SOURCE: "Fictions of Acquisition," in Culture in an Age of Money, edited by Nicolaus Mills, Ivan R. Dee, 1990, pp. 216-33.

In the following excerpt, Hendin explores the integration of emotions, individuality, materialism, and commercial culture in Bright Lights, Big City. According to Hendin, the novel represents "the compression of the novel of manners into an equivalent of upscale ads."

The rich diversity of American fiction has always made newness difficult to characterize. But the 1980s have seen not only the arrival of fresh work by writers who have long established that diversity, but also the fracturing of literary culture along quasipolitical lines: the rise of a multi-ethnic literature encompassing the work of Chinese Americans, Indians, African Americans, and European ethnics, a growing gay literature, and new additions to feminist fiction. Powerful novels of Vietnam and its aftermath, many by combat veterans, have added to the cultural ferment. Yet...