Not having been to Las Vegas, I tried to read this piece with an open mind. Tom Wolfe quite clearly finds the place to be nothing but odious. This is evident in his descriptive language. There can be nothing attractive in pissed nobodies rambling nonsense suffering from toxic schizophrenia, piped muzak , being trapped in a car where the radio will not turn off and being surrounded by exposed butt cracks of pregnant women and aging ‘babes’. Not to mention phlegmy old men with oatmeal skin.
The image created by this writing is that of an exploitative machine aimed at the intellectually inferior. Wolfe describes a never ending drone fuelled by an infinite number of generic, interchangeable and replaceable characters. It’s worse than the lives they are trying to escape. It’s pleasure without a cause.
Hedonism and indulgence are far more palatable when linked to some kind of agenda such as search for enlightenment or rebellion in fact pleasure when coupled with cause has a certain glamour.
Las Vegas used to have glamour in spades. It was there once. Anyone who has seen Ocean’s eleven (the real Ocean’s eleven not the less than mediocre remake with George Clooney and Julia Roberts in it) can see that Las Vegas had once been fresh and pioneering and dangerous and exciting and edgy. It seems that today it has more in common with an aging British seaside town, tragic and slightly sinister in its trashiness; distinctively for the proles. It has crossed over the fine line between glamour and vulgarity and it did so a long time ago.
As always Tom Wolfe manages to veil his criticism in a blithe satirical way which results in a vivid read but ultimately in the realisation that it is a narrative you cannot trust. I will not let this essay form my basis for the judgment of the city but I must say that it hasn’t encouraged exactly cultivated any glimmer of affection or interest I might have had in the place. It just made me feel dirty.
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