Living in a Material World: Men & Women in
The Great Gatsby and Bright Lights, Big City

The 1980s in America were not unlike the 1920s, as almost everyone noticed. Costly foreign military adventures had wound down, postwar slumps had turned to booms, friends of business in both parties had power in Washington, the demand for illegal substances was enriching the criminal classes even as the rewards of high finance were making criminals of certain of the rich. And the young, it seemed, were running wild to the corrupting beat of music their elders couldn't see the point of. In both decades the age demanded a new literature commensurate with its power to excite and offend, and as usual the literary business stood ready to oblige.[1]

Literature is one of the most fascinating cultural artifacts, acting almost as a substitute form of history. Novels in particular are one of "the strongest and supplest medium[s] for conveying thought and emotion from one human being to another," making them uniquely effective for communicating the "the hum and buzz of implication" so important to understanding decades like the 1920s and the 1980s.[2] Equidistant from their respective ends of the last millennium, these flashy eras of economic prosperity and social excess punctuated by sudden, sharp stock market crashes are frequently linked together in popular perception. Authors whose works are heavily associated with their individual eras are often selected as its representatives, providing the fictions that define as much as identify their generations. This is clearly the case with F. Scott Fitzgerald, who took credit for naming the "Jazz Age" and is overwhelmingly cited as its leading example.[3] His sad young men and flappers are the icons of an age. It is more difficult to recognize the spokesperson for the Eighties, since its relative historical proximity disallows a clear view. Jay McInerney, an author commonly compared to Fitzgerald, stands out as one possibility. Although initially anointed by reviewers as the voice of the Eighties generation, McInerney has so far failed to gain broad academic acceptance. But like Fitzgerald, McInerney has captured the spirit and meaning of his times in ways that define not only the decade, but also the essential conflicts of American culture. His aspiring yuppies and fashion models grapple with many of the same issues faced by Fitzgerald's characters. Their works show surprising similarities despite the fact their individual social moments are separated by more than 50 years of great historical change, including the progression towards a post-industrial economy and a major upheaval in relations between the sexes. Both authors write almost exclusively about the trials and tribulations of love in the boom times, depicting the debilitating effects of the culture of affluence on romantic and sexual relationships in ways that reveal the essential conflicts of their times. The material girls and boys in their novels are, as the Eighties' most representative pop star so elegantly sang, "living in a material world." Fitzgerald and McInerney portray gender relationships significantly influenced by the cultural climate, a rarefied atmosphere that undermines the idealistic pretensions of the American Dream.