Bright Lights, Big City Setting & Symbolism

Bright Lights, Big City Objects/Places

The Department of Factual Verification

The Department of Factual Verification is where the narrator works. He describes it as an open office with desks, like a "locker room for a chess team." The office of the magazine itself, the New Yorker, occupies two floors of a building in midtown Manhattan.

Odeon

Odeon is a seminal nightclub of 1980s downtown New York, and the scene of much of the nighttime activity in the book, along with other clubs such as Heartbreak and Lizard Lounge. The clubs are frequented by men and women intent on dancing and taking drugs, many times in the bathrooms.

Bolivian Marching Powder

The Bolivian Marching Powder is the nickname used by the narrator to identify cocaine, the stimulant of choice for many of the nightclub people in the book.

New York Post

The New York Post is a New York City tabloid whose sensational headlines often make comic reading and provide a backdrop for much of the action....
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