tattooed bald head and the cocaine supplies are consumed - no question in all this effusion, which may be of interest other than his house dealer no problem, that would not be solved by Alka Seltzer. "