Happy 25th anniversary of coked-out young dudes writing novels about being coked-out young dudes! To celebrate, Random House is finally updating the cover of Bright Lights, Big City.

Which is kind of a shame! The old "Vintage Contemporaries" cover was as much of an awesome time capsule as Jay McInerney's book is. It's perfect! The oddly colored illustration of an anonymous guy in a trench coat wandering toward The Odeon with the Twin Towers in the background, those bold colors and the justified text makes it look like an '80s video game, which is perfect for a novel that reads like a text-based RPG in which YOU are a DISSATISFIED FACT CHECKER SEEKING SOLACE IN DRUGS AND EMPTY HEDONISM.

But now it is 2009, and, weirdly, the Twin Towers are gone but The Odeon is not. And so, a new cover. This one just looks like the opening credits of Saturday Night Live.