Bright Lights, Big City

Rating:
Summary: This book is a very very good one
Review: 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...

Rating:
Summary: Timeless
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Superficial and tired
Review: 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.