{"product_id":"vegas-by-john-gregory-dunne-9781961341326","title":"Vegas","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe best book about Sin City ever written... [Dunne's] grotesqueries aren't drug-induced, they're very real. His is the genuine Vegas.\u003c\/strong\u003e \u003cstrong\u003e\u003ci\u003eEsquire\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\"In the summer of my nervous breakdown, I went to live in Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada.\" So begins John Gregory Dunne's neglected classic of first-person writing, a mordant, deadpan, grotesque tale that blurs the line between autobiography and fiction, confession and reportage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePanicked by his own mortality, despondent over his many failings as a writer and a man, Dunne leaves his wife and their three-year-old child for the solitude of a crummy apartment off the Vegas Strip. There he plans to write an account of the city as he finds it; the book he ends up writing is \u003cem\u003ea fiction which recalls time both real and imagined\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe remarkable central characters are Artha, a student at cosmetology college by day and a sex worker by night; Buster Mano, a private detective whose specialty is tracking down errant husbands; and Jackie Kasey, a lounge comic who opens for Elvis at $10,000 a night and wonders why he is still only a 'semi-name'. Pimps, bail bondsmen, parking-lot moguls, used-car tycoons, ex-jockeys, and women who look as if they had \"spent a lifetime meeting guys in Vegas or Miami Beach or Louisville for the Derby\": these are the people who wander through the lives of Artha, Buster, and Jackie and, for a dark season, the life of the narrator.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Gregory Dunne captures a low point in American culture and in one American life with rare vitality, honesty, and perception. Sad, powerful, wildly funny, \u003ci\u003eVegas\u003c\/i\u003e is like no memoir before or since.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47773220307180,"sku":"9781961341326","price":37.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9781961341326-vegas.jpg?v=1782185804","url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/products\/vegas-by-john-gregory-dunne-9781961341326","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}