Bright Lights Big City

You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might become clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, it might not... So begins our nameless hero's trawl through the brightly lit streets of Manhattan, sampling all this wonderland has to offer yet suspecting that tomorrow's hangover may be caused by more than simple excess. Bright Lights, Big City is an acclaimed classic which marked Jay McInerney as one of the major writers of our time.

"Postmodernism" has become the buzzword of contemporary society. Yet it remains baffling in its variety of definitions, contexts and associations. Beginning Postmodernism aims to offer clear, accessible and step-by-step introductions to postmodernism across a wide range of subjects. It encourages readers to explore how the debates about postmodernism have emerged from basic philosophical and cultural ideas. With its emphasis firmly on "postmodernism in practice," the book contains exercises and questions designed to help readers understand and reflect upon a variety of positions in the following areas of contemporary culture: philosophy and cultural theory; architecture and concepts of space; visual art; sculpture and the design arts; popular culture and music; film, video and television culture; and the social sciences.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 1,0, University of Cologne, language: English, abstract: The success of his debut novel "Bright Lights, Big City" brought Jay McInerney an astonishing amount of media coverage and an equivalent in book sales, but not much approval, let alone deeper analysis of his work, from critics and scholars. In fact, the hype that surrounded him and his fellow “brat-pack” writers is likely to have prevented any serious scholarly interest in this kind of new urban literature back in the day. “Bright Lights, Big City” was dismissed as a “yuppie bildungsroman- full of tortured self- searching and struggling- writer romance” (Young/Caveney 1992: 47) at first, without any considerable novelty or value. However, the enthusiasm of the large, young readership showed that there was something to McInerney’s novel that other novels did not offer- a setting and a language that were familiar and uncomplicated for them, but, at the same time, an account of relevant, postmodern issues that very well did concern the Bright Young Things of the 80s, but were usually seized in more elitist literature, and thus, eluded an audience that was ready for them to be taken up. This thesis attempts to perform a detailed analysis, starting with a brief description of the historical and cultural features of the setting and then proceeding to the interpretation of all important themes, motifs and symbols of the book in the context of postmodernism but also in general terms. Each chapter investigates the influence of a certain aspect of the protagonist’s life on his crisis, especially in how far one or the other led him to a life on the edge and to the loss of the self. In order to understand why, in the end, the protagonist has to “learn everything all over again” (BLBC 174) to get back on the right track, it is essential to point out the roles that Amanda- his opportunist model wife- his job in the fact checking department and the death of his mother played over time, and how drugs and Ray-Ban sunglasses seem to provide temporary solutions for the most acute of his troubles.

Chronicles the political events of the 1980s, offering a year-by-year account of the economic and cultural changes that took place during Ronald Reagan's two terms in the White House.

Dans le New York des années quatre-vingt, ce New York flamboyant qui ne semble vivre que la nuit, un jeune homme s'ennuie. Son job de correcteur au Grand Magazine l'assomme et Amanda, l'amour de sa vie, vient de le quitter. Dans la chaleur des clubs, dans l'ivresse des drogues et des excès en tout genre, il cherche une issue qui ressemble à l'oubli. Jay McInerney vit aujourd'hui à New York. Il est notamment l'auteur de Trente ans et des poussières, La Belle Vie et Les Jours enfuis.

Through an examination of 1980s America cultural texts and media, Kevin L. Ferguson examines how new types of individuals were created in order to manage otherwise hidden cultural anxieties during the American 1980s. Exploring a variety of strategies for fashioning self-knowledge in the decade, this book illuminates the hidden lives of surrogate mothers, crack babies, persons with AIDS, yuppies, and brat packers. These seemingly simple stereotypes in fact concealed deeper cultural changes in issues relating to race, class, and gender. Through a range of texts, Eighties People shows how the commonplace reading of the 1980s as a superficial period of little importance disguises the decade's real imperative: a struggle for self-definition outside of the limited set of options given by postmodern theorizing.

The Literature of Emigration and Exile is a collection of works from various writers that explore the literature of emigration and exile. These writers examine poetic, fictional, and biographical voices from settings such as Turkey, renaissance Italy, modern Spain, Central and South America, Eastern Europe, China, Canada, and elsewhere.

Cities have always been defined by their centrality. But literature demonstrates that their diverse peripheries define them, too: from suburbs to slums, rubbish dumps to nightclubs and entire failed cities. The contributors to this collection explore literary urban peripheries through readings of literature from four continents and numerous cities.

The Literary Afterlife of Raymond Carver examines the cultural legacy of one of America's most renowned short story writers.

Combining literary analysis with a practical introduction to interdisciplinary literary geography, Literary Geograp hie s examines key elements of Colum McCann's 2009 novel, Let the Great World Spi n . Hones examines concepts such as narrative space, literary and academic collaboration, and the geographies of creation, production, and reception.

American Literary Minimalism fills a need for a comprehensive study of this twentieth-century literary movement. In it, Robert Clark explores works that are emblematic of the style by best-selling authors Ernest Hemingway, Sandra Cisneros, Raymond Carver, Jay McInerney, Cormac McCarthy, and Susan Minot.

Millard leads the interpretation of post-1970 fiction by addressing particular authors and themes.

In Hooked in Film, John Markert takes a close look at the correlation between social policies and the public view of drugs and their portrayals in film. In this volume, Markert examines the changing social attitudes toward illegal drugs and their cinematic depictions from as early as the 1894 film Chinese Opium Den to the present. Tracking hundreds of films spanning more than a century, Hooked in Film looks at camp classics like Reefer Madness, comedies such as Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke, Dazed and Confused, and Pineapple Express, and dramas, including Panic in Needle Park and Requiem for a Dream. Scholars and students of cinema, popular culture, media studies, and sociology will find this book a valuable examination of how cinematic portrayals of drugs have changed over time, and how those images have influenced public perception of drugs and even public policy.

This edition of The Little Black Songbook presents the complete lyrics and chords to 88 classics blues numbers by the masters! This handy chord songbook is perfect for any aspiring guitarist, ideal for group singalongs, a spot of busking or simply to play the best of the blues from past to present. This little book includes: - Baby Please Don't Go [Big Joe Williams] - Blind Willie McTell [Bob Dylan] - Diddie Wah Diddie [Blind Blake] - Dust My Blues [Elmore James] - Dying Crapshooter’s Blues [Blind Willie McTell] - Farther Up The Road [Bobby “Blue” Bland] - Hey Joe [The Jimi Hendrix Experience] - Hi-Heel Sneakers [Tommy Tucker] - Hound Dog [Big Mama Thornton] - I Can’t Quit You Baby [Otis Rush] - I’d Rather Go Blind [Etta James] - (I’m Your) Hoochie Coochie Man [Muddy Waters] - Lady Sings The Blues [Billie Holiday] - My Babe [Little Walter] - Mystery Train [Elvis Presley] - Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out [Eric Clapton] - One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer [John Lee Hooker] - See That My Grave Is Kept Clean [Blind Lemon Jefferson] - Shake Your Hips [The Rolling Stones] - Sittin’ On Top Of The World [The Mississippi Sheiks] - Smokestack Lightning [Howlin’ Wolf] - Sweet Home Chicago [Robert Johnson] - That’s All Right Mama [Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup] - The Thrill Is Gone [B.B. King] - Wang Dang Doodle [Koko Taylor] - Where Did You Sleep Last Night? [Leadbelly] - Who Do You Love [Bo Diddley] - Yer Blues [The Beatles] - You Shook Me [Led Zeppelin] And many more!

Praise for the print edition:" ... no other reference work on American fiction brings together such an array of authors and texts as this.