how to win the lottery s13e3 – bright lights, big city by jay mcinerney
welcome back to the penn badgley module. today’s episode is the most “normal” book we’ve read in a while: bright lights, big city by jay mcinerney. we talk about the novel’s deadpan humor, whether it feels tied to the 1980s, and how the main character ends the book while still sort of spiraling. we explore the current irony of a plot about fact-checking and computers making life easier, the arc to cocaine as a drug in the united states, and a time where t.g.i. friday’s was a cool place to hang out. we wonder if there’s a jay mcinerney connected universe and we revisit shreds’s shared bennington literary universe. we discuss how the second-person perspective villainizes amanda, the amount that bret easton ellis seems to take from this writing, and the weird miscasting in the film adaptation. shreds champions a specific element of kevin smith’s movies.
reading list for season thirteen
interior chinatown by charles yu
if on a winter’s night a traveler by italo calvino
bright lights, big city by jay mcinerney
suicide by édouard levé
the malady of death by marguerite duras
how like a god by rex stout
the diver’s clothes lie empty by vendela vida
the night circus by erin morgenstern
a man asleep by georges perec
open water by caleb azumah nelson
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