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world — can we not lament our national isolationism and celebrate an escape from
the ever-increasing globalization of our consciousness at the same time? Here con
servative southern women sunbathe topless at the hotel pool. (“I mean, I would
never have the nerve to do this anywhere else,” say the happy sisters on a vacation
without their husbands at the Luxor. “I think we need cities like this.”24) In Vegas,
people walk — Americans walk! — from one destination to another.25
But if we look past the dichotomies we can see the categoriality that makes
them a unity: tourist-mecca and hometown, downtown and Strip, individual and
community, Self and Other, love hate, yin yang, black red, hit stand, win bust,
Siegfried Roy. Las Vegas is the One and the Many.
Some claim that it is hyperbole incarnate, exaggeration for effect only,
this land of large grand buffets, all nude dancing, Circus Circus, and New YorkNew York. But there are times we must risk repetition and scorn to speak the truth.
It is why 1 love and hate Las Vegas, and why I never, never, never split fours.
DePaul University
H. Peter Steeves
Notes
1. This is what makes the original/copy distinction unimportant and uninteresting. Even
if the “real” Eiffel Tower were to be shipped from France’s Paris to Hilton’s Paris in
Nevada, its mode o f presentation would change alongside a pyramid built by the Luxor
(or a pyramid bought by Luxor and re-located to stand beside the Eiffel Tower).
2. Cf. Briavel Holcomb, “Marketing Cities for Tourism,” in The Tourist City ed. Dennis
R. Judd and Susan Fainstein, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), p. 54.
3. Cf. Robert E. Parker, “Las Vegas: Casino Gambling and Local Culture” in The Tourist
City{ 1999), p. 116.
4. I borrow this image from John Urry. See his “Sensing the City” in The Tourist City
(1999), p. 78.
5. Cf. Mary Herczog, Frommers 2000 Las Vegas (NY: Macmillan, 2000), p. 48.
6. Herczog, Frommer s 2000 Las Vegas, p. 1.
7. Hal K, Rothman, D evils Bargains: Tourism in the Twentieth-Centuiy American West
(Lawrence, KS: University Press o f Kans’ as, 1998), p. 314.
8 Andres Martinez, “24/7: Living It Up and Doubling Down” in The New Las Vegas
(NY: Vi Hard, 1999), p. 116.
9. Parker in The Tourist City, p. 121.
10. See Pete Earley, Super Casino: Inside the “N ew” Las Vegas (NY: Bantam, 2000),
p. 197 for the “token o f appreciation” interpretation.
11. Martinez, 24/7, p. 229.
12. Earley (quoting Marino), Super Casino, pp. 252-253.
13 Michael Ventura, “Las Vegas: The Odds on Anything” in Literary Las Vegas: The Best
Writing About Americas Most Fabulous City , ed. Mike Tronnes (NY: Henry Holt and
Co., 1995), pp. 191-192.