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There Will Always Be the Odeon
Jay McInerney’s latest novel, See You on the Other Side, opens at the Odeon in Manhattan. “Stepping out of the cab into the twilight,” McInerney writes, “he felt a rush of nostalgia at the sight of the red-and-white neon sign hovering above West Broadway like an old movie title materializing on a dark screen.” The glamorous Tribeca brasserie was made famous, or maybe more famous, in McInerney’s zippy and funny 1984 debut, Bright Lights, Big City, and McInerney’s readers already know what to expect when he evokes this specific corner of the world. But something has changed in his new novel, something is off—notes Erin Somers in her review for Spring Books. The people are older; the economy is less robust and profitable, the world more fragile and uncertain, and the city that sits at the center of his novels is more unequal, more divided, more expensive than it has ever been. If McInerney’s first novels about New York explored a city full of possibility and careerism—and some cynicism—now they offer a different tale: One of a city that is growing old and struggling to remain alive. Read “Jay McInerney’s Yuppie New York” |
