Audio Book Prologue
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EnglishVoice Age
Middle Aged (35-54)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
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right. Bright Young Things Written by Anna God Person HarperCollins Publishers 2000 and 10 Prologue It is easy to forget now how effervescent and free we all felt that summer. Everything fades. The shimmer of gold over White Cove, the laughter in the night air, the lavender early morning light on the faces of skyscrapers, which had suddenly become so heroically told every dawn seemed to promise fresh miracles, among other joys that are in short supply these days. And so I will try to tell you while I still remember how it was then, before everything changed that final season oven era that roared by the summer of 1929 when the weather was just getting warm enough that girls could exhibit exactly how high hem lines had risen, Pro commission had been in effect for so long it had ceased to bother anyone much. The city had a speakeasy for every 50 souls or so the preachers like to exclaim on Sundays, and sweet faced girls from the hinterlands were no longer blinded by wood. Alcohol for the rial stuff had become plenty easy to get. The 18th Amendment had converted us old to grateful outlaws We did whatever we liked and dressed in whatever we thought smart and broke rules for the sport of it, diving into public fountains, mixing social classes as casually as we mixed cocktails. There were no longer exclusive balls given for a few people with old money and good names, and even if there were, no one would have cared to go Nice girls were the kind of makeup that 30 years before would have only been seen on. Actresses and actresses were escorted publicly by the science of shipping fortunes, and some of them didn't even bother to disguise their Bronx accents. Girls took to dressing like boys, and the women had obtained the vote. We had swiftly moved on to pursuing flashier freedoms, necking in cars and smoking cigarettes and walking down city streets in flesh colored stockings. New York was the capital of commerce and joy. Young people sought us from every direction. They came in droves to join the kind of party only a great metropolis can host. They came from wealthy families and farming families from the north and the south and the West. They came to avoid kitchens and marriages to a place where they could reasonably claim to be 18 forever or for the foreseeable future anyway, which seemed to us the same thing. But they came mostly for the fun, especially the young things, especially the girls. I can't remember very many now, although there are three from that last incandescent summer whom I resist forgetting they were all marching toward their own secret fates and long before the next decade rolled around. Each would escape in her own way. One would be famous, one would be married and one would be dead. That is what I want to tell you about the girls. With their short skirts and bright eyes, Big city dreams girls of 1929.