How "Big" and how "Bright"?

Jay McInerney’s title of the novel “Bright Lights, Big City” could be seen as a cliche. “Bright lights” and “big cities” bring about pictures of hope and promising futures. His seemingly cliched title, “Bright Lights, Big City”, however, are the two things that the main character hates about moving to New York City. It is interesting how two of the aspects that normally draw and attract people to moving to a large city, are the two things that distract and repel him from being there.
From the very first line of the novel, “You are the not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning” (1), we immediately know that the main character is out of place in his surroundings. A drug laden party scene opens the novel, and the main character is seen talking with a girl with a “shaved head [and] a scar tattooed on her scalp” (3). He remarks how he wishes he could find the “kind of girl who is not the kind of girl who would ...