Disallusionment and Deliverance in Bright Lights, Big City

The skin-deep phase that marked the nineteen-eighties was radically captured by Jay McInerney in his emotional and wildly amusing Bright Lights, Big City; the novel identifies with a generation in the same manner that F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby resembled life in the nineteen-twenties. McInerney's extraodrinary vision combined with the unique second person approach extricates an underlying cautionary tale. The poignant tone of the novel uncovers the artificial layers of the narcissistic and ostentatious characters; moreover, McInerney projects his own thoughts and vulnerability through the unnamed protagonist, who is often called Coach by his cocaine supplying friend Tad Allagash. Much of the novel illustrates Coach during his white powder haze avoiding the women and demons that haunt his existence. Meanwhile his continuous inner turmoil is mimicked through the literary style and plot structure of the novel.

A huge distinction exists between the man that Coach believes himself to be and the individual that he has become over the last year. The protagonist asserts, "You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning" (McInerney 1); however, we come to learn that Coach is the kind of man who uses drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism, who goes out bar hopping to relinquish the memories of the live he once had, and who envelops himself in the ideals that he thinks he depicts. Regardless of his great education, Coach never seems to learn how to be self-aware; his mindset dwells between self-consciousness and arrogance simultaneously. Throughout the novel we are allowed to discover more about the protagonist's tendencies, depression, and inner strife that will become crucial to the plot structure.

Amidst the neon lights and fog of the New York City nightlife, Coach finds comfort night after night albeit ephemeral in his quest for "Bolivian marching powder" to pass the time. His recent cocaine addiction exists because of some tragedy in his life that he is reluctant to share with us, but we are perceptive of his exhausting self-pity and helplessness. Perhaps the greatest declaration of his superficially plagued generation is when he emphasizes, "Here you are again. All messed up and no place to go" (McInerney 10). It is then as readers that we realize the journey we will take with him through his daily pleasure seeking binges and emotional pursuit of the true happiness he so desperately desires.

The women we finally learn of are loathed, loved, and lost despite every attempt to obtain control over his life. His boss at the venerable magazine is the loathed Ms. Clara Tillinghast, who criticizes his every idiosyncrasy. Despite the fact that he must keep his job to afford the expensive apartment in which he currently resides, he no longer views his job as prestigious and becomes careless due to his binges. The woman he longs for night after night is his wife who left him for a French photographer, and he fills his nose trying to escape the ethereal memories they shared in their apartment. Lastly we learn of the most significant woman in his life: his mother, who passed away just one year before. His mother gave him his life's blood and was his pillar of hope and trust, but she abandoned him in a sense in her passing.

Due to the intriguing structure of the novel, we come to terms with his current reality at the same moment he does. We are allowed into his world of white powder fantasies and painful recollections of a once good life, but the somber tone and episodic plot of the novel leads us to the most captivating redemption in modern fiction. Coach pronounces, "You will have to go slowly. You will have to learn everything all over again" (McInerney 182); his salvation comes at a time when he realizes he had traded stability for addiction. This sharp and satirical anecdote delineates the story of a generation seeking pleasure and never finding the contentment that pacifies the soul.