Drugs clearly plays a different role in Bright Lights, Big City than in any of the earlier works we’ve read. New York itself appears in a very different guise (and in this case, not from an “underground” writer, or even a marginalized writer). Write about 300 words about McInerney’s book, particularly about the drug use (and the different drugs) but also as a portrait of New York. You should be sure to quote from some of the earlier books to make your points clear.
New York Underground in Film, Music and Literature 1955-85 
I definitely agree with the idea that Bright Lights, Big City distinguishes itself from the previous works we have read in this quarter, for as its title promises, this book spreads before us a New York city of a large metropolitan scale and also full of bright lights. Indeed, the streets in this New York draws a sharp contrast with Great Johns street: due to the latter’s author’s postmodernist style, Great Johns street is both elusive and photographic, both realistic and surrealistic, both dispersive and politically concentrated. While Jay McInerny, as it is mentioned in the prompt, stick to a classical realistic painting of the city, that is, the surrounding of the single protagonist. More profoundly speaking, the landscape of this novel differs from the scenes in Junky or Last Exit to Brooklyn also because of the sociopolitical and ideological settings of these two groups of works. Clearly, the protagonist, or the narrative, due to the special usage of second person narrative, obtains a middle-class social status in the society; his frustration, suggested by the vision of fetus from the very beginning of the narration, is due to the fissure in his family, the symbol of the traditional social institution. The second person narrative gradually clarifies the novel as with the genre of confession, further reinforcing the protagonist’s anxiety to restore his out-of-jointness.
This may explain why the narrative about the underground culture, especially about the usage of drugs, is fundamentally different from the typical underground writings we have read. Compare this work with Basketball Diary will make this point clear. Despite his middle-class family background, the narrator in the former work argues and indeed fights against social normativity, among which his addiction to drug and his vision engendered by the usage are all his weapon of battle. His deep anger against the on-going war further accentuates that drugs, homosexuality, and unconventional writings are, as they are for other underground writers, constantly politicalized (though not often so effective or even morally justifiable as the characters expect). On the contrary, the protagonist, with a classical frustration of a modern middle-class metropolitan male figure, wanders above the ground, and occasionally ventured into the underground area as a release from/temporary alternative of his barren urban life. He is the one who essentially heads for Paris, despite his failures in the journey. This may be why the drug use in this novel is often omitted (e.g. 86), while the effect of the drug, that is, the desperation of the vision is the main focus. Thanks to Tad, a friend who can be remembered and also be dismissed according to the protagonist’s moods and needs, the latter can travel conveniently from the world of lights and the one of shadow.
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Towards the end of the book, the protagonist describes his use of cocaine as following “the rails of white powder across the mirror in pursuit of a point of convergence where everything was cross-referenced according to a master code. For a second, you felt terrific. You were coming to grips. Then the coke ran out; as you hoovered the last line, you saw yourself hideously …” (170). Several descriptions relate a similar mode of clarity from initially using the drug and then it fading and revealing a sickly person desperate for another rush of clarity. His use of the drug is a search for a revelation, a “convergence” where everything that has happened to him makes sense along the lines of an all-knowing “master code.” Rather than feel he is losing touch with reality, he begins to gain physical control and only loses it when the rush ends. His body can no longer function normally without the drug. He also cannot socialize, work, or concentrate on anything meaningful without the help of drugs. In contrast, Burroughs does not associate such a romantic notion of clarity with drug use. He describes it in more physical terms and as a biological necessity for some human bodies to function: “’I need junk to get out of bed in the morning, to shave and eat breakfast. I need it to stay alive’ …. Kicking a habit involves the death of junk-dependent cells and their replacement with cells that do not need junk” (27). Unlike McInerney’s protagonist, Burroughs’s protagonist does not develop a habit of using expensive cocaine after a personal tragedy. It is more embedded in him as his way of functioning and living. It is not a temporary situation, although McInerney suggests his main character will fail to ever replace his “junk-dependent cells” with a functioning, respectable New York human that manages to wake up early and grab the paper and croissants.
As a portrait of the city, McInerney uses the beginning of Amanda and her now “sexually abandoned husband’s” marriage as a mutual state of fascination with a big city that holds many opportunities for the both of them. For him, it is joining the literary world and for her it is modeling. Although both seemed to be after luxury and prestige. The protagonist describes spending their first night in the Plaza as “arriving at the premiere of the movie which was to be your life …. you cannot believe your dreams were so shallow” (151). His reflection notes the coming unpredictable play of his life that seems to be written by someone else. He takes all the right steps to be the writer he envisions himself as, but the shallowness he ignored in his wife and his own pursuits accumulate to an abrupt ending of the life he grew comfortable with and the start of a less fascinating on. While he used to remember his weekend mornings as peaceful and filled with the smell of bread, in his current state he cannot remember what he spoke about with his wife or her appearance. McInerney suggests that his protagonist is only happy in New York when he is still living in the delusion of his shallow and far-fetched dreams with his wife or using drugs. However, when he is not under the influence, the city loses any meaning or significance and actively seems to reject him, from the sun hurting his eyes, to the company letting him go despite his expansive plans, to the women in the clubs becoming uninterested in him. When the “coke ran out” he loses any sense of attachment to the city.
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I feel like right away it was extremely telling that McInerney is not a marginalized and/or underground author. The tone of the “underground” New York scene depicted as well as the use of drugs as a tool through the text takes on a significantly darker and more pessimistic tone. The protagonist appears to be constantly isolated from the world around him, he feels like an outsider and there’s a sense of a lack of belonging, or searching for something more or for an escape, in a self-inflicted way; the bitterness of his mental state seems to cause a negativity towards the underground counterculture scene in a way more personal than the overarching disgust with the “filth” present in Travis’ behavior in “Taxi Driver.” This is seen in the discussion of drug use as depicted as well. From the very beginning of the book he compares his drug use to soldiers marching tirelessly through a war, and that concept of using drugs to power through grueling everyday life appears to be a common theme, which is a stark contrast to the likes of authors such as Borroughs in “Junky,” who talks about drug use in a way much more “morally grey,” where it is not exactly praised but is not stigmatized either and reads much more as a narrator simply describing the experience of his life and usage with occasional surreal or artistic imagery: “Of course, junkies don’t as a rule die from the withdrawal of junk. But in a very literal sense, kicking a habit involves the death of junk-dependent cells and their replacement with cells that do not need junk” (Borroughs 27), or even Carroll who also narrates his drug use as a complex, and sometimes dreamlike, but not wholly negative aspect of his life, such as in the very beginning of The Basketball Diaries when he describes getting high with, “I pictured myself paddling across a river with black water, only the canoe was going backwards instead of forwards, with clouds that were faces laughing spooky fun-house laughs” (Carroll 4).
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In “Bright Lights, Big City” the main character slowly begins to self destruct reaching his ultimate low when he wakes up in a teenager’s bedroom in Queens and has to trade his Ray-Bans for a bag of hard bread rolls. Unlike previous works such a “Junk” or “Last Exit to Brooklyn” which are incredibly graphic and brutal with descriptions of drugs, the portrayal of drugs in this novel isn’t as gruesome. While the narrator’s use of cocaine, “Bolivian Soldiers”, is immediately present in the first chapter, drugs take a backseat in this novel and almost seem to be more of a side effect to what is happening to our main character as he begins to spiral. Burroughs in “Junk” focuses a great deal on how drugs destroy one’s ‘personhood’ with descriptions such as, “Addicts ransacked their persons looking for veins to shoot in outside the arm area”(80). Instead of horrific descriptions of characters, McInerney uses humor which creates a lighter tone in the beginning of the book describing one woman’s voice as “The New Jersey State Anthem played through an electric shaver”(15). The main character’s real addiction in this book seems to be centered around his ex-wife, Amanda. The detrimental decisions he makes such as completely screwing up at his job resulting in his firing, sinking deeper into the New York nightlife, and isolating himself from his family seem to be fueled by the impact Amanda had on him, as well as the loss of his mother. So much of who Amanda was to the narrator has affected the way he views the city. When he reflects back on fond memories with Amanda, he romanticizes New York. When he describes their first night at The Plaza he recalls, “you seemed to be arriving at the premiere of the movie which was to be your life…though you could not see the city out the window, you believed that it was spread out at your feet”(202). This dream-like world created in his mind, is contrasted with the reality he finds himself in now where a homeless man can harass an old woman on the subway and no one, including him, moves to help. He straddles fantasy and reality throughout the novel and the two come to a head in the last chapter when he is struggling to make his way back home from Queens. Trying to control his bloody nose, he walks faster towards Canal Street and although he is at his all-time low, when the smell of bread hits him, he is transported to his childhood kitchen where his mother is baking bread. The end is hopeful and there is a feeling that this character is going to “start over” so to speak after hitting rock bottom.
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Jay McInerney’s novel “Bright Lights, Big City” crafts a unique vision of New York through the author’s choice of writing from the second person perspective of “you,” the reader. By drawing in the reader as a character, McInerney involves and implicates readers as participants in the seedy dealings of a New York from a non-underground point of view.
In the novel, you are an educated someone who works as an editor for a prestigious magazine, but your wits aren’t primarily learned from your occupation. Evidenced here, you possess a certain detachment and particular knowledge of contemporary dealings. “She acts embarrassed when you greet her, as if something shameful had once passed between you, though all you can remember is a discussion about the political ramifications of The Clash” (pg 51). Your observations are contrasted with a tendency to participate in the nightlife, including cocaine use and casual sex.
Drug use in this novel is notable due to its unique coinage of “Marching Powder” to refer to cocaine. It is something you cannot operate without: established early in the novel, “Your brain is composed of brigades of tiny Bolivian soldiers. They are tired and muddy from their long march through the night…they need the Bolivian Marching Powder,” (pg 2). Later, you compare eight days of sleep to be as effective a cure as a “boatload of Marching Powder,” indicating the use of the drug supplants the body’s own processes. The way McInerney handles drug use contrasts to other course material relating to New York drugs, and “Junky” by William S. Burroughs is a good example of this contrast. In “Junky,” heroin is not something you use to enhance yourself, but as a result of a lack of direction in life. For example, “you become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations…just drift along until [you] get hooked…an addict never stops growing,” (pg 5). McInerney’s protagonist differs from Burroughs because the former uses drugs to accelerate his own capabilities and continue functioning rather than due to a complacency in life.
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McInerney’s book describes the life of a mediocre white man who is dissatisfied with his life yet refuses to change it. As I read I often forgot that the male is supposed to be a young guy in the prime years of his life, he complains and goes through drastic changes as if he is going through a midlife crisis. “Bright Lights, Big City” differs from the other readings of drug use mainly because for the first time we read about high functioning drug addict versus “Junky” where his job was hardly mentioned nor critical to the story, or like “The Basketball Diaries” where the character was still a child and not required to be high functioning. Also I feel it is important to mention the different drug use. In “Junky” and “The Basketball Diaries” the drug of choice was mostly heroin. While the male character in “Bright City, Big Lights” uses cocaine. Throughout the book McInerney illustrates how the other half of New York lives, unlike Carroll or Burroughs who shared the description of drugs ruling the characters lives. McInerney describes the characters work life personal life all while including his recreational activities and his dependency on the drug. McInerney offers an office view of drugs rather than hotels in Mexico. He writes about doing drugs in an office building with a woman he attempted to pursue giving me major Wolf on Wall Street vibes. Through this new perspective McInerney allows us to see the different ways the different drugs affected the white collar New Yorkers. McInerney writes, “For a second, you felt terrific… then the coke ran out” (170). Near the end of the novel it seems as if the character has some deep revelations about his failed marriage and how his mother’s death, who interestingly was not mentioned at all until the end, affected his way of life. McInerney’s description of the characters emotions show how the character himself depends on coke to feel content with who he is and without it he does not feel as if he has his life together. The drug allows him to feel as if he is the best version of himself.
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Jay McInerney’s novel “Bright Lights Big City” explores the daily routine of a writer in New York City through a second-person perspective. As the author implements his protagonist he voices his immediate distaste for his job and his ruined love life. All aspects of his life portray a seemingly normal life of the New York City man. In doing so, the author cultivates a universal lens with which to view the city life through. The protagonists assist in this depiction through his personal sentiments of aggravation within this lifestyle and his drug usage. While a quick glance at McInerny’s novel explores the use of drugs as a coping mechanism for the protagonists deeper issues. A closer examination of the novel argues that drugs assist him in his life and relationships, through his quaint diction when describing drugs the author challenges standard views on drugs as solely addictive and harmful.
The author’s integration of the protagonist’s relationship with Megan and her use of drugs with him challenges his drug usage as non-immoral. As the protagonist engages in lunch with his previous coworker Megan, he supplies her some of his powder before. By implementing Megan’s actions while taking the drugs he voices: “Meg twists her nose like a rabbit and sniffles.Thanks”(131). The author’s depiction of drugs when tied to Megan becomes a portrayal of drugs as soft and non-obstructive in her life. Megan’s character indicates that drugs for the protagonist cause him minimal harm within his daily life. Rather, he views drugs as he views Megan like a rabbit, small and non-aggressive. Unlike common views of drugs as widely addictive and dangerous to an individual’s life, McInerney integrates drugs as a small aspect of the protagonist’s life. Rather he focuses upon the view of his love complications and hatred of his work life. While drugs play an integral part of his story and his life, they do not become the focus within his life.
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In Jay McInerney’s book Bright Lights, Big City the main character’s use of drugs is recreationally at clubs and parties. Unlike in other books we have read, drugs are not the center of the protagonist’s life. For example, in the Basketball Diaries Jim Carroll’s life revolves around drugs and finding drugs. When he is not playing basketball, he is doing drugs or mugging people to get money for drugs. At the end of the memoir, Carroll acknowledges that drugs have consumed his life when he says “I go in and puke. I just want to be pure…” (210). Similarly in Junky, William S. Burroughs describes his life as a heroin user and dealer. Towards the end of the novel, Lee says “when you give up junk, you give up a way of life” (Burroughs, 127). Junk is Lee’s life and although along the way he tried to quit, he was permanently locked into the abyss of junk sickness. “When you are junk sick you dream about junk” (Burroughs, 137). Whether he was awake or asleep junk was constantly on his mind. These books highlight the class divide in New York City. Both Bill Lee and Jim Carroll are marginalized members of society. Their drug use compared to the drug use of the protagonist in Bright Lights, Big City underscores the societal class divide. The people in the New York underground have no regular job or expectations to meet. In Bright Lights, Big City the protagonist has several significant things to worry about outside his drug use, like his deadline for the French piece, why his wife left him and his mother’s death. The books portray the outlook on New York City differently. For the protagonist in Bright Lights, Big City, New York is a city filled with options of different parties full of drugs to relieve the stress of everyday life. Whereas for Carroll and Lee New York is filled with dirty corners to stand on and people to rob to find the next fix.
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In Jay McInerney’s “Bright Lights, Big City”, drugs play a prominent role, although not entirely the same as in past works we’ve read. In Burroughs’ words, “Junk…is a way of life” (Burroughs, 6). “Junky” explores drugs by describing their physical and psychological effects on their users, such as when the narrator first tries drugs (12). The descriptions of the city are centered around “junk” as a narrative (32-33). In works such as The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll, drugs don’t play as much of a central role, but they still paint a different picture of New York than they do in McInerney’s work. Carroll’s drug use plays more of a “positive” role in the narrative in that they are a part of his rebellious identity. And although there are parts of New York that don’t accept him (for example, 11-12, 17), Carroll doesn’t seem to suffer from the same lack of purpose that McInerney’s narrator does. In contrast, the narrator of McInerney’s work seems to be “out of place” in New York. From the start of the novel, with the invasion of the “tiny Bolivian soldiers” (2) on his mind, the narrator’s experiences with drugs are largely unpleasant. From his confession to buying drugs from a kid (108), to his awkward encounter with Megan on valium (141), drugs clearly play a destructive role in the narrative. McInerney’s portrait of New York is one in which he seems to not fit in. The narrator is “tired” of “New York, the club, bald women…” (3-4). His detailed descriptions of the homeless man terrorizing a woman on the subway (13) and how he was scammed (27-28) paint a “dirty” picture of New York. However, despite this darkness, McInerney’s New York isn’t entirely awful. His descriptions of the umbrella salespeople disappearing into the “subterranean circuits” (86) is quite charming, and the way that New York doesn’t mock him after being thrown out of the fashion show is strangely comforting (126). The bakery that Megan brings him to (134) seems to have an important part in the narrator’s journey to emotional recovery at the end of the novel (182). Although New York doesn’t seem to accept him and his drug use unlike the protagonists of other works, just gets him into further trouble. However, there seems to be some “subterranean circuit” that McInerney alludes to through the bread at the end of the novel.
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The crux of the difference between Bright Lights, Big City and other books about addiction that we read this quarter, such as Junky and The Basketball Diaries lies in how fully the addict main characters accept their addictions. Both Burroughs’ and Carroll’s narrators seem to have accepted their roles as drug addicts and fully embraced the grimy underworld that often goes hand-in-hand with drug addiction, while McInerny’s hero is still desperately grasping onto his office job and outwardly “normal” life. At one point, he says of his job “it’s not much, this menial job in a venerable institution, but it’s all [I’ve] got left” (46). McInerny’s hero loses the girl, and feels that his life has taken a downward turn, so he clings desperately to the last semblance of a balanced life that he has left. On the other end of the spectrum, the matter-of-factness and familiarity with which Burroughs describes the junky reflects his acceptance of his own addiction. “I was out of junk and sick. Waiting for Old Ike to show with a morphine script. A junkie spends half his life waiting” (121). Burroughs describes junkie habits with a matter-of-fact, almost clinical tone, as if he were merely an observer to the hell of drug addiction.
Another difference between Bright Lights, Big City and Junky and The Basketball Diaries is how New York City is portrayed. While in Junky and The Basketball Diaries, we get a peek of the city’s grimy underbelly, Bright Lights tends to focus more on the glittering, upscale club scene. This further illustrates the fact that McInerny’s hero is less keen to accept his drug addiction, because doing cocaine in clubs is much more socially acceptable than shooting heroin on the street. On one of his many nights out with Tad Allagash, the narrator finds himself in a club that he describes as follows. “The glittering, curvilinear surfaces inside Odeon are reassuring. The place makes you feel reasonable at any hour… with its clean luncheonette-via-Cartier deco deco” (44-45). McInerny’s hero lives in the plush world of upscale clubs, Caroll saw a grittier, grimier side of the city. He often hangs out at a friend’s apartment, which he describes as “an amazing place where there are usually anywhere between ten and thirty locals hanging out either laughing insanely from grass or simply on the nod from smack. I’ve lived here from time to time when my parents gave me the toss… “ (80). The two views of New York City seem to reflect two completely different realities, hundreds of miles apart, but in actuality, they simply reflect two sides of one iconic city.
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Throughout Bright Lights, Big City, the unnamed narrator seems to forgo food and sleep in search of the ultimate high through a search for cocaine through the streets of New York. Despite longing for a normal night at home, “Have you ever experienced this nearly overwhelming urge for a quiet night at home?” he seems to go against this want for normalcy throughout the novel and continues a self-destructive use of drugs. Drug use seems to be one of the causes of the dissociation the narrator feels throughout the novel. He seems out of touch with himself, wanting to remain isolated from the world and the troubles of life in a cocaine-infused stupor. Like the Coma Baby he dreams about one night, a newborn that survives in the womb after its mother died during a car accident, the narrator seems to desire a similar kind of womb for himself, to protect himself from the “car accidents” of his own life: getting fired from his job, his wife leaving him, his mother dying of cancer. The womb, his protection, then, are the drugs he uses so frequently. Thus, drug use in this novel is presented in a somewhat different manner than in previous books we have read, not as a disease or a problem, but as an escape and as protection. In Burroughs’ Junky, drugs are presented as almost a bodily disease, his descriptions reading, “His face was lined with suffering in which his eyes did not participate. It was a suffering of his cells alone. He himself — the conscious ego that looked out of the glazed, alert-calm hoodlum eyes — would have nothing to do with the suffering of his rejected other self, a suffering of the nervous system, of flesh and viscera and cells” (12). Drugs are presented as a ravaging chemical which affects the body alone, and Burroughs’ presents this ravaging through highly detailed and metaphoric corporeal descriptions in his book. In the movies of Cassavetes, we see drugs presented as a way to experience life in its ultimate fullness, to live in the present and live through and in the senses. However, in Bright Lights, Big City, we see drugs presented as an avenue for escape and protection, the narrator’s own “womb” protecting him from the outside world of hurt. One of his descriptions of his drug use is, “Your brain at this moment is composed of brigades of tiny Bolivian soldiers. They are tired and muddy from their long march through the night. There are holes in their boots and they are hungry. They need to be fed. They need Bolivian Marching Powder.” The words “tired,” “muddy,” and “long march” seem to signify exhaustion from pace of life (especially in New York) and the different events which caused the narrator to feel so defeated. His avenue for rest and escape, then, is “Bolivian Marching Powder:” cocaine, drugs. The use of second person throughout the novel only reinforces this deep dissociation the narrator feels and embraces, as the narrator himself can be either a fictional character or the reader themselves.
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Examining the perception of New York that is painted and drugs used in Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City one can see a stark contrast from Jim Carroll’s The Basketball Diaries. Despite being in the same city, the narrator in Bright Lights, Big City is notably older than Carroll and therefore encountering drastically different people and experiences than Carroll. Even when they both use drugs, they are doing different drugs for different reasons. In my eyes, this was emblematic in the following quote from The Basketball Diaries, “To sit in this awful mess and maybe smoke some dope and watch some innocuous shit on a dumb glass tube and feel fine about it and know there’s really nothing you have to do, ever, but feel your warm friend’s silent content. You don’t feel guilty about not fighting a war or carrying signs to protest it either. We’ve just mastered the life of doing nothing, which when you think about it, maybe the hardest thing of all to do.” “Smoking dope” is more linked to youth culture and apathy. Carroll, writing as a young teen in his diary, is not as concerned with life’s hard-hitting topics or emotions that the narrator of Bright Lights, Big City grapples with. Carroll noted that he isn’t concerned with war efforts or activist efforts and the smoking helps him with that—helps him not feel “guilty” about doing “nothing.” On the other hand, the narrator of Bright Lights, Big City, being an older figure, struggles with lost love, grief, and finding a sense of belonging. In one of the nightclub scenes, the narrator hunts the area for any woman to cling on to, finally finds one interested too, and the two have the following interaction: “‘You’ve got some blow?’ she says. ‘Is Stevie Wonder blind?’ you say… A couple of spoons and she seems to like you just fine, and you are feeling very likable yourself… ‘I love drugs’ she says, as you march towards the bar. ‘It’s something we have in common,’ you say.” Now out of a relationship with Amanda, the narrator is searching for any morsel of connection to a femme presence—using cocaine to enhance his image perception, lure woman, and find common ground. After this moment in the club and the woman leaves him, the narrator departs and walks New York’s streets romanticizing and reminiscing about Amanda. Cocaine operates as a form of escapism from his reality and a crutch for his insecurities. Cocaine and marijuana are opposites of each other with one being a depressant and one being a stimulant. Carroll simply wants to sit-back and effortlessly live his youth whereas the other narrator is actively attempting to subvert his reality and live in fantasy-land—away from losing Amanda and the death of his mother.
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The drug use in Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney is significant, because of the manner in which he uses it to blur the lines between reality and fiction, and provide a perspective that is reminiscent of an “unreliable” narrator. There are fundamental moments within the plot that leaves the reader unsure of its validity. Utilizing second-person perspective, the author is able to illustrate the progressive deterioration of the protagonist’s character and evident derealization at the hands of drugs. A notable moment in which derealization occurs after the protagonist is removed from the Vogue show by “robots,” as the narrator states, “You considered violence and you considered reconciliation. But what you are left with is a premonition of the way your life will fade behind you, like a book you have read too quickly, leaving a dwindling trail of images and emotions, untul all you can remember is a name” (127). This quote functions in a manner that is central to the message of the text. As the sentence drags on there is an evident disconnect between the protagonist’s thoughts and the world that is surrounding them. It is obvious that he, the protagonist, is exhausted by the emotional trauma that he has been subjected to at Amanda’s hands, and unsure of what follows. He is disillusioned by the novelty of the great city and the love that he once had, but now reflecting on it, realizes that just like every moment in the past, that very painful moment of rejection is fleeting. As he has done his entire life, he looks retrospectively and notices that the emotional burden that has led him to this point, though disregards it as he recognizes that the relationship has long been over. Throughout there is a sentimentality that is present, as he reminisces and experiences “flashbacks” to the past that continues to haunt him. But, by the end, he has recognized that the only way to continue forward is to “learn everything all over again” (182). Undoubtedly, this is a result of drug abuse and aforementioned derealization.
Conversely, drug use in other surveyed texts from this course, specifically Last Exit to Brooklyn, is different in the manner it approaches the drug itself. In Bright Lights, Big City drugs are covert, never explained too deeply, while in other novels they are central to the plot or characters. In Selby’s novel, drugs seem to allow the characters to feel, which was difficult before because of the frightening realities they all wish to escape. For example, referring to the dopamine rush Harry would get after sex, the narrator states, “[Harry experienced] sudden overpowering sensations of pleasure, a pleasure he had never known, a pleasure that he, with its excitement and tenderness, had never experienced” (196). Harry’s plight was caused by his heavy drinking as a means of escaping his inability to grasp his own mental state and sexuality. Using this example, though, it is clear that his character is driven by drugs, and using sex as “drug.” Drug use typically brings about the protagonist’s downfall in our course literature.
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In Bright Lights, Big City, drug use is associated with fairly mainstream ’80s New York party culture, rather than any countercultural movement. It’s more a form of escape than a lifestyle for McInerney’s protagonist, in contrast to the position it occupies in the lives of Carroll and Burroughs’ autobiographical protagonists, who wholly identify as users/addicts. For him, and more so his friend Tad Allagash, drugs are a way to “have more fun than anyone else in New York City.” Their drug use is a habit, but not one that inhibits day-to-day functioning, unlike in The Basketball Diaries. They also appear to sustain this habit fairly easily with no worries about cost, a far cry from Burroughs in Junky, who meticulously details the math behind his ability to pay for his next fix. Perhaps this is because the two stick to “Bolivian marching powder,” cocaine, while most other drug-using main characters we’ve encountered do heroin. But it’s also a sign of their socioeconomic privilege; indeed, McInerney’s protagonist lives life on the intersection of multiple privileges.
He engages with mainstream aspects of New York culture available to him because of his privilege – such as the city’s genteel literary and journalistic scene, and its position as a fashion capital. This is the main reason his portrait of New York is so different from the ones we’ve seen so far. He begins his nights on the Upper East Side, never once coming in contact with the gritty city realities that fill the lives of Selby’s protagonists. His low point – a blackout that he wakes from to find himself with a teenage girl in Queens – is tame in comparison to those of any other main character we’ve encountered. Also, he gets a redemption arc, in his connection to Vicky and reconnection with his brother Michael – this is something we don’t see in the bleak narratives that make up the rest of the course syllabus.
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Bright Lights, Big City tells the story of a man that watches, and does nothing, as his life is slowly growing out of control due to his drug addiction. At this point in his life, he feels he’s lost everything and can do nothing more than accept that perhaps he will also be losing his job — the only thing he had left; all because of his cocaine consumption. Through this narration, we are able to get a glimpse of the New York life: its clubs, drugs, sex, and overall sub-culture of the night. It seems almost expectant that someone of his caliber — high class — would partake in these activities, as throughout the book the reader can sense that the narrator associates this lifestyle with his social position, “You watch the solemn progress of a garbage barge, wreathed in a cloud of screaming gulls, heading out to sea. Here you are again. All messed up and nowhere to go.” His life is completely dependent and encompassed by drugs, but he does not seem to feel any remorse about it and simply accepts it. Later it becomes clear that the drugs were simply a coping mechanism to his fathers death, “After the funeral it seemed as if you were wandering around your own interior looking for signs of life, finding nothing but empty rooms and white walls. You are beginning to suspect it arrived nine months later, disguised as your response to Amanda’s departure.” It becomes evident that cocaine was what got him out of “wandering around,” and perhaps even made him feel something again; however, he eventually lost his control to New York and its drugs, giving it the power to take way everything from him. There is a continuous differentiation between uptown and downtown, highlighting his different lifestyles that correspond to separate sections of New York.
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McInerney’s “Bright Lights, Big City” strays away from the underground drug community of New York that we have explored in the past books and instead takes a look at the “socially acceptable,” high-class version of this drug culture. While the past books tackled addiction in the most obvious forms, such as the jobless heroin addicts portrayed in “Junky,” “Bright Lights, Big City”f tells a story about the more widely practiced addiction of high brow parties and cocaine through the eyes of a fact-checker at the prestigious magazine, The Post. Similarly to how Burroughs illustrates the impact of drugs by giving them a living quality as “cells” that take over, McInerney describes the addiction of cocaine, or “Bolivian Marching Powder,” as making it so the brain is “composed of brigades of tiny Bolivian Soldiers” who “are hungry” and “need to be fed.” (2). By assigning agency to these drugs, however, different the two are, both authors demonstrate the life-consuming nature of the addiction.
Although addiction and drugs are present in this book, they are portrayed as an almost inevitable consequence of living an upper-class life in New York at the time. Rather than being the source of life and purpose that we saw in “Junky” and “Last Exit to Brooklyn”, drugs in this book take a more passive role as a part of life. When cleaning out his desk after getting fired, Alex finds drugs and casually offers them to Meg who doesn’t hesitate to take them. Although before this there was no indication of drug use by Meg, this unconcerned response demonstrates the general acceptance of drug culture in even high brow New York. While “Bright Lights, Big City” is told from a completely different New York subculture than the past books we have read, it attacks some of the very same societal problems. It shows that even models, businessmen, and successful members of society aren’t immune to the life-altering effects of drugs of any kind.
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Drugs definitely play a different role in McInerney’s book and I definitely see this very different guise he writes with. For starters the style of writing is completely framed with a unique repeating sentences structure in which he utilizes the phrase “you do this” or “you do that”. Indeed the writer also does not fit with the typical guise of other “underground” writers we have studied. His first chapter, “Its 6AM, Do you know where you are?” shows the image a very different image of New York. While drug use is still very prevalent, hence the repeating theme of cocaine usage, the image is that of a more upscale scene. Looking onto the first lines of the second Chapter, “The Department of Factual Verification” we see that the narrative isn’t of underground for he holds a relatively normal job and has a seemingly normal Monday morning routine. “Monday arrives on schedule. You sleep through the first ten hours. God only knows what happened to Sunday.” The phrase “on schedule” gives off a sense of time organization that isn’t very prevalent in previous author’s works, especially that of Burroughs and Don Dedillo, both of whom have writing that depict time in a more unorganized fashion in which drugs often cloud there being a sense of time at all. Still I think what makes the whole “drug” theme unique in Bright Lights, Big City is the fact that the narrative doesn’t seem to be addicted to an actual drug–yes I know there is the cocaine usage at upper-east side parties–yet after reading through the novel, I strongly believe that he is in fact addicted or rather obsessed with a materialistic life in which he struggles to hold on to. Especially when he lies about the situation with his supermodel wife leaving him, I get a sense that he is addicted to holding onto whatever superficial lifestyle that gives him surface satisfaction.
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Bright Lights, Big City, shows it’s difference in wys of drug use in the opening scene of the story. Drug use, say, in Burroughs, or Basketball Diaries, came out of an incesant need to understand how these people were living. It was more experimental, as both those writers were cleary on the outside of it all living in New York. For this novel, written in second person, McInerney gives the drugs more excitment, that when snorting blow exciting things were going to happen. The drugs offer a sense of hope for the main character, which is completley opposite from the other novels we have read. Where the characters who do drugs are, in many cases, kind of hopless. Even though this main character is hopless in many ways too, he is still able to blend into high society, and keep a middling job. The way Burroughs writes about drugs and the people who do them, is somewhat sad, “There was not much left of Nick. His constant, unsatisfied hunger had burned out all other concerns”(Burroughs 46). Again, not that McInerney’s main character isn’t sad, but the enviorment’s where these drugs are done are completely oppostite of each other. In Bright Lights, Big City, often these drugs are done durign “nights out”, “The sweet nasal burn hits like a swallow of cold beer on a hot August day… You are upwardly modile. Certainly something excellent is bound to happen”(McInerney 48). These guys see New York, more or less, as an opportunity to mingle with important people. In the other book’s we’ve read, it has mostly been about people soley living on the outside.
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From the very beginning, the difference between McInerney and other underground writers is clearly tangible. One can see that McInerney wasn’t a contemporary among Selby or Wojnarowicz; but is writing towards more of a mainstream audience. Our main character was more within the likes of Jordan Belfort in “Wolf of Wall Street” rather than Georgette from “Last Exit to Brooklyn” or David Wojnarowicz in “Close to the Knives”. There has definitely been a change of scenery and genre despite this novel still technically being within the “NYC underground”. I would have to say the largest difference between our previous writers would be the socioeconomic status. Our protagonist belongs to crowds that we have not seen before. There is the introduction of the corporate workplace within the city, highlighting the restaurants, clubs, and parties that are attached within it. The protagonist seems to be leaning towards an upper-class existential crisis which leads him to this extracurricular use of drugs. The portrayal of our protagonist’s cocaine use is nothing compared to that of Burroughs within Junky. It is seen more of a sidekick rather than a necessity, like coffee within the everyday work environment. Our protagonist states, “Your brain is composed of brigades of tiny Bolivian soldiers. They are tired and muddy from their long march through the night…they need the Bolivian Marching Powder” (McInerney 2). With that being said, as a reader I can’t put our protagonist in the same boat as Burroughs because I feel as though our protagonist is using cocaine as a stimulant to further propel his career and social life rather than the bare necessity of addiction. It is hard to remember that he is indeed a drug addict because he is the first character in which we see him be able to function within the real world.
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McInerny’s portrayal of New York is initially presented as a meandering series of upscale or hip haunts, each only a small pit stop on a nightly binge. Ultimately, all the places “you” visit are vapid and empty, so much so that in the novel’s first page the protagonist is unsure whether he’s in Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge (1). Everyone is using cocaine, but it seems more soulless than any of the other portrayals; the cocaine seems to be a fad and a way to fit in as much as it is a genuine addiction — and the protagonist is always, always looking for ways to fit in. He pretends he speaks French. He talks up his job to make himself seem important. He goes out with Tad Allagash despite not really enjoying his company, because Tad is the right “type” of upper-class New York socialite the protagonist wishes he could be. The cocaine seems to me to be all wrapped up in that idea of fitting in and putting on a mask for society. The protagonist copes with his mother’s death and his wife’s abandonment by pretending everything is fine, and the cocaine is definitely a coping mechanism, as is clear on page 164: “You do two of the lines and sit back in the chair. A year ago tonight you were up until daybreak, sitting beside your mother’s bed.” Here the protagonist is doing cocaine because it’s his mother’s anniversary; although he states that he just wants to celebrate on the previous page, the memory’s resurfacing reveals the true impetus behind his drug use, which is the trauma around his mother’s death.
In contrast, looking at Junky, Burroughs has a scientific and pragmatic approach to heroin a lot of the time; and early on, when he introduces junk, he does so with an almost reverence for the stuff itself. On page 5 he says that “when you stop growing you start dying. And an addict never stops growing…Junk is a cellular equation that teaches the user facts of general validity.” It’s not just a physical habit, it’s a mind-altering substance to him, mind-expanding even. This is in contrast to McInerny’s protagonist, who uses cocaine essentially to shut down thoughts. I feel the intervening decades and the widespread use of cocaine really shifted drug culture, and that’s reflected very well in ‘Bright Lights, Big City.’ The addict of McInerny’s novel was not the addict of Burroughs’. He was a yuppie, a conformist, and did drugs to fit in, rather than because he was on the edges of society.
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