Las Vegas IS Thoroughly American
By Leonard Wibberley
First Published June 21, 1979
3/1/2017
The reason the great American novel has never yet been written and probably never will be written is because there are so many Americas. There are about as many Americas, at first glance, as there are nations in Europe. So to think of writing the great American novel is to think of writing the great European novel, which is a thought beyond all reason. This concept came to me the other day when I found myself in Las Vegas somewhat to my surprise, for I had not really planned to go but just went anyway, to be overwhelmed by the mutter and clatter of slot machines, by jarring neon lights, by curiously stale air-conditioned air and nudity stereotyped and glamorized to the point of monotony. In short, in an America as far removed as one could imagine from apple pie, watermelons, family picnics and lawn mowing. But it is still America—and, indeed, to my mind the white-hot spear point of America, the vigorous thrust of the American spirit, which started out with pioneering and crashing a way through thousands of miles of impenetrable forest and wound up with making the desert not only hospitable but also outrageously luxurious. The first time I came across this demonstration of the American spirit was when I went to Death Valley. Before I went there I had heard all the appalling stories of the place and one which touched me very deeply. I recall, alas, only the barest outline. It concerned one group of wagons, which reached Death Valley and was stranded there. In one of the wagons there were three children. And all the way across the great plains through the terrible mountain passes the children had had before them the vision of reaching California where there was, for them, the only gold that really mattered—oranges glowing in hundreds of trees with leaves of jade. The wagons reached Death Valley and could go no more. One group slaughtered their oxen and tried to climb out with the meat oozing fat and blood on their backs. They failed. Another group turned back and an improbable Englishman and his wife and children headed south and were the only ones to get out with wagon and oxen intact. But the children’s wagon stayed, unable to go further, on the far side of Death Valley. Two men of the party set out on foot to see if they could get help. One claimed to have been a veteran of the Civil War. He’d been boasting of his courage in that war all the way west and now he had to prove it. He died of thirst on the valley floor and maybe when he died he felt he had atoned at last for all his boasting. The other man did at last make his way to California where he met, across the mountains, a Mexican rancher who gave him a burro and some provisions. With these the man set back. He was a couple of weeks gone when at last he reached Death Valley and sighted the wagon. All around it was as still as a grave. He fired his gun and got no reply. With fear in his heart he stumbled forward, shouting to the wagon. Out from the shade of the wagon bed came the three little children. They looked at him unbelieving and he looked at them unbelieving. And then without a word he opened one of the sacks on the burro and took from it an armful of oranges and the children burst into tears. Those oranges are surely remembered in Heaven with the olive branch the dove brought back to Noah’s ark. That then was Death Valley and, in any other nation in the world, so it would have remained. But not in America. For when I visited the place I was astonished to discover there was a nine-hole golf course right there in that pit of hell. The golf course proclaimed, as no other monument ever could, that the Americans had not failed. They had tamed Death Valley. And so back to Las Vegas. All around, the Mojave Desert glitters under the merciless sun. The mountains stretch around silent and indifferent to man in pastel shades of pink and blue. The place is plainly uninhabitable. And right in the middle of it all the slot machines mumble and clatter, the air-conditioned hotels rise gleaming in the desert air, the neon lights outrival the galaxies and the sylphs and goddesses of ancient Greece (though they came from Michigan and New Jersey and Wisconsin and Indiana) perform their rites and receive their tribute of praise and adoration. It is all, then, thoroughly American—a manifestation of spirit which is essential American and which consists of doing not only that which is outrageous but also that which is impossible. And so, despite this crisis and that, I am not worried about the future of America. I would be worried only if places like Las Vegas were no longer conceived, planned and built.
The 9th book in the Father Bredder Mystery Series—The Mirror of Hell—is now available on Kindle!
Description: When Lt. Minardi’s 16-year-old daughter attends a summer drama and cheerleading program at a local college, students begin turning up dead. While investigating the case, Minardi and Father Bredder uncover a conspiracy of drug-dealing and murder.
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