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Mar. 16th, 2012 08:14 amSo, Jay McInerney and Donna Tartt and Bret Easton Ellis all went to school together, which seems to explain a lot about their writing. I'm really glad I didn't go to school where they did, anyway.
McInerney also shows up in one of Ellis's books, Lunar Park, which is a faux-autobiography written as if the narrator was Ellis himself (it's complicated). I know that American Psycho and McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City" came out very close together -- Bright Lights in '89, Psycho in '91 -- and both in their own way are considered defining novels about the 80s. One of my friends asked why on earth I was reading Bright Lights because "Yes yes, we've defined the eighties, we lived through them, who cares?" and then realized "Oh my god, you didn't live through the eighties, did you?"
Not really. I was nine when Bright Lights, Big City was published.
But I don't really care about the eighties, in the sense that I have no special attachment to the decade and wasn't reading Ellis's work in order to understand it better. Mostly I'm reading McInerney because of his connection to Ellis, to see what other writers in similar circumstances were writing about. I think the problem is that Bright Lights, Big City, while published first, still reads like a bland, generic version of American Psycho. In some ways that's not a bad thing -- it's not quite as culture-specific and thus ends up being a lot less dated, which on a surface level makes it almost more relevant. Take out some of the fashion and most of the coke and the narrator could be a hipster in 2012. It's very much in the vein of Catcher In The Rye, with a hyperintelligent but aimless hero trying to figure out where he fits in. It's a lot less endearing in a twenty-six-year-old than in Catcher's teenage Holden.
But I feel like it has less relevance in the end purely because it has less depth -- it's less dated, but it just plain has less to say. It's a fast read, and it's not boring (okay sometimes it's boring) and I finished reading it, which is a big feat these days given how many books I toss aside when it becomes clear they're not going to get better. I just don't really think it's a book anyone genuinely needs to read.
McInerney also shows up in one of Ellis's books, Lunar Park, which is a faux-autobiography written as if the narrator was Ellis himself (it's complicated). I know that American Psycho and McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City" came out very close together -- Bright Lights in '89, Psycho in '91 -- and both in their own way are considered defining novels about the 80s. One of my friends asked why on earth I was reading Bright Lights because "Yes yes, we've defined the eighties, we lived through them, who cares?" and then realized "Oh my god, you didn't live through the eighties, did you?"
Not really. I was nine when Bright Lights, Big City was published.
But I don't really care about the eighties, in the sense that I have no special attachment to the decade and wasn't reading Ellis's work in order to understand it better. Mostly I'm reading McInerney because of his connection to Ellis, to see what other writers in similar circumstances were writing about. I think the problem is that Bright Lights, Big City, while published first, still reads like a bland, generic version of American Psycho. In some ways that's not a bad thing -- it's not quite as culture-specific and thus ends up being a lot less dated, which on a surface level makes it almost more relevant. Take out some of the fashion and most of the coke and the narrator could be a hipster in 2012. It's very much in the vein of Catcher In The Rye, with a hyperintelligent but aimless hero trying to figure out where he fits in. It's a lot less endearing in a twenty-six-year-old than in Catcher's teenage Holden.
But I feel like it has less relevance in the end purely because it has less depth -- it's less dated, but it just plain has less to say. It's a fast read, and it's not boring (okay sometimes it's boring) and I finished reading it, which is a big feat these days given how many books I toss aside when it becomes clear they're not going to get better. I just don't really think it's a book anyone genuinely needs to read.
