Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney

 BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY - JAY MCINERNEY

Whenever Dillinger had cocaine running around in his brain and he would tell Jim that a knife, a fork, a bottle and a cork was the way you spelt New York I used to think: No it isn't. When I actually first went to New York I thought I might hate it there, this powerhouse of capitalism where money is God and where its inhabitants are loud and crass as a matter of course. But I was wrong. I was impressed. I stood looking out at Manhattan from on top of the Empire State Building and the noise from down below was like some colossal machine. A never-ending roar like that of a gigantic waterfall. Down there below me was one of the pinnacles of human creation. Looking up from the street from down on Fifth Avenue the buildings stretched up into the sky and were indeed like canyons. And then with the hustle and the bustle and the extremities of all human life I though yes, I could live here.

Whenever Peter York or some such similar talking head was on television defining the 1980s solely as a time of extravagance, Sloane Rangers, yuppies, and wealth creation on the Stock Exchange I always used to think: No it wasn't. On picking up a copy of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City I thought I might hate everything about it, this tale of a young urban professional carousing the streets of Manhattan in a blaze of cocaine and first world problems. But I was wrong. In fact I'm almost impressed.

According to the blurb on the cover from Tony Parsons, Bright Lights, Big City is 'probably the best book ever written about being young, about doing drugs and about music'. It isn't and Tony Parsons is wrong but then when is he ever right? Were it not for its wry humour and weird attention to weird detail then it would be a tale of self absorption and self pity kept afloat by a druggy white line fever but it is instead a sort of immorality tale of a fall from grace and a gradual redemption. It's well composed, finely executed and not too serious which makes for the final redemption to come across as quite touching that in itself is an achievement because let's face it, no-one likes a yuppie.

Its drug angle is of interest as well because the whole book seems to be not so much about drugs but drug-fuelled: 'The sweet nasal burn hits like a swallow of cold beer on a hot August day and by the time you all troop out of the bathroom you are feeling omnipotent. You are upwardly mobile. Certainly something excellent is bound to happen.'

Would it come as any surprise to know that the whole Thatcher/Reagan economic free-for-all, the whole shoulder pads and Armani fashion sense, the whole selfishness and greed is good mantra of the 1980s was ridden on the crest of a cocaine wave? Of course not. Why else would all those brash city slickers of that period appear so confident? How else would the musical emptiness and the lyrical shallowness of someone like Phil Collins gain such traction and provide the soundtrack to anyone's life? Why else would a place like Studio 54 become so popular? Why else would anyone want to go to the Groucho Club?

Not that I would ever condemn cocaine use, however. In fact more power to it, I say. Whatever gets you through the night, etc. It's just that Bolivian Marching Powder does not make for witty or erudite conversation nor does it make for great art which is why Bright Lights, Big City impresses because it is witty, it is somewhat erudite and it is rather great.

John Serpico