(born 1955) Bright Lights, Big City (1984) identified the Tennessee author with New York City, NY’s literary brat pack, including Bret Easton Ellis and Tama Janowitz, and their Generation-X depictions of empty yuppie lives in the big city After becoming, in his own words, an overexposed literary celebrity as a twenty-something, McInerney has sought more serious themes and style, sometimes reflecting F. Scott Fitzgerald, in later novels like Brightness Falls (1992) and The Last of the Savages (1996).