“Bright Lights, Big City” by Jay McInerney

Published by Vintage Books

Published in 1984, Jay McInerney’s novel, ‘Bright Lights, Big City‘, remains one of the sharpest, funniest portraits of life in Manhattan during the 1980s. McInerney’s hero is nameless, telling his story in the rare second person point of view. The young twenty-something writer hopeful tells the story as if “You” are the one traipsing around the city late at night, trying to find some action or forgetting important deadlines for your job at a New York magazine. Underneath the veneer of late night activity and slacking off at work, readers soon realize McInerney’s character is truly suffering, and its more than just his overbearing boss.

From the beginning of ‘Bright Lights, Big City’, it’s clear that the main character’s life is in disarray. He’s hoping to score some drugs, find a girl and forget his worries. However, he’s tried all night and now it’s 6 A.M. on a Sunday, and he’s not had much luck in any of the three endeavors. The first chapter ends with, “Here you are again. All messed up and no place to go.”

At first readers may attribute the protagonist’s depression and hopelessness to his addiction or his lousy job. As the novel goes on, the character opens up and shares more of his pain–he’s got a wife who’s a model who never returned from a European runway show. Then his wife, Amanda, suddenly returns to New York without warning, which further throws his chaotic life into a tailspin. Readers may then attribute his suffering to lost love and the need for closure.

While the ending of a marriage and unresolved relationship issues can cause an overwhelming amount of sorrow, McInerney’s character has something even more pressing going on. Readers watch as he avoids his brother at all costs, going so far as to run for blocks when he sees his brother at his apartment building. He’s been dodging his brother’s calls at home and work, so when he nearly injures himself trying to get away, it’s clear there’s more the protagonist needs to deal with.

Throughout ‘Bright Lights, Big City’, the motif of freshly baked bread is constant. The protagonist is entranced by it every time he walks by a bakery, he recalls his old apartment that he shared with Amanda that was close to a bakery, where he awoke to the smells of fresh bread each morning. He tells a story of how his mother used to try to bake bread (she’d burned it two times before) and shares a specific memory of coming home from college to the smells of flour and yeast in the kitchen. This bread and his longing for it are they keys for unlocking his deepest struggle: finally facing the grief of his mother’s death.

Finally, readers understand the late nights, the drug use, the disengagement from work, the tinge of sadness that permeates absolutely everything this protagonist experiences. His mother has died, and he’s never mourned the loss. Toward the end of the novel, he tells the reader about some of her last moments. He’d spent nights awake with her and administered morphine shots as she suffered from late stage cancer.

During those evenings, the protagonist tries to tell his mother of “the feeling [he’d] always had of being misplaced.” She replies, “Don’t you think everyone feels a little like that?” She refuses morphine during this conversation because she wants to keep talking, to be clear. She asks her son to hold her hand and asks him if he knows what this is like–the pain. She again refuses morphine and experiences the pain to spend those moments with him. In the end, this is the moment the protagonist remembers most:

“Are you still holding my hand,” she asked.

“Yes. I am.”

“Good,” she said. “Don’t let go.”

McInerney’s masterpiece takes readers on an emotional journey within his protagonist as this nameless young man reveals his pain in layers. The novel centers on the emotional drive of the unnamed character — but there’s tons of action and ridiculous situations that the hero gets himself into in an effort to elude working through his grief. People who lose a parent in early adulthood may relate to the protagonist, who desperately tries everything in his power to escape letting go of his mother–including never thinking of her. However, he learns over time that in order to move forward, thinking of her, talking of her and remembering her is exactly what he must do.