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Popular Culture Review
boomerangs, rhomboids, trapezoids, and all the rest of it, are
already the staple design of the American landscape outside of
the oldest parts of the oldest cities. They are all over every
suburb, every subdivision, every highway. . . They are the
new landmarks of America, the new guideposts, the new way
Americans get their bearing.38
Relying on a hyperactive writing style that is punctuated by an
obsessive use of exclamation points, ellipses, italicized words, capitalization,
word sounds (such as Varoom! Hmmmmmmm! Urgggggggghhhhhh!), Wolfe
abandons conventional nonfiction storytelling to paint a detailed portrait of the
subjective reality of American subcultures that have been ignored by
mainstream reportage. For example, in his essay, “Las Vegas (What?) Las
Vegas (Can’t Hear You! Too Noisy!) Las Vegas!!!," Wolfe roams the casinos,
streets, jails, bars, and clubs of Las Vegas to illustrate that Vegas is much more
than simply gambling; that it is, in fact, a metaphor for a troubled, restless,
overly affluent society. Wolfe’s description of his visit to the Clark County
Courthouse underscores this theme:
I am on the third floor of the Clark County Courthouse talking
to Sheriff Captain Ray Gubser, another of these strong, pale
eyed Western-builder types, who is obligingly explaining to
me law enforcement on the Strip, where the problem is not so
much the drunks, crooks or roughhousers, but these nuts on
pills who don't want to ever go to bed, and they have
hallucinations and try to bring down the casinos like Samson.
The county has two padded cells for them, they cool down
after three or four days and they turn out to be somebody’s
earnest breadwinner back in Denver or Minneapolis, loaded
with the right credentials and pouring soul and apologiae all
over the county cops before finally pulling out of the nevernever land for good by plane.39
Wolfe is particularly interested in the allure of Las Vegas, and in his
interviews with gamblers and tourists from throughout the country, he concludes
that the primary allure is liberation. This allure of liberation is most irresistible
not to the young, but the old. Wolfe points out that although it is not the
glamorous image of the city. Las Vegas is basically a resort for old people. “In
those last years,'’ he writes, “before the tissue deteriorated and the wires of the
cerebral cortex hang in the skull like a clump of dried seaweed, they are seeking
liberation.”40 Here, psychological interpretation becomes part of the reporter’s
arsenal in penetrating subjective reality. Within the constraints of conventional
news reporting—where facts are to speak for themselves without elucidation by
the reporter—such psychologizing is considered unprofessional journalistic
conduct.41