Word: manhattanization
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...life of new titles at the book chains have accelerated the conversion of authors into fashionable commodities. This is especially true for writers who can be plugged into the latest trends. Jay McInerney, Bret Easton Ellis, Jill Eisenstadt and other young novelists who currently rouse the bid-lust of Manhattan publishers were raised on pseudo events. Particularly flamboyant evidence of this can be seen in the self-promotions of their colleague Tama Janowitz, author of Slaves of New York...
...higher education, sex, drugs and psychotherapy. Their casual sophistication is worn two sizes too big. The best characters in their fiction are invariably white, bright and dangerous to know, like the autobiographical narrator of McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City and his sidekick Tad Allagash, a stripling adman and Manhattan party animal with inexhaustible supplies of Bolivian Marching Powder (coy for cocaine...
...been filmed with Michael J. Fox and Phoebe Cates, and is a bit of instant folklore in the book industry. Published as a paperback original by Random House's Vintage Contemporaries series, McInerney's romp gave readers a fast look at a young man's entry-level Manhattan. Bright Lights also put a glamorous shine on Vintage's soft-cover format and helped similar ventures at Scribner's (Signature), Penguin (Contemporary American Fiction) and Bantam (New Fiction). Artfully designed and inexpensive, these books have partially answered the question of how to get new writers published...
...personal life that ran parallel to his fiction. Bright Lights caused a small stir by caricaturing a magazine that resembled the author's former employer, The New Yorker. The novel's more capitalizing feature was that its hero and his pals were regulars at Odeon and other lower- Manhattan spots that were trendy at the time. The book was witty and well paced, yet neon and clouds of expensive white powder tended to obscure the fact that the work was as slick as a disco dance floor and about as deep as a Jacuzzi bath. In short, it had everything...
...Cannibal. The latter is the story of a well-read tribal chief who becomes the toast of the asphalt jungle and accidentally eats his wife at a barbecue. Janowitz has a catchy style and achieves her satiric effects with a sly Valley Girl delivery. Slaves cartoons the downtown-Manhattan art scene, where Janowitz, like her friend the late Andy Warhol, understands that people will look at anything rather than nothing: artlike artifacts if there is no art, and booklike objects if there is no literature...