Is it Really only Mid-Winter?

When we were at our local independent bookstore yesterday, a friend lamented that it’s only January and she is already done with winter. I’m feeling completely the same. I am really struggling this year with all of the snow and the cold and the gloom. Normally, I love the cosiness of the season and the holidays, but this year I am full of sadness and dread. I can’t completely blame the relentless snow for my mood, but I know it’s getting me down when we’re actually contemplating the purchase of an electric snowblower.

A Dark Season

I think it’s a pretty common experience to have a dark season. I can remember how lost I felt in my mid-twenties, when school was over and everyone started to ask me what was next. It feels like I’ve embarked on another one recently as I have to deal with the realities of aging parents and a lot of changes in our day-to-day lives.

John Gregory Dunne’s Vegas is describing Dunne’s dark season. He’s forty-two and feels unmoored in his career and his life and starts to wonder how he can continue to write. So he leaves his family behind in California to go to Las Vegas and spend his days in a small apartment just writing what he sees and the side of the city that often isn’t on display to the average tourist. As he writes, he slowly finds himself leaving his dark season behind.

Misfits and Vagabonds

Who does Dunne write about? The misfits and the grifters. The vagabonds and the failures. Dunne is bringing us the part of the city that is washed out and washed away by the lights of the Strip. There’s Artha, the sex worker that’s also trying to get a degree in cosmetology; Buster Mano, a private detective that specializes in tracking down errant husbands; and Jackie Kasey, a lounge comedian that is always chasing the next gig and some chance at financial stability. None of these individuals is a success, which is partially what draws Dunne to them. Instead, they are living on the fringes, from dollar to dollar and job to job. However, unlike Dunne who feels adrift, each of these individuals has what Dunne lacks — for good or ill, they are comfortable with who they are and a lifestyle that can mostly be described as surviving ‘by hook or by crook’.

It’s an entertaining look at lives that are probably very far from the reader’s, however I would warn that since this book was written and published in the 1970s, one can expect the prejudices of that time to bleed through. The treatment of women is particularly unfair — either they are beautiful or washed-up. Sex workers or saints or naïve marks.

Shall We Compare to Thompson?

It’s nearly impossible to avoid comparing this book to Hunter S Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. So I’m really not going to fight it. However, I am going to warn that Fear and Loathing is one of those rare books that I’ve read multiple times and is one of my favourites — so I’m a bit biased.

Both of these books feature at least partially fictionalized trips to Vegas in order to find something. For Thompson it was the American Dream, for Dunne it was something a bit more undefinable. Dunne’s trip involves less drugs and less antics and is relatively tame. It also lacks the gritty realism of Gonzo Journalism. Dunne is writing a book with characters and seeing aspects of himself through them. Thompson is writing a book primarily about himself and the way the country has become lost as it transitioned between the 1960s and 1970s. I find Thompson a bit more compelling as a narrator. Dunne is more committed to being an objective observer. He also is more invested in reminding us that he has a wife and child that he’s left behind. Writing is a major part of his life, but it isn’t his life. Thompson writes as if he has laid it all on the line.

As I was reading Dunne, I could not escape a comparison to Didion. I could not help but wonder she thought about this book and what he says about her or this representation of her. That left a bad taste in my mouth.

Back to Crafting

One good thing about the winter gloom? It’s driven me back to some crafting projects that I’ve left half-finished for quite some time. Cross-stitch and embroidery have made the sofa time still feel productive and also kept me mindful of time passing in a way that doesn’t panic me. It’s perfect for some of the true-crime binge-watching I like to indulge in on weekends. I won’t name all of the things I enjoy, but Mother, May I Murder? is a favourite and so is Murder at the Motel and The Curious Case Of…