Bright Lights, Big City

Tad is the narrator’s closest friend and nightclub companion. Tad is a cocaine addict and an insatiable partier, who prefers drugs, nightly visits to dance clubs, and casual sex to a good night’s sleep. The narrator describes him as “shallow and dangerous” (2). All of Tad’s friends, except for the narrator, are wealthy and spoiled. Tad reinforces the narrator’s vices, despite the latter’s sense that he should be more productive. Tad works at an ad agency and lives in an apartment building on the Upper East Side. He is witty and bright but has little motivation beyond partying. His unreliability is the source of his cousin Vicky’s tempered disdain for him and the narrator’s mistrust. Tad is usually available to perform various acts of mischief, such as breaking into Clara’s office in the middle of the night with the narrator. 

Amanda is the narrator’s wife. She worked as a model in New York before leaving the narrator and moving to Paris. The couple met in Kansas City, where Amanda worked for a florist and toyed with the idea of taking university courses. Early in their relationship, Amanda relied on the narrator to become more cultivated, to achieve recognition through his prospective writing success, and to move to New York.

Elaine, a fellow model who knew her, describes Amanda as having a “slinky girl-next-door look” and “[f]arm fresh” (45). The narrator describes her as having hair “the color of wheat” and, when they met, she had a “lanky, awkward grace [that reminded him] of a newborn foal” (69). Amanda’s father abandoned the family when she was six to go work on oil rigs. The last she heard from him—through a Christmas card—was that he was in Libya. When she was 10, she and her beautician mother, Dolly, moved to a cousin’s farm in Nebraska where her mother married a man who sold feed and grain. Thereafter, the three moved to Kansas City.

According to either the narrator’s faulty memory or Amanda’s ambiguous retelling of her early life, or some combination of both, the narrator vaguely recalls learning that Amanda’s stepfather was sexually abusive. As a likely result, Amanda left home when she was 16 and lived with a boyfriend who later left her to move to California. The narrator and Amanda lived together for eight months before moving to New York and, after two years, marrying. After developing her career in Paris, Amanda returns to New York and, during her divorce from the narrator, becomes engaged to a man named Odysseus, whom Tad identifies as a former high-priced escort.

On the surface, Amanda’s character seems opportunistic, vapid, and even ruthless. However, her history of economic insecurity and abuse reveal that her actions are likely based more on a survival instinct than any desire to cause harm. It is unclear if she and the narrator were ever in love, or if they simply saw something in the other which they coveted—he, her seemingly unattainable beauty and, she, his intelligence, cultivation, and solid middle-class status. 

Vicky is Tad’s cousin. She is originally from Boston but stays with Tad while attending an academic conference at New York University. Her cousin describes her as “[a] well-bred young woman, something of an intellect” (89). When the narrator meets her, he sees that she is a blonde, with hair “somewhere between strawberry and gold” and casual in her style (90). Vicky is in her third year of graduate work at Princeton University where she studies philosophy. By the end of the novel, it appears that she and the narrator will embark on a romantic relationship. Her level-headedness contrasts with her cousin’s destructive behavior and makes her a better influence on the narrator. Her education also provides the narrator with the intellectual stimulation he needs from someone on a similar level.

Clara, also known as “Clingfast” and “The Clinger,” is the narrator’s boss and the supervisor of the Department of Factual Verification. She is an alum of Vassar College and a fastidious taskmaster. The narrator describes her as having “a mind like a steel mousetrap and a heart like a twelve-minute egg” (14). Clara has never married and originally comes from Nevada—something about which she is somewhat ashamed. The narrator fears her, knowing that his habitual tardiness and less than stellar output do not meet Clara’s standards. Eventually, Clara fires the narrator for not properly fact-checking a sloppy article on French elections contributed by a notoriously incompetent journalist.

Clara is the butt of jokes around the office—particularly from male staffers—who dislike her sternness and judge her behavior as masculine. The narrator views her as a bitter old spinster who has developed an animus toward him, despite having hired him. The narrator’s attitude toward Clara reveals his sexism and his unwillingness to take responsibility for having been an incompetent employee.