Bright Lights, Big City | Jay McInerney

This episode of Books for Men features Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney. A novel about a twenty-something writer who copes with his hapless life by resorting to the hedonism of 1980's Manhattan—cocaine, nightclubs, parties, etc. It uses a second-person point of view, placing you in the shoes of the unnamed protagonist. Listen for more!

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Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do so. As indicated earlier in the month, I am featuring a second work of fiction for the month of July as opposed to sharing a nonfiction book. And that's primarily because, in the previous two episodes, I shared a From The Vault episode with none other than Annie Duke featuring her excellent work of nonfiction, a big-idea book called Thinking in Bets: How to Make Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts. And so I considered it sort of like two episodes on one book that you definitely should read. And with that being said, I wanted to feature two novels this month. So there we have it. And that brings us to the one in question today, which is titled Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney. And this is a piece of literary fiction, sort of like a coming-of-age story.

(01:12)

It's short, it's about a hundred and eighty, a hundred eighty-five pages. It came out in 1984, I think it was. Yes, 1984. And it was a really big book at the time. It was the author's debut. He now has around eight or nine novels, I think under his belt, many of them were in the eighties and nineties. And he sort of slowed down his output following those years. Some of you might recognize the name of the book, Bright Lights, Big City as a movie of the same title that came out, I believe in the eighties or the nineties. And it starred Michael J. Fox, who was insanely popular at that time, Kiefer Sutherland, and Phoebe Cates. And it was actually a box office bomb at the time. But I think that that primarily had more to do with the casting, at least in my humble opinion because Michael J. Fox playing this protagonist is kind of a mismatch.

(02:12)

Maybe it was just Hollywood doing what Hollywood does and trying to take advantage of a superstar at the time. Of course, Michael J. Fox at the time was coming off of movies like Back to the Future and Teen Wolf and other hits of the time and the television show that of course made him famous Family Ties where he played Michael P. Keaton, and all of these characters were a little cleaner cut and had that boy next door quality about them. So to play the protagonist in Bright Lights, Big City which I will explain to you a little bit about what the book is about, it might have been a little bit of a mismatch as I kind of alluded to. With that being said, I have no idea why the movie didn't work. I am just hypothesizing and this is just my opinion. Anyway, let's bring it back to the novel at hand.

(03:03)

So with that being said, I should tell you that I picked this novel to share with you for a couple of specific reasons. One, craft related in the second, more thematically related, and the former, the craft piece, I will get to momentarily because if you are a writer or somebody who enjoys novelty, there is something that this book does that is very unique, that is worth the read alone. But I'll get to that after I tell you a little bit about what the book is about. So like always, I'm not going to share too much with you because I don't want to ruin the actual story, but I need to give you something. And so you should know that the story is about a guy, 20-something years old, who wants to be a writer. He's working as a fact-checker, I believe for … I'm sorry, I know I should know the details, right?

(03:51)

I'm talking to you about the story, but sometimes the minutia isn't as important as the big picture, which is the thing that I wanted to share with you. Anyway, he's a fact-checker for a magazine in New York City. He winded up in New York City by following his wife, who ends up leaving him for another guy. And he doesn't really want a cop to this at all. He actually doesn't tell anybody about it. But what he does instead is he hits the town frequently with his buddy Tad and they go to nightclubs and parties, all these places that his wife used to love to go to. And he falls into this life of debauchery where it's about meeting superficial women and doing drugs and drinking and partying. But he's not totally lost because as you learn or as the book progresses, things come to light that makes the reason why he's acting in this way make more sense.

(04:51)

And I don't want to spoil that, so I won't share it with you. But what I think is really important with this novel is that we all reach these certain points in our lives where we realize that the decisions that we've made are solely because of other things that have happened to us. So they weren't really of our own volition or our own choice, they were our own choice actually, but they were only the result of something that happened to us. And you get to a certain point sometimes where something wakes you up to that fact and you look back and you realize that you are in this maze and now you're trying to figure a way out of that maze, or your life is like a ball of yarn that's all been tangled up and now you're trying to untangle it. And I think that the protagonist in this book finds himself in that situation, and it's one that we can all relate to if we zoom out on a macro level, right?

(06:01)

And he does these things like party and all this stuff to avoid the realities of his life, his wife leaving him, his mother dying. It's just all a Band-Aid to dealing with the real stuff that is happening in life and the things that become eventually inevitable for you to take on. At a certain point, if you want to progress with clarity, and I'm not saying that life gets easier, but having to deal with your own baggage at some point is a necessity of life if you want to live a little bit easier as you get older, because that baggage only gets heavier and heavier and heavier. And I think that this book, it’s a perfect example of a small story where the protagonist didn't follow his own compass. He followed somebody else's compass for the wrong reasons and then found himself in this situation that then he had to get himself out of.

(07:02)

And I'd like to believe that the book ends on a hopeful note because he kind of has this realization. But like all great literary works of fiction, it doesn't tie an absolute bow on things. It kind of lets it sit and you depict how you want to view the ending of the novel. As they say, it's a sliver of life, not the total story. And I think that that's always important to realize when you're reading anything that has a literary bent to it. I love the title of this novel, Bright Lights, Big City, and of course, it's referencing New York City, but I think on a metaphorical level, each of us in our own lives has a version of Bright Lights, Big City if that makes sense. So I alluded to a craft reason why I thought that this was a must-read, and that's because it is written in second person, which is totally unique.

(07:59)

And so you might be saying to yourself, second person, yes, most books are written in either first person or third person. This book is written in second person and it features an unnamed protagonist. So you heard me say the word protagonist a lot, and that's because the protagonist doesn't actually have a name. And so by combining these two things, it places you the reader inside of the shoes of that protagonist. And this is a very unique way of telling the story. And just so you have a little bit of a better understanding of what I mean, I'll read you two or three quotes. Your heartbreak is just another version of the same old story. You are the kind of guy who always hopes for a miracle at the last minute. Something changed somewhere along the line, you stopped accelerating. The problem is, for some reason, you think you are going to meet the kind of girl who is not the kind of girl who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning.

(08:57)

So you see what I mean by it’s written in second person. You are the protagonist of the novel. And this, again, is very, very interesting and it's very unique and it's a really great referential piece of literature as well, especially for a writer if you're curious on how to write in the second person, which again is not common, but might be something that you want to do one day. And so this would be a good book for you to pick up for that reason. And lastly, before I wrap up this episode, because I think I've given you enough on the book and the author and everything else to hopefully intrigue you to read it, I did just want to make mention of one very selfish reason why I shared it. It was the springboard to launch the career of Brett Easton Ellis. So as the story goes, the literary world was looking for the next version of this, and that's what led to Less Than Zero coming out.

(09:52)

Of course, that would parlay into a very successful career with many books for Brett Easton Ellis. I've read 90% of those books. You know, there's a lot of things that people could say about this time, about the type of books that were being produced and what it says on masculinity and culture and all of the above. But for me, you can't take away talent and you can't take away the fervor and energy in someone's pen. And to me, that's what a guy like Ellis has. And as I mentioned just moments ago, without Bright Lights, Big City, perhaps there would've never been the springboard to make that all possible. All right, that's all I've got. So this is about the time of the show when I remind you that if you enjoyed this episode or if you enjoy the podcast as a whole, please remember to share it with friends, family members, and other people who you think might enjoy it, because word of mouth is everything when you're trying to spread awareness.

(10:54)

And with this show specifically, that's to inspire more men to read. And I would love for you to double down on that support by taking 30 seconds, a minute, whatever it takes to like, follow, subscribe, rate, review all of it, or any of it on whatever podcast platform that you are listening to this on. Because in doing that, you are helping more people find the show. Of course, if you want more information, you can always visit BooksforMen.org where you can get full transcripts of all of the episodes, as well as sign up for the newsletter, which is a monthly roundup of all the episodes, including full book and author information, all the best quotes and newsletter-only book recommendations. So again, if you're interested in that, you can sign up at BooksforMen.org.