Art & Craft: Creative Fiction and Las Vegas David Spanler
This article provides a review of the contrasting ways in which m o d e r n essayists and novelists have reflected their experience of Las Vegas. T h e author suggests that while Las Vegas may serve as a convenient symbol for depression and alienation, contemporary fiction also celebrates Las Vegas for its life-enhancing impact. These themes are fused with surreal imagination in the novel Keno Runner by David Kranes.
"Las Vegas isn't America . . . America is Las Vegas" from Keno Runner by David Kranes
Las Vegas brings out the downside in writers, their sense of despair. The whole place, with its brighter-than-bright exterior concealing a darker-than-dark abyss, offers a perfect "objective correlative" for personal depression and artistic gloom. If you are feeling lousy, if your marriage is breaking up, what better town than Las Vegas to ponder the transience of this sad world? Naturally there are exceptions, the most notable example being the man in the white suit. The sheer energy of T o m Wolfe's adverse judgment on Las Vegas carries such an exciting charge that he wins you over, as in Bonfire of the Vanities (Wolfe, 1985). His piece entitled "Las Vegas (What?) Las Vegas (Can't Hear You! Too Noisy) Las Vegas!!!!" (Wolfe, 1963) is a classic.
Send reprint requests to David Spanier, 60 Gloucester Crescent, London NW1 7EG, United Kingdom.
Journal of Gambling Studies Vol. 11(1), Spring 1995 9 1995 Human Sciences Press, Inc.
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It begins, you may recall, with the word "hernia" being repeated over and over and over again. "Hernia, hernia, hernia, HERNia, H e r n i a . . . " for a whole paragraph. Raymond is standing at the craps table, zonked out of his mind after two and a half days without sleep, and this is the only noise he can hear at that point. "Hernia, hernia, hernia, H E R N i a , H e r n i a . . . " Wolfe is right, it is the characteristic background blur at the craps table, in the middle of the casino floor, when you are that far gone. The security guards ease R a y m o n d out before he gets into trouble. But Wolfe has much else to celebrate about Las Vegas, notably the signs, their shapes and colors, the fizz of it all. For the grand debut of Monte Carlo as a resort in 1879, the architect Charles Garnier designed an opera house for the Place du Casino, and Sarah Bernhardt read a symbolic poem. "For the debut of Las Vegas as a resort in 1946 Bugsy Siegel hired Abbott and Costello, and there, in a way, you have it all" (Wolfe, 1963, p. 16). Wolfe might have added that the immortal Sarah Bernhardt was wont to gamble away her fees at the gaming tables, which shows that the Monegasque management was not altogether blinded by culture. No one can match Wolfe when it comes to dissecting the funny side of social mores, but the weirdest, most frenetic account of Las Vegas is Hunter S. Thompson's celebrated spree, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Thompson, 1971). This is the gambling city as seen through the dilated eyes of a guy stoned out of his skull on a cornucopia of drugs--grass, mescaline, acid, "cocaine, uppers, downers, screamers, laughers, raw ether, amyls, plus quantities of tequila, rum and beer. This is what Thompson and friend packed into the trunk of their car when he set off for a life-defying rampage through casino culture. "Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only real cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas" (p. 19). Ostensibly, Thompson was on a magazine assignment, looking for the American Dream. His quest turns into a series of drugged-up encounters with casino staff, police officers, bartenders and waitresses, which end in farce, shocks, threats and hasty exits, and the rapid ingestion of more and more stimulants. In the brief intervals of this hallucinogenic progress, like the m o m e n t a r y pattern of colors caught when you shake up a kaleidoscope,
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surreal glimpses of Las Vegas flash by. The Flamingo hotel like a huge under-financed Playboy Club in the middle of the desert . . . CircusCircus like the Sixth Reich . . . "This is what the whole hep world would be doing on Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war" (Thompson, 1971, p. 47). North Las Vegas a limbo for gunsels, hustlers, drug cripples and losers . . . Eventually, Thompson and his attorney, a huge Samoan no less crazed and drugged than he is, drive out to a place they are told might be "the American Dream." It used to be known as the old Psychiatrist's Club, on Paradise. The only people who hang out there, recalls a guy at a fast food stand, who gives them directions, is "a bunch of pushers, peddlers, uppers and downers, and all that stuff' (p. 153). Sounds all right! Is it a night-time place or all day? They inquire. It never stops. H u n t e r gets out there to find a huge slab of cracked, scorched concrete in a vacant lot full of tall weeds. The owner of a gas station across the road says the place had burned down about three years ago. A little bit of this town, Hunter concludes, as he staggers out on another mindbending high, goes a very long way. A funny book indeed, which says a lot more about the author than Las Vegas. When it comes to expressing depression in Las Vegas, two writers share the palme noire, J o a n Didion and J o h n Gregory Dunne. Didion's Play It As It Lays was published in 1970. Dunne's Vegas-A Memoir of a Dark Season came out in 1974. Though not exactly a husband-and-wife team, the fact that the authors were (and are) married adds a certain piquancy to their very different narratives. Play It As It Lays (which Joan Didion dedicated to John) is the story of a young woman drifting in the milieu of spoiled, beautiful movie people, whose lives criss-cross Los Angeles and Las Vegas, a backdrop in emotional terms as arid as the Mojave desert. Maria, the heroine, is going through a mental breakdown. The experience is seen mainly through her deepening unhappiness, of losing a child, of failing to connect with husband, lovers, friends, her own future. In her desolation, the evocation of a particular side of Las Vegas' smart-life, rich, empty, corrupt, depicted from the inside, is horribly convincing. Take this chilling paragraph for example, which distils Maria's feeling, or her lack of feeling, about her life (Didion, 1970). Maria made a list of the things she would never do. She would never: walk through the Sands or Caesarsaloneafter midnight. She would never: ball at a party, do
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S & M unless she wanted to, borrowfurs from Abe Lipsey, deal She would never: carry a Yorkshire in Beverly Hills (p. 136).
Play It As It Lays takes its title from the advice Maria's father gave her as a child--life is a crap game. It goes as it lays, don't do it the hard way. She was, she says, raised to believe that what came in on the next roll would always be better than what went out on the last. Maria finds that this easy gambler's optimism, which only half carried the family through even in the old days, when they lived out in the desert--now a nuclear testing g r o u n d - - n o longer applies. It is hopelessly out of synch with her adult life. She has nowhere to turn, caught up in the artificial existence of selfish, self-indulgent people, playing around with drugs and movie-making. In the vacuum of her life, she drives endlessly up and down the Los Angeles freeways. What game was it supposed to be that she was playing? Nothing counts. All warmth and sympathy has gone. H e r disillusionment is not a story" about Las Vegas, but it conveys more intensely than any other novel the desolation of Vegas--hernia, hernia--when life goes wrong. By contrast, John Gregory Dunne fled to Las Vegas to get away from himself and work through a bad patch in his marriage. The result was his A Memoir of a Dark Season. It is a look at Las Vegas from the bottom of the pile. Three characters, a hooker, a comedian and a private detective, expose their desperate search for the grail of success-- big bucks in one way or another-- and reveal at the same time a lot about Las Vegas lowlife. And low it is. Gambling hardly gets a look in: the universal hustle is for cheap sex, preferably free sex. The hooker dispenses it, in the intervals of getting busted for soliciting; the failed comedian talks about it, with less and less conviction; the detective tracks down spouses who have offended sexually against each other. Dunne saw a sign, emblazoned in gold letters on a roulette wheel, on a billboard in Hollywood: V I S I T LAS V E G A S B E F O R E Y O U R N U M B E R S UP. The message had a delphic fascination for him. It persuaded him to make the trip and immerse himself in the people he met there, their seedy true-life confessions. (He was the kind of stranger people would immediately confide in.) Las Vegas offered salvation without commitment, a way of easing his own nervous breakdown by peeping, like a voyeur, into the even more desolate lives of these denizens of the too much fun club.
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D u n n e strikes u p q u i c k f r i e n d s h i p s w i t h all m a n n e r o f p e o p l e (the exact o p p o s i t e o f the fictional M a r i a o f Play It As It Lays), f r o m the v e r y start o f his stay. " ' I f y o u g a m b l e , sir, g o o d luck', says the a g i n g bellhop w h o s h o w s h i m his r o o m , ' a n d if y o u n e e d a little c o m p a n y , y o u j u s t give m e a ring, h e a r ? ' " ( D u n n e , 1974, p. 22). E a c h o f the trio o f c e n t r a l c h a r a c t e r s he b e f r i e n d s u n c o v e r s m o r e a n d m o r e o f the d a r k side o f V e g a s ( D u n n e , 1974). The hooker: "She had been cruising since midnight with no luck. The secret of cruising was to keep moving. Caesars first, then the Tropicana, then the Sands. No luck. No more than two drinks in any casino. Stay for more than two drinks without making a connection and hotel security begins to get nervous. The hotels draw a fine line. They like the girls available for the roller who wants a pop, but then they don't want the casino to look like a lamppost." (p. 125) As the second main character, the private detective says, reassuringly: "everyone in Vegas knows what everyone else is doing . . . so what?" (p. 74) Or the warm-up comedian, who comes ahead of the star-name of the dinner-show, a showbiz entertainer, the performer whom the audience has paid out good money to see: "The warm-up comic has forty-five minutes and functions basically as a high colonic, getting the audience through dinner, one trip to the john, a little juice on board, loosening them up for the headliner. He stands up there, a guy with six tuxedos in his closet, every one with the sky-blue lining . . ." (p. 45) Time is up, the star awaits. The headliner comes out. The people have finished their dinner. All he can hear is the waiters saying, "You want the parfait or the mousse? . . ." (p. 46) Yet a sort o f gritty o p t i m i s m keeps o n b r e a k i n g t h r o u g h , as these L a s V e g a s c h a r a c t e r s struggle to m a k e a living. S o m e h o w , the t h e r a p y o f e m p a t h i z i n g with their futile lives w o r k s for the a u t h o r o f A Memoir of a Dark Season. A f t e r 200 pages, he is calling his wife o n the p h o n e . S o o n after t h a t he is o n the w a y b a c k h o m e . A s u n n y o p t i m i s m is w h a t lifts the h e r o i n e o f The Desert Rose ( M c M u r t r y , 1983). She is a showgirl, o n c e loved a n d c h e r i s h e d as the m o s t beautiful o f all the showgirls, n o w at a l m o s t 39, o n her w a y o u t o f the show. L a r r y M c M u r t y ' s novel (written he confessed in three weeks in 1983) is p e r h a p s the best b o o k a b o u t ordinary d a y to d a y life in L a s V e g a s . It s h o w s people as t h e y are, w o r k i n g , r u s h i n g their coffee b r e a k s b e t w e e n shows, t r y i n g to get their cars fixed a n d d o their h o u s e h o l d chores, h a v i n g fast friendships like fast food, the daily r o u n d set a g a i n s t the n o n - s t o p glitz o f the strip casinos, w h i c h are not, for these people, places o f e n t e r t a i n m e n t b u t places o f w o r k .
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Harmony, the showgirl, has an even more attractive daughter, named Pepper (the names say a lot about the characters.) Pepper at the age of 16 is being groomed for the role of lead dancer in the "tits and feathers" show in which her mother has displayed her charms (suspended on a disc above the stage) all her showgirl life. It's a tough trade for Harmony, to be told she has to quit the show, sacked, to enable her daughter to take over as star. The producer tells her frankly, a mother and daughter on the same stage could lead to some tricky publicity. But H a r m o n y can take it. She is none too strong at standing up for herself, but she has a special quality "the ability to see the bright side". It takes courage to do that, a friend tells her. She is a person who likes to think about the good kinds of things that could happen rather than the bad kinds of things. And one of the good things about Vegas was that it enabled her to become a showgirl, a feathered beauty, whereas anywhere else, she feels, nobody would have known what to do with her. Harmony's optimism sort of wins through ("sort of' is how the characters express their thoughts and feelings in this story). Actually, the author is sort of in love with Harmony: one of the nicest things that can happen, M c M u r t r y says in a preface to the paperback, is to have your characters teach you something, that optimism is a form of courage, for example. This is Harmony's theme, and through her, it gives Las Vegas a warm glow--even if, overall, the book is smudged by sentimentality. W h i c h - a sentimental glow--is more than can be said for the Las Vegas of Mario Puzo's novel "Fools Die (1978). Most of the action happens in a big casino in the heart of the Strip called the Hotel Xanadu. The slick picture it gives of sex and corruption has, presumably, colored the imagination of thousands of readers around the world as to what life in a top casino is like. Everybody in management is cheating on each other, from the president on down, so in the end no one knows who is hustling whom; cheap and sleazy sex is on demand (at $100 a shot) from every female employee on the casino staff; overall, the characters act out their lives with the same deadening amorality which was the pervasive principle (or lack of principle) of The Godfather (Puzo, 1970). Fools Die (Puzo, 1978) presents a very one-sided view of Las Vegas as a resort. But amid all the narrative schlock it does convey a clear perception of what gamblers and gambling is about. Mario Puzo, as he
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admits, has played for high stakes himself. The opening scenes in the casino offer some sharp observations about gambling--a house shill, indifferent to winning or losing is described as "boringly immortal"; the faint roar from the action on the casino floor is heard high up in a hotel room like surf on a distant beach; or the curious aloneness and togetherness of gambling -- "He loved the feeling of being solitary in the crowd of people and the gambling hum. To be alone without being lonely. To be friends with strangers for an hour and never see them again" (Puzo, 1978, p. 18). And the guiding principle of the casino, the golden rule which management lives by: percentages. "Percentages never lie. We built all these hotels on percentages. We stay rich on the percentage" (Puzo, 1978, p. 155). As the hero of the story is advised by the president: "You can lose faith in everything, religion and God, women and love, good and evil, war and peace. You name it. But the percentage will always stand fast" (p. 396). Beating the percentage, as all gamblers hope and pray to do in the short run, has its disadvantage, too. The leitmotif of Fools Die is the gambler who beats the house, wins a fortune, and somehow or other can't live with his success. In this story, nobody comes out winning. Even the hero, who at least manages to stay alive, concludes: "I knew now the single fact that no matter how carefully I planned, no matter how cunning I was, lies or good deeds alone, I couldn't really win" (p. 442). The story of high life and corruption in Fools Die is a long way from the workaday cares of the people who serve the customers in The Desert Rose. But Puzo knows the high roller mileu from the inside; he is revealing about foreign gamblers, particularly the Japanese (Puzo, a978). "The English were immediately written off, despite their history of being the biggest losers of the nineteenth century. T h e end of the British E m p i r e had m e a n t the end of their high rollers . . . the French were also written off. T h e French didn't travel and would never stand for the extra house double zero on the Vegas w h e e l . . . B u t the G e r m a n s a n d Italian were w o o e d . . , there was something in the high flying Vegas style that appealed to the Teutonic spirit . . . Italian millionaires were big prizes in Vegas. T h e y gambled recklessly while getting d r u n k . . . T h e Mexican and South A m e r i c a n gamblers were even bigger prizes . . . special planes were sent there to b r i n g the p a m p a s millionaires to Vegas. Everything was free to these sporting gentlemen who left the hides of millions of cattle at the baccarat tables . . ." (pp. 162-163)
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T h e J a p a n e s e in the story all w e a r black business suits, b a d l y tailored b y western standards, with white shirts a n d black ties. T h e p a r t y a r r i v i n g at the airport looks like a b a n d of v e r y e a r n e s t clerks instead of the ruling b o a r d of J a p a n ' s richest a n d m o s t p o w e r f u l business c o n g l o m e r a t e (Puzo, 1978). 9 . . the band of ten Japanese terrorized the casinos of Vegas. They would travel together and gamble together at the same baccaret table9 When Fummiro (the leader) had the shoe, they all bet the limit with him on the bank . . . they played withjoie de vivre more Italian than Oriental. Fummiro would whip the sides of the shoe and bang on the table when he dealt himself a natural eight or nine. He was a passionate gambler and gloated over winning a two-thousand-dollar bet. This amazed Cully. He knew Fummiro was worth over half a billion dollars . . . the band of ten men in their shiny black suits . . . were a frightening sight, marching ten strong into a casino, looking like undertakers come to collect the corpse of the casino's bankroll (p. 168). But of course the p e r c e n t a g e got t h e m , too. T h e h a p p y g a m b l e r is the m a n who j u s t plays for the helluvit, for fun, like the n a r r a t o r in Fools Die: "I m a d e five-dollar bets a n d bet all the n u m b e r s . I w o n a n d I lost. I drifted into m y old g a m b l i n g patterns, m o v i n g f r o m craps to blackjack a n d roulette. Soft, easy, d r e a m y g a m b l i n g , b e t t i n g small, w i n n i n g a n d losing, p l a y i n g loose p e r c e n t a g e s . . . g a m b l i n g was fun, that was all" (p. 119). M a n y writers have tried to catch Las V e g a s in its different m o o d s and a s p e c t s - sleaze and depression on one side, g l a m o u r a n d e x c i t e m e n t on the other. But no one has yet captured Las Vegas with the i m a g i n a t i v e truth of art, in the w a y M a r k T w a i n caught the Mississippi a n d m a d e it his own, or n e a r e r o u r own times William F a u l k n e r the South. D a v i d K r a n e s (a writer w h o teaches at the U n i v e r s i t y o f U t a h ) to m y m i n d c o m e s closest to it. H e has caught the nihilistic, floating, surreal quality of living in L a s Vegas, of a life strangely r e m o v e d a n d h e i g h t e n e d f r o m e v e r y d a y living, b e t t e r t h a n a n y o n e else. I n his short stories, the identity of the c h a r a c t e r s seems to shift in their u n c e r t a i n t y a b o u t themselves, a n d w h a t they are doing, in w a y s which e v o k e the essential e x p e r i e n c e of L a s V e g a s . H e r e is the o p e n i n g p a r a g r a p h of his story called " W h o I a m is" ( K r a n e s , 1985) You're staying at the MGM Grand, and it's between late May and early September and you're by the pool on your chaise with something that's got gin or vodka or sherbet in it and the page girl over the p.a. keeps saying: 'Mr. Leland
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Hetchgar: telephone, please! Mr. Leland Hetchgar. 'And then again, five minutes later: 'Mr. Leland Hetchgar: long distance!' Every five minutes or so, it repeats. You're there. And I'm being paged: "Mr. Leland Hetchgar!' And you're wondering who the hell I am. Well, that's who. That's me. I'm him. I'm the guy who does business by the pool five months at least a year. I'm Lee Hetchgar (p. 17). T h i s story can't be s u m m e d u p b y its plot b e c a u s e there is no p l o t - n o t h i n g h a p p e n s - - t h e central c h a r a c t e r drifts a r o u n d town, taking calls, h a v i n g a m a n i c u r e , taking a girl to dinner, t e a c h i n g her to play d i c e - - b u t all in a kind of s u s p e n d e d state, as if w a t c h i n g himself a n d listening to himself, and noting o t h e r people w a t c h i n g a n d listening to h i m , b u t without getting answers. At one point he goes to a p a r t y for a m e e t i n g of m a g a z i n e distributors ( K r a n e s , 1978, D e c e m b e r ) . 'Sally Ann, sweetheart, I've never read a paperback book.' A lot of people hear. They listen . . . "Do you have a favorite author," Sally Ann asks. "Right!" I say: "One." It's for the listeners just as it's for Sally Ann . . . my favorite author comes from my father's set of leather bound books that he left . . . William Blake! "He wrote a lot about Las Vegas," I tell Sally Ann. She says she's heard of him: "He's supposed to be interesting." I quote from "I Saw a Chapel All of Gold." "This guy did everything, ! tell her: "wrote; drew". I don't like this group (p. 17). T h e sense of alienation, of b e i n g p a r t of the scene a n d at the s a m e t i m e not in the scene, c o m e s t h r o u g h in a n o t h e r of K r a n e ' s stories called "Dealer" ( K r a n e s , 1978). T h e central c h a r a c t e r of the story, n a m e d H a t c h , aged 26, has lost, or lost at, almost e v e r y t h i n g : a father, a m o t h e r , college, a wife, their b a b y , a n y j o b , a n d hitched west, a r r i v i n g in J a c k p o t , N e v a d a . H a t c h h a d n e v e r b e e n in a casino before. H e h a d h e a r d a b o u t t h e m , read a b o u t t h e m , i m a g i n e d what Las V e g a s m u s t be like. "But the m i n u t e he stepped inside, he k n e w he was h o m e . S o m e t h i n g a b o u t the w a y the light fell, a b o u t the smell, a b o u t the m u s i c - - a l m o s t like an all-night radio station" (p. 86). H a t c h takes a j o b as a blackjack dealer, but with this difference: he has a strange p o w e r which seems to fascinate players w h o try to beat h i m . Until one night a m a n arrives w h o m a k e s little five dollar bets at the table, while at the s a m e t i m e p u s h i n g out twenty-five dollar chips in tips to the d e a l e r - - a m a n w h o seems to exult in losing. As he loses m o r e hands, he increases the a m o u n t of his tips to the dealer. W h e n v e r y occasionally the m a n wins a h a n d , he m a k e s a point of not giving a tip.
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This bizarre reversal of the norm, as if turning gambling at blackjack inside out, somehow undermines Hatch as dealer. It's more than he can stand. He cracks, continues dealing, receiving ever bigger tips when the player loses; finally he takes his break. Outside, in the snow, the boulders seem to rise up like moons; he has a m e m o r y of his father from childhood. H a t c h drives his hands into the sheered rock at the highway's edge, repeatedly. He returns to the casino, dealing with bandaged hands. And the man wins. After that, anyone could beat Hatch at the table. He quits, and turns his horse over to a ranch, to be taken care of, as if his instinctual life is over. These stories of Kranes are all quite slight but they are at the same time compelling and suggestive of deeper emotional currents in the gambling life. In his novel, Keno Runner (1989) Kranes gives these themes much richer and fuller treatment. It is a novel of discovery, of uncovering of the self, set in Vegas. The story conveys, in an entirely original and startlingly imaginative way, the experience of Vegas. Keno Runner in outline is about a writer who leaves a broken affair in New York to go to Las Vegas. He has a project to write a book about a young woman, Janice Stewart, who has been acquitted of a bizarre arson-murder charge in another state. She is working as a keno runner. Within that brief frame, the characters undergo a profound transformation, in which Las Vegas is the catalyst. Before flying to Las Vegas, however, the writer who is named Benjamin Kohlman stops off in Iowa, to re-visit the farm community where he grew u p - - a brief but'significant detour (Kranes 1989). 9 . . he stood there, dry and sweating, as he had done sometimes as a young man, where he ran: breathing heavily. And then did a crazy thing! He bent and swept dusty nuggets of earth up with a slap of his hand and stuffed them into his mouth and swallowed them. It was an act too late to reverse (p. 24). It is only a brief moment, but sufficient: in Keno Runner, there is a presence, distant but actual, all the way through of the other, real America, behind the lights of Vegas. In the random postcards Kohlman receives from his parents, travelling America in a camper. A sense of slick urban New York is half present too, in the sharp ironic putdowns he receives from his former lover, who has turned him out. The keno runner herself, Janice Stewart, turns out to be a mysterious young women~ fey, apparitional, other-wordly. Janice had the
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n i c k n a m e of Angel because she once passed out, almost died, a n d c a m e back. But there is, it e m e r g e s , n o t h i n g w e a k a b o u t J a n i c e . She is c o m m i t t e d to life, and she soon b e c o m e s c o m m i t t e d to K o h l m a n . She is the best k e n o r u n n e r , always on the go, a n d she loves h e r j o b . In an evocative a n d poetic confession ( K r a n e s ' writing excels in this combination of lightness and intensity) she s u m s u p her role at keno ( K r a n e s , 1989): I bring the numbers! . . . I bring the one-spots and the three-spots. And all the four-and five-way combinations. I carry 63s! And 39s! and 4s! And 16s, 17s, and 18s--all in my hand! I carry 52s! I carry 80s! I carry 3s and 2s and ls! I take them all! Old women in wheelchairs. Truckers. Marketing executives. Mad handkerchief-chewing women in shawls. Junkies. Murderers. I find them all! I take them. I move for them. I bring them back. I bring the numbers from the numbers to the numbers! And I bring them back! I watch them watching . . . and I feel each light! All numbers. And all the numbers reaching even before number. Before word (p. 181). J a n i c e chooses to interpret her a g r e e m e n t to talk to K o h l m a n a b o u t her case, to give h i m as a writer her story, as giving h e r life to h i m . . . as a m a r r i a g e contract. "I gave y o u m y life exclusively. It's a beautiful contract. Y o u h a v e me. It's on p a p e r . W e b o t h signed." (p. 73). I n v a i n K o h l m a n protests. T h e i r roles reverse. J a n i c e plies h i m with questions, d e m a n d i n g m o r e and m o r e of his t i m e . K o h l m a n is d r a w n into her n i m b u s . H e tries to explain it is only a b o o k contract. H e loses a n y sense of outline or direction for the w o r k he is p l a n n i n g a b o u t her. H e seems to be falling in love with her. It is surreal, the experience he undergoes, and the Las V e g a s all a r o u n d t h e m is surreal too. I n a compelling dream-like series of scenes, reality is heightened, as it is in dreams. E v e r y t h i n g is there, the casinos, the light, the hype, the hustle, even the b o x i n g - - b u t expressed indirectly, in tangential experiences, arising f r o m the interplay of the characters. T h e story it transpires, has b e c o m e K o h l m a n ' s quest for survival. T a k e this v e r y funny, accurate, real but u n r e a l episode ( a m o n g m y favorites in the book) w h e n K o h l m a n drifts into the R i v i e r a ( K r a n e s , 1989). He sat down at an empty blackjack table. The dealer nodded. A smiling man in a pewter-colored suit moved forward from the pit to the table. He stuck his hand out to Kohlman. "Mr. B!" he said. "FinaLly back! How's the war?" Kohlman shook the man's hand. Mr. B. ? " . . . Fine," he said.
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"We haven't seen you!" the pit boss said. "No," Kohlman said. "You've been away." "Yes." The pit boss put a hand on the dealer's shoulder. "Start Mr. B with a mark of two, Lonnie." Then he looked up at Kohlman: " T w o - M r . B? Am I on target? Did I remember?" "Fine," Kohlman said. He had no idea what was being transacted. "Standard fare," the pit boss said to Lonnie, the dealer. "Whenever you see Mr. B--start him off with a mark of two." Things were happening, Kohlman was watching. Something was being filled out on a voucher pad. The dealer was gathering stacks of chips from his tray, lining them up, counting them, restacking them, lining them up again, counting. The pit boss pushed the voucher pad to Kohlman, handed over his pen. Kohlman hesitated, then scratched a signature where the man had indicated on the pad. The pit boss took the pad back, smiled at Kohlman touched his own vest: "Jerry Lissac, Mr. B. I know you're scrambling. Jerry Lissac. I'm sorry. I know I should're reminded you." (p. 57)
I n fifteen m i n u t e s K o h l m a n m o r e t h a n t r i p l e s his o r i g i n a l c h i p s . H e asks the d e a l e r h o w m u c h he has. L o n n i e e y e b a l l s the stacks: E i g h t y - s i x h u n d r e d . K o h l m a n felt his m i n d go to w h i t e t u r b u l e n c e . H i s chips w e r e hundreds, n o t as he a s s u m e d , dollars ( K r a n e s , 1989).
"Would you like to cash in your mark, s i r - M r . B?" Lonnie said. "Sure," Kohlman said. "Right. That's a good idea. Cash in my mark." Lonnie gathered all the chips and rearranged them. He drew off four stacks of five, separated them back towards his tray. He produced the voucher that Kohlman had signed. "Do you want to rip this up yourself?. Or should I?" he said. " O h . . . go ahead," Kohlman said, "Rip. Fine." Lonnie ripped the voucher. He set the chips he'd separated back into the tray. "Should I change these up for you?" he asked. "Sure," Kohlman said. He felt lunatic. He felt buoyant, absolutely outside any laws of logic. Kohlman handed the black chip back. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you, Mr. B." Jerry Lissac was on the scene as Kohlman rose. "God, you did it to us again, Mr. B," he said to Kohlman. "Well..." "What can we get you? What can we do? How can we be there for you? It's ten minutes past nine: breakfast?" (p. 60)
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This kind of vignette touches the quick of Las Vegas: its style, its mode of language, the casino experience, the transaction in its essence. But gambling is not what Keno Runner is about. The story darkens; threats are made to Kohlman's life-mysterious people mistake his motives, confusing the arson he is talking about in Janice's earlier life with investigation of a fire in Vegas. In these dreamlike images of colored violence, he is assaulted, shot at, cut, wounded, but never more than momentarily hurt. He survives, he discovers himself; he meets other, larger-than-life characters, friends, strangers, even the President of the United States. Keno Runner presents Vegas more as a context, a confluence of strange forces--too bright, too vibrant, by turns indulgent and violent, extrovert yet introspective--than a gambling resort. In its clear, sharp, disjointed style, its alternation between love and violence, Vegas becomes a wildly comic place, in control, out of control, an allegory of Amei'ica. A film by Bunuel conveys something of the same rich, colored, disturbing experience. Keno Runner, as a work of imagination, cannot be reduced to a simple formula. As the quintessential fiction of modern Las Vegas it surely deserves wider recognition. It is easy to write about Las Vegas, as an abundance of bad journalism proves. The reason is that Las Vegas makes a tremendously powerful onslaught on the senses of everybody who goes there, and at the same time poses a challenge to everyone's normal values. It insists on the basic questions--What do we feel about money? Or the kind of life when money is the sole measurement of success? -- while celebrating its own abnormality in a package of fun, designed to undermine self-questioning and moral judgment. It is a place, to cite a formula of my own (Spanier, 1993), which is both wonderful and awful at the same time. That may be why writers who have sought to define its true nature have found it so elusive. Keno Runner is sub-titled "A Romance" and that is probably the best way to read it. A romance between the author and Las Vegas, too. At the end of the story, when a whole series of unlikely coincidences and denouements have come up, the author offers a direct clue. It's a fiction, the boxing champion explains to the bemused Kohlman, "With no basis in . . ." Another character completes the explanation: "No basis in Daily Life as We Live It" (p. 274). The final scene is one of
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wine, laughter and celebration, preceding the marriage of hero and heroine. Like all good romances, Keno Runner has a happy ending.
REFERENCES Didion, J. (1970). Play it as it lays. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Dunne, J.G. (1974). Vegas: A memoir of a dark season. New York: Random House. Kranes, D. (1989). Keno runner Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Kranes, D. (1978, December) "Who I Am Is". Paper presented to the Fourth International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, University of Nevada, Reno. Kranes, D. (1978). "Dealer", In D. Kranes, Hunters in the snow. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
McMurtry, L. (1985). Desert rose. New York: Simon and Schuster. Puzo, M. (1978). Fools die. New York: Random House. Puzo, M. (1970). The godfather. New York: Random House. Spanier, D. (1993). Welcome to thepleasuredome: Inside Los Vegas, Reno: University of Nevada Press. Thompson, H.S. (1979). Fear and loathing in Las Vegas. New York: Random House Wolfe, T. (1986). Bonfire of the vanities. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux Wolfe, Tom (1963). "Las Vegas (What?) Las Vegas (Can't Hear You! Too Noisy) Las Vegas!!!", In T: Wolfe The kandy kolored tangerine-flake streamline baby (pp. 3-29). New York: Farra, Straus & Giroux.
This article provides a review of the contrasting ways in which m o d e r n essayists and novelists have reflected their experience of Las Vegas. T h e author suggests that while Las Vegas may serve as a convenient symbol for depression and alienation, contemporary fiction also celebrates Las Vegas for its life-enhancing impact. These themes are fused with surreal imagination in the novel Keno Runner by David Kranes.
"Las Vegas isn't America . . . America is Las Vegas" from Keno Runner by David Kranes
Las Vegas brings out the downside in writers, their sense of despair. The whole place, with its brighter-than-bright exterior concealing a darker-than-dark abyss, offers a perfect "objective correlative" for personal depression and artistic gloom. If you are feeling lousy, if your marriage is breaking up, what better town than Las Vegas to ponder the transience of this sad world? Naturally there are exceptions, the most notable example being the man in the white suit. The sheer energy of T o m Wolfe's adverse judgment on Las Vegas carries such an exciting charge that he wins you over, as in Bonfire of the Vanities (Wolfe, 1985). His piece entitled "Las Vegas (What?) Las Vegas (Can't Hear You! Too Noisy) Las Vegas!!!!" (Wolfe, 1963) is a classic.
Send reprint requests to David Spanier, 60 Gloucester Crescent, London NW1 7EG, United Kingdom.
Journal of Gambling Studies Vol. 11(1), Spring 1995 9 1995 Human Sciences Press, Inc.
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It begins, you may recall, with the word "hernia" being repeated over and over and over again. "Hernia, hernia, hernia, HERNia, H e r n i a . . . " for a whole paragraph. Raymond is standing at the craps table, zonked out of his mind after two and a half days without sleep, and this is the only noise he can hear at that point. "Hernia, hernia, hernia, H E R N i a , H e r n i a . . . " Wolfe is right, it is the characteristic background blur at the craps table, in the middle of the casino floor, when you are that far gone. The security guards ease R a y m o n d out before he gets into trouble. But Wolfe has much else to celebrate about Las Vegas, notably the signs, their shapes and colors, the fizz of it all. For the grand debut of Monte Carlo as a resort in 1879, the architect Charles Garnier designed an opera house for the Place du Casino, and Sarah Bernhardt read a symbolic poem. "For the debut of Las Vegas as a resort in 1946 Bugsy Siegel hired Abbott and Costello, and there, in a way, you have it all" (Wolfe, 1963, p. 16). Wolfe might have added that the immortal Sarah Bernhardt was wont to gamble away her fees at the gaming tables, which shows that the Monegasque management was not altogether blinded by culture. No one can match Wolfe when it comes to dissecting the funny side of social mores, but the weirdest, most frenetic account of Las Vegas is Hunter S. Thompson's celebrated spree, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Thompson, 1971). This is the gambling city as seen through the dilated eyes of a guy stoned out of his skull on a cornucopia of drugs--grass, mescaline, acid, "cocaine, uppers, downers, screamers, laughers, raw ether, amyls, plus quantities of tequila, rum and beer. This is what Thompson and friend packed into the trunk of their car when he set off for a life-defying rampage through casino culture. "Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only real cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas" (p. 19). Ostensibly, Thompson was on a magazine assignment, looking for the American Dream. His quest turns into a series of drugged-up encounters with casino staff, police officers, bartenders and waitresses, which end in farce, shocks, threats and hasty exits, and the rapid ingestion of more and more stimulants. In the brief intervals of this hallucinogenic progress, like the m o m e n t a r y pattern of colors caught when you shake up a kaleidoscope,
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surreal glimpses of Las Vegas flash by. The Flamingo hotel like a huge under-financed Playboy Club in the middle of the desert . . . CircusCircus like the Sixth Reich . . . "This is what the whole hep world would be doing on Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war" (Thompson, 1971, p. 47). North Las Vegas a limbo for gunsels, hustlers, drug cripples and losers . . . Eventually, Thompson and his attorney, a huge Samoan no less crazed and drugged than he is, drive out to a place they are told might be "the American Dream." It used to be known as the old Psychiatrist's Club, on Paradise. The only people who hang out there, recalls a guy at a fast food stand, who gives them directions, is "a bunch of pushers, peddlers, uppers and downers, and all that stuff' (p. 153). Sounds all right! Is it a night-time place or all day? They inquire. It never stops. H u n t e r gets out there to find a huge slab of cracked, scorched concrete in a vacant lot full of tall weeds. The owner of a gas station across the road says the place had burned down about three years ago. A little bit of this town, Hunter concludes, as he staggers out on another mindbending high, goes a very long way. A funny book indeed, which says a lot more about the author than Las Vegas. When it comes to expressing depression in Las Vegas, two writers share the palme noire, J o a n Didion and J o h n Gregory Dunne. Didion's Play It As It Lays was published in 1970. Dunne's Vegas-A Memoir of a Dark Season came out in 1974. Though not exactly a husband-and-wife team, the fact that the authors were (and are) married adds a certain piquancy to their very different narratives. Play It As It Lays (which Joan Didion dedicated to John) is the story of a young woman drifting in the milieu of spoiled, beautiful movie people, whose lives criss-cross Los Angeles and Las Vegas, a backdrop in emotional terms as arid as the Mojave desert. Maria, the heroine, is going through a mental breakdown. The experience is seen mainly through her deepening unhappiness, of losing a child, of failing to connect with husband, lovers, friends, her own future. In her desolation, the evocation of a particular side of Las Vegas' smart-life, rich, empty, corrupt, depicted from the inside, is horribly convincing. Take this chilling paragraph for example, which distils Maria's feeling, or her lack of feeling, about her life (Didion, 1970). Maria made a list of the things she would never do. She would never: walk through the Sands or Caesarsaloneafter midnight. She would never: ball at a party, do
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S & M unless she wanted to, borrowfurs from Abe Lipsey, deal She would never: carry a Yorkshire in Beverly Hills (p. 136).
Play It As It Lays takes its title from the advice Maria's father gave her as a child--life is a crap game. It goes as it lays, don't do it the hard way. She was, she says, raised to believe that what came in on the next roll would always be better than what went out on the last. Maria finds that this easy gambler's optimism, which only half carried the family through even in the old days, when they lived out in the desert--now a nuclear testing g r o u n d - - n o longer applies. It is hopelessly out of synch with her adult life. She has nowhere to turn, caught up in the artificial existence of selfish, self-indulgent people, playing around with drugs and movie-making. In the vacuum of her life, she drives endlessly up and down the Los Angeles freeways. What game was it supposed to be that she was playing? Nothing counts. All warmth and sympathy has gone. H e r disillusionment is not a story" about Las Vegas, but it conveys more intensely than any other novel the desolation of Vegas--hernia, hernia--when life goes wrong. By contrast, John Gregory Dunne fled to Las Vegas to get away from himself and work through a bad patch in his marriage. The result was his A Memoir of a Dark Season. It is a look at Las Vegas from the bottom of the pile. Three characters, a hooker, a comedian and a private detective, expose their desperate search for the grail of success-- big bucks in one way or another-- and reveal at the same time a lot about Las Vegas lowlife. And low it is. Gambling hardly gets a look in: the universal hustle is for cheap sex, preferably free sex. The hooker dispenses it, in the intervals of getting busted for soliciting; the failed comedian talks about it, with less and less conviction; the detective tracks down spouses who have offended sexually against each other. Dunne saw a sign, emblazoned in gold letters on a roulette wheel, on a billboard in Hollywood: V I S I T LAS V E G A S B E F O R E Y O U R N U M B E R S UP. The message had a delphic fascination for him. It persuaded him to make the trip and immerse himself in the people he met there, their seedy true-life confessions. (He was the kind of stranger people would immediately confide in.) Las Vegas offered salvation without commitment, a way of easing his own nervous breakdown by peeping, like a voyeur, into the even more desolate lives of these denizens of the too much fun club.
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D u n n e strikes u p q u i c k f r i e n d s h i p s w i t h all m a n n e r o f p e o p l e (the exact o p p o s i t e o f the fictional M a r i a o f Play It As It Lays), f r o m the v e r y start o f his stay. " ' I f y o u g a m b l e , sir, g o o d luck', says the a g i n g bellhop w h o s h o w s h i m his r o o m , ' a n d if y o u n e e d a little c o m p a n y , y o u j u s t give m e a ring, h e a r ? ' " ( D u n n e , 1974, p. 22). E a c h o f the trio o f c e n t r a l c h a r a c t e r s he b e f r i e n d s u n c o v e r s m o r e a n d m o r e o f the d a r k side o f V e g a s ( D u n n e , 1974). The hooker: "She had been cruising since midnight with no luck. The secret of cruising was to keep moving. Caesars first, then the Tropicana, then the Sands. No luck. No more than two drinks in any casino. Stay for more than two drinks without making a connection and hotel security begins to get nervous. The hotels draw a fine line. They like the girls available for the roller who wants a pop, but then they don't want the casino to look like a lamppost." (p. 125) As the second main character, the private detective says, reassuringly: "everyone in Vegas knows what everyone else is doing . . . so what?" (p. 74) Or the warm-up comedian, who comes ahead of the star-name of the dinner-show, a showbiz entertainer, the performer whom the audience has paid out good money to see: "The warm-up comic has forty-five minutes and functions basically as a high colonic, getting the audience through dinner, one trip to the john, a little juice on board, loosening them up for the headliner. He stands up there, a guy with six tuxedos in his closet, every one with the sky-blue lining . . ." (p. 45) Time is up, the star awaits. The headliner comes out. The people have finished their dinner. All he can hear is the waiters saying, "You want the parfait or the mousse? . . ." (p. 46) Yet a sort o f gritty o p t i m i s m keeps o n b r e a k i n g t h r o u g h , as these L a s V e g a s c h a r a c t e r s struggle to m a k e a living. S o m e h o w , the t h e r a p y o f e m p a t h i z i n g with their futile lives w o r k s for the a u t h o r o f A Memoir of a Dark Season. A f t e r 200 pages, he is calling his wife o n the p h o n e . S o o n after t h a t he is o n the w a y b a c k h o m e . A s u n n y o p t i m i s m is w h a t lifts the h e r o i n e o f The Desert Rose ( M c M u r t r y , 1983). She is a showgirl, o n c e loved a n d c h e r i s h e d as the m o s t beautiful o f all the showgirls, n o w at a l m o s t 39, o n her w a y o u t o f the show. L a r r y M c M u r t y ' s novel (written he confessed in three weeks in 1983) is p e r h a p s the best b o o k a b o u t ordinary d a y to d a y life in L a s V e g a s . It s h o w s people as t h e y are, w o r k i n g , r u s h i n g their coffee b r e a k s b e t w e e n shows, t r y i n g to get their cars fixed a n d d o their h o u s e h o l d chores, h a v i n g fast friendships like fast food, the daily r o u n d set a g a i n s t the n o n - s t o p glitz o f the strip casinos, w h i c h are not, for these people, places o f e n t e r t a i n m e n t b u t places o f w o r k .
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Harmony, the showgirl, has an even more attractive daughter, named Pepper (the names say a lot about the characters.) Pepper at the age of 16 is being groomed for the role of lead dancer in the "tits and feathers" show in which her mother has displayed her charms (suspended on a disc above the stage) all her showgirl life. It's a tough trade for Harmony, to be told she has to quit the show, sacked, to enable her daughter to take over as star. The producer tells her frankly, a mother and daughter on the same stage could lead to some tricky publicity. But H a r m o n y can take it. She is none too strong at standing up for herself, but she has a special quality "the ability to see the bright side". It takes courage to do that, a friend tells her. She is a person who likes to think about the good kinds of things that could happen rather than the bad kinds of things. And one of the good things about Vegas was that it enabled her to become a showgirl, a feathered beauty, whereas anywhere else, she feels, nobody would have known what to do with her. Harmony's optimism sort of wins through ("sort of' is how the characters express their thoughts and feelings in this story). Actually, the author is sort of in love with Harmony: one of the nicest things that can happen, M c M u r t r y says in a preface to the paperback, is to have your characters teach you something, that optimism is a form of courage, for example. This is Harmony's theme, and through her, it gives Las Vegas a warm glow--even if, overall, the book is smudged by sentimentality. W h i c h - a sentimental glow--is more than can be said for the Las Vegas of Mario Puzo's novel "Fools Die (1978). Most of the action happens in a big casino in the heart of the Strip called the Hotel Xanadu. The slick picture it gives of sex and corruption has, presumably, colored the imagination of thousands of readers around the world as to what life in a top casino is like. Everybody in management is cheating on each other, from the president on down, so in the end no one knows who is hustling whom; cheap and sleazy sex is on demand (at $100 a shot) from every female employee on the casino staff; overall, the characters act out their lives with the same deadening amorality which was the pervasive principle (or lack of principle) of The Godfather (Puzo, 1970). Fools Die (Puzo, 1978) presents a very one-sided view of Las Vegas as a resort. But amid all the narrative schlock it does convey a clear perception of what gamblers and gambling is about. Mario Puzo, as he
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admits, has played for high stakes himself. The opening scenes in the casino offer some sharp observations about gambling--a house shill, indifferent to winning or losing is described as "boringly immortal"; the faint roar from the action on the casino floor is heard high up in a hotel room like surf on a distant beach; or the curious aloneness and togetherness of gambling -- "He loved the feeling of being solitary in the crowd of people and the gambling hum. To be alone without being lonely. To be friends with strangers for an hour and never see them again" (Puzo, 1978, p. 18). And the guiding principle of the casino, the golden rule which management lives by: percentages. "Percentages never lie. We built all these hotels on percentages. We stay rich on the percentage" (Puzo, 1978, p. 155). As the hero of the story is advised by the president: "You can lose faith in everything, religion and God, women and love, good and evil, war and peace. You name it. But the percentage will always stand fast" (p. 396). Beating the percentage, as all gamblers hope and pray to do in the short run, has its disadvantage, too. The leitmotif of Fools Die is the gambler who beats the house, wins a fortune, and somehow or other can't live with his success. In this story, nobody comes out winning. Even the hero, who at least manages to stay alive, concludes: "I knew now the single fact that no matter how carefully I planned, no matter how cunning I was, lies or good deeds alone, I couldn't really win" (p. 442). The story of high life and corruption in Fools Die is a long way from the workaday cares of the people who serve the customers in The Desert Rose. But Puzo knows the high roller mileu from the inside; he is revealing about foreign gamblers, particularly the Japanese (Puzo, a978). "The English were immediately written off, despite their history of being the biggest losers of the nineteenth century. T h e end of the British E m p i r e had m e a n t the end of their high rollers . . . the French were also written off. T h e French didn't travel and would never stand for the extra house double zero on the Vegas w h e e l . . . B u t the G e r m a n s a n d Italian were w o o e d . . , there was something in the high flying Vegas style that appealed to the Teutonic spirit . . . Italian millionaires were big prizes in Vegas. T h e y gambled recklessly while getting d r u n k . . . T h e Mexican and South A m e r i c a n gamblers were even bigger prizes . . . special planes were sent there to b r i n g the p a m p a s millionaires to Vegas. Everything was free to these sporting gentlemen who left the hides of millions of cattle at the baccarat tables . . ." (pp. 162-163)
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T h e J a p a n e s e in the story all w e a r black business suits, b a d l y tailored b y western standards, with white shirts a n d black ties. T h e p a r t y a r r i v i n g at the airport looks like a b a n d of v e r y e a r n e s t clerks instead of the ruling b o a r d of J a p a n ' s richest a n d m o s t p o w e r f u l business c o n g l o m e r a t e (Puzo, 1978). 9 . . the band of ten Japanese terrorized the casinos of Vegas. They would travel together and gamble together at the same baccaret table9 When Fummiro (the leader) had the shoe, they all bet the limit with him on the bank . . . they played withjoie de vivre more Italian than Oriental. Fummiro would whip the sides of the shoe and bang on the table when he dealt himself a natural eight or nine. He was a passionate gambler and gloated over winning a two-thousand-dollar bet. This amazed Cully. He knew Fummiro was worth over half a billion dollars . . . the band of ten men in their shiny black suits . . . were a frightening sight, marching ten strong into a casino, looking like undertakers come to collect the corpse of the casino's bankroll (p. 168). But of course the p e r c e n t a g e got t h e m , too. T h e h a p p y g a m b l e r is the m a n who j u s t plays for the helluvit, for fun, like the n a r r a t o r in Fools Die: "I m a d e five-dollar bets a n d bet all the n u m b e r s . I w o n a n d I lost. I drifted into m y old g a m b l i n g patterns, m o v i n g f r o m craps to blackjack a n d roulette. Soft, easy, d r e a m y g a m b l i n g , b e t t i n g small, w i n n i n g a n d losing, p l a y i n g loose p e r c e n t a g e s . . . g a m b l i n g was fun, that was all" (p. 119). M a n y writers have tried to catch Las V e g a s in its different m o o d s and a s p e c t s - sleaze and depression on one side, g l a m o u r a n d e x c i t e m e n t on the other. But no one has yet captured Las Vegas with the i m a g i n a t i v e truth of art, in the w a y M a r k T w a i n caught the Mississippi a n d m a d e it his own, or n e a r e r o u r own times William F a u l k n e r the South. D a v i d K r a n e s (a writer w h o teaches at the U n i v e r s i t y o f U t a h ) to m y m i n d c o m e s closest to it. H e has caught the nihilistic, floating, surreal quality of living in L a s Vegas, of a life strangely r e m o v e d a n d h e i g h t e n e d f r o m e v e r y d a y living, b e t t e r t h a n a n y o n e else. I n his short stories, the identity of the c h a r a c t e r s seems to shift in their u n c e r t a i n t y a b o u t themselves, a n d w h a t they are doing, in w a y s which e v o k e the essential e x p e r i e n c e of L a s V e g a s . H e r e is the o p e n i n g p a r a g r a p h of his story called " W h o I a m is" ( K r a n e s , 1985) You're staying at the MGM Grand, and it's between late May and early September and you're by the pool on your chaise with something that's got gin or vodka or sherbet in it and the page girl over the p.a. keeps saying: 'Mr. Leland
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Hetchgar: telephone, please! Mr. Leland Hetchgar. 'And then again, five minutes later: 'Mr. Leland Hetchgar: long distance!' Every five minutes or so, it repeats. You're there. And I'm being paged: "Mr. Leland Hetchgar!' And you're wondering who the hell I am. Well, that's who. That's me. I'm him. I'm the guy who does business by the pool five months at least a year. I'm Lee Hetchgar (p. 17). T h i s story can't be s u m m e d u p b y its plot b e c a u s e there is no p l o t - n o t h i n g h a p p e n s - - t h e central c h a r a c t e r drifts a r o u n d town, taking calls, h a v i n g a m a n i c u r e , taking a girl to dinner, t e a c h i n g her to play d i c e - - b u t all in a kind of s u s p e n d e d state, as if w a t c h i n g himself a n d listening to himself, and noting o t h e r people w a t c h i n g a n d listening to h i m , b u t without getting answers. At one point he goes to a p a r t y for a m e e t i n g of m a g a z i n e distributors ( K r a n e s , 1978, D e c e m b e r ) . 'Sally Ann, sweetheart, I've never read a paperback book.' A lot of people hear. They listen . . . "Do you have a favorite author," Sally Ann asks. "Right!" I say: "One." It's for the listeners just as it's for Sally Ann . . . my favorite author comes from my father's set of leather bound books that he left . . . William Blake! "He wrote a lot about Las Vegas," I tell Sally Ann. She says she's heard of him: "He's supposed to be interesting." I quote from "I Saw a Chapel All of Gold." "This guy did everything, ! tell her: "wrote; drew". I don't like this group (p. 17). T h e sense of alienation, of b e i n g p a r t of the scene a n d at the s a m e t i m e not in the scene, c o m e s t h r o u g h in a n o t h e r of K r a n e ' s stories called "Dealer" ( K r a n e s , 1978). T h e central c h a r a c t e r of the story, n a m e d H a t c h , aged 26, has lost, or lost at, almost e v e r y t h i n g : a father, a m o t h e r , college, a wife, their b a b y , a n y j o b , a n d hitched west, a r r i v i n g in J a c k p o t , N e v a d a . H a t c h h a d n e v e r b e e n in a casino before. H e h a d h e a r d a b o u t t h e m , read a b o u t t h e m , i m a g i n e d what Las V e g a s m u s t be like. "But the m i n u t e he stepped inside, he k n e w he was h o m e . S o m e t h i n g a b o u t the w a y the light fell, a b o u t the smell, a b o u t the m u s i c - - a l m o s t like an all-night radio station" (p. 86). H a t c h takes a j o b as a blackjack dealer, but with this difference: he has a strange p o w e r which seems to fascinate players w h o try to beat h i m . Until one night a m a n arrives w h o m a k e s little five dollar bets at the table, while at the s a m e t i m e p u s h i n g out twenty-five dollar chips in tips to the d e a l e r - - a m a n w h o seems to exult in losing. As he loses m o r e hands, he increases the a m o u n t of his tips to the dealer. W h e n v e r y occasionally the m a n wins a h a n d , he m a k e s a point of not giving a tip.
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This bizarre reversal of the norm, as if turning gambling at blackjack inside out, somehow undermines Hatch as dealer. It's more than he can stand. He cracks, continues dealing, receiving ever bigger tips when the player loses; finally he takes his break. Outside, in the snow, the boulders seem to rise up like moons; he has a m e m o r y of his father from childhood. H a t c h drives his hands into the sheered rock at the highway's edge, repeatedly. He returns to the casino, dealing with bandaged hands. And the man wins. After that, anyone could beat Hatch at the table. He quits, and turns his horse over to a ranch, to be taken care of, as if his instinctual life is over. These stories of Kranes are all quite slight but they are at the same time compelling and suggestive of deeper emotional currents in the gambling life. In his novel, Keno Runner (1989) Kranes gives these themes much richer and fuller treatment. It is a novel of discovery, of uncovering of the self, set in Vegas. The story conveys, in an entirely original and startlingly imaginative way, the experience of Vegas. Keno Runner in outline is about a writer who leaves a broken affair in New York to go to Las Vegas. He has a project to write a book about a young woman, Janice Stewart, who has been acquitted of a bizarre arson-murder charge in another state. She is working as a keno runner. Within that brief frame, the characters undergo a profound transformation, in which Las Vegas is the catalyst. Before flying to Las Vegas, however, the writer who is named Benjamin Kohlman stops off in Iowa, to re-visit the farm community where he grew u p - - a brief but'significant detour (Kranes 1989). 9 . . he stood there, dry and sweating, as he had done sometimes as a young man, where he ran: breathing heavily. And then did a crazy thing! He bent and swept dusty nuggets of earth up with a slap of his hand and stuffed them into his mouth and swallowed them. It was an act too late to reverse (p. 24). It is only a brief moment, but sufficient: in Keno Runner, there is a presence, distant but actual, all the way through of the other, real America, behind the lights of Vegas. In the random postcards Kohlman receives from his parents, travelling America in a camper. A sense of slick urban New York is half present too, in the sharp ironic putdowns he receives from his former lover, who has turned him out. The keno runner herself, Janice Stewart, turns out to be a mysterious young women~ fey, apparitional, other-wordly. Janice had the
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n i c k n a m e of Angel because she once passed out, almost died, a n d c a m e back. But there is, it e m e r g e s , n o t h i n g w e a k a b o u t J a n i c e . She is c o m m i t t e d to life, and she soon b e c o m e s c o m m i t t e d to K o h l m a n . She is the best k e n o r u n n e r , always on the go, a n d she loves h e r j o b . In an evocative a n d poetic confession ( K r a n e s ' writing excels in this combination of lightness and intensity) she s u m s u p her role at keno ( K r a n e s , 1989): I bring the numbers! . . . I bring the one-spots and the three-spots. And all the four-and five-way combinations. I carry 63s! And 39s! and 4s! And 16s, 17s, and 18s--all in my hand! I carry 52s! I carry 80s! I carry 3s and 2s and ls! I take them all! Old women in wheelchairs. Truckers. Marketing executives. Mad handkerchief-chewing women in shawls. Junkies. Murderers. I find them all! I take them. I move for them. I bring them back. I bring the numbers from the numbers to the numbers! And I bring them back! I watch them watching . . . and I feel each light! All numbers. And all the numbers reaching even before number. Before word (p. 181). J a n i c e chooses to interpret her a g r e e m e n t to talk to K o h l m a n a b o u t her case, to give h i m as a writer her story, as giving h e r life to h i m . . . as a m a r r i a g e contract. "I gave y o u m y life exclusively. It's a beautiful contract. Y o u h a v e me. It's on p a p e r . W e b o t h signed." (p. 73). I n v a i n K o h l m a n protests. T h e i r roles reverse. J a n i c e plies h i m with questions, d e m a n d i n g m o r e and m o r e of his t i m e . K o h l m a n is d r a w n into her n i m b u s . H e tries to explain it is only a b o o k contract. H e loses a n y sense of outline or direction for the w o r k he is p l a n n i n g a b o u t her. H e seems to be falling in love with her. It is surreal, the experience he undergoes, and the Las V e g a s all a r o u n d t h e m is surreal too. I n a compelling dream-like series of scenes, reality is heightened, as it is in dreams. E v e r y t h i n g is there, the casinos, the light, the hype, the hustle, even the b o x i n g - - b u t expressed indirectly, in tangential experiences, arising f r o m the interplay of the characters. T h e story it transpires, has b e c o m e K o h l m a n ' s quest for survival. T a k e this v e r y funny, accurate, real but u n r e a l episode ( a m o n g m y favorites in the book) w h e n K o h l m a n drifts into the R i v i e r a ( K r a n e s , 1989). He sat down at an empty blackjack table. The dealer nodded. A smiling man in a pewter-colored suit moved forward from the pit to the table. He stuck his hand out to Kohlman. "Mr. B!" he said. "FinaLly back! How's the war?" Kohlman shook the man's hand. Mr. B. ? " . . . Fine," he said.
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"We haven't seen you!" the pit boss said. "No," Kohlman said. "You've been away." "Yes." The pit boss put a hand on the dealer's shoulder. "Start Mr. B with a mark of two, Lonnie." Then he looked up at Kohlman: " T w o - M r . B? Am I on target? Did I remember?" "Fine," Kohlman said. He had no idea what was being transacted. "Standard fare," the pit boss said to Lonnie, the dealer. "Whenever you see Mr. B--start him off with a mark of two." Things were happening, Kohlman was watching. Something was being filled out on a voucher pad. The dealer was gathering stacks of chips from his tray, lining them up, counting them, restacking them, lining them up again, counting. The pit boss pushed the voucher pad to Kohlman, handed over his pen. Kohlman hesitated, then scratched a signature where the man had indicated on the pad. The pit boss took the pad back, smiled at Kohlman touched his own vest: "Jerry Lissac, Mr. B. I know you're scrambling. Jerry Lissac. I'm sorry. I know I should're reminded you." (p. 57)
I n fifteen m i n u t e s K o h l m a n m o r e t h a n t r i p l e s his o r i g i n a l c h i p s . H e asks the d e a l e r h o w m u c h he has. L o n n i e e y e b a l l s the stacks: E i g h t y - s i x h u n d r e d . K o h l m a n felt his m i n d go to w h i t e t u r b u l e n c e . H i s chips w e r e hundreds, n o t as he a s s u m e d , dollars ( K r a n e s , 1989).
"Would you like to cash in your mark, s i r - M r . B?" Lonnie said. "Sure," Kohlman said. "Right. That's a good idea. Cash in my mark." Lonnie gathered all the chips and rearranged them. He drew off four stacks of five, separated them back towards his tray. He produced the voucher that Kohlman had signed. "Do you want to rip this up yourself?. Or should I?" he said. " O h . . . go ahead," Kohlman said, "Rip. Fine." Lonnie ripped the voucher. He set the chips he'd separated back into the tray. "Should I change these up for you?" he asked. "Sure," Kohlman said. He felt lunatic. He felt buoyant, absolutely outside any laws of logic. Kohlman handed the black chip back. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you, Mr. B." Jerry Lissac was on the scene as Kohlman rose. "God, you did it to us again, Mr. B," he said to Kohlman. "Well..." "What can we get you? What can we do? How can we be there for you? It's ten minutes past nine: breakfast?" (p. 60)
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This kind of vignette touches the quick of Las Vegas: its style, its mode of language, the casino experience, the transaction in its essence. But gambling is not what Keno Runner is about. The story darkens; threats are made to Kohlman's life-mysterious people mistake his motives, confusing the arson he is talking about in Janice's earlier life with investigation of a fire in Vegas. In these dreamlike images of colored violence, he is assaulted, shot at, cut, wounded, but never more than momentarily hurt. He survives, he discovers himself; he meets other, larger-than-life characters, friends, strangers, even the President of the United States. Keno Runner presents Vegas more as a context, a confluence of strange forces--too bright, too vibrant, by turns indulgent and violent, extrovert yet introspective--than a gambling resort. In its clear, sharp, disjointed style, its alternation between love and violence, Vegas becomes a wildly comic place, in control, out of control, an allegory of Amei'ica. A film by Bunuel conveys something of the same rich, colored, disturbing experience. Keno Runner, as a work of imagination, cannot be reduced to a simple formula. As the quintessential fiction of modern Las Vegas it surely deserves wider recognition. It is easy to write about Las Vegas, as an abundance of bad journalism proves. The reason is that Las Vegas makes a tremendously powerful onslaught on the senses of everybody who goes there, and at the same time poses a challenge to everyone's normal values. It insists on the basic questions--What do we feel about money? Or the kind of life when money is the sole measurement of success? -- while celebrating its own abnormality in a package of fun, designed to undermine self-questioning and moral judgment. It is a place, to cite a formula of my own (Spanier, 1993), which is both wonderful and awful at the same time. That may be why writers who have sought to define its true nature have found it so elusive. Keno Runner is sub-titled "A Romance" and that is probably the best way to read it. A romance between the author and Las Vegas, too. At the end of the story, when a whole series of unlikely coincidences and denouements have come up, the author offers a direct clue. It's a fiction, the boxing champion explains to the bemused Kohlman, "With no basis in . . ." Another character completes the explanation: "No basis in Daily Life as We Live It" (p. 274). The final scene is one of
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wine, laughter and celebration, preceding the marriage of hero and heroine. Like all good romances, Keno Runner has a happy ending.
REFERENCES Didion, J. (1970). Play it as it lays. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Dunne, J.G. (1974). Vegas: A memoir of a dark season. New York: Random House. Kranes, D. (1989). Keno runner Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. Kranes, D. (1978, December) "Who I Am Is". Paper presented to the Fourth International Conference on Gambling and Risk Taking, University of Nevada, Reno. Kranes, D. (1978). "Dealer", In D. Kranes, Hunters in the snow. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
McMurtry, L. (1985). Desert rose. New York: Simon and Schuster. Puzo, M. (1978). Fools die. New York: Random House. Puzo, M. (1970). The godfather. New York: Random House. Spanier, D. (1993). Welcome to thepleasuredome: Inside Los Vegas, Reno: University of Nevada Press. Thompson, H.S. (1979). Fear and loathing in Las Vegas. New York: Random House Wolfe, T. (1986). Bonfire of the vanities. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux Wolfe, Tom (1963). "Las Vegas (What?) Las Vegas (Can't Hear You! Too Noisy) Las Vegas!!!", In T: Wolfe The kandy kolored tangerine-flake streamline baby (pp. 3-29). New York: Farra, Straus & Giroux.
