The writers are coming. Plympton, an East Coast-based literary studio, is bringing authors to Las Vegas this fall—Jamel Brinkley in September, JC Hemphill in October and Jennifer Croft in November—for month-long residencies centered around Downtown’s Writer’s Block bookstore. Meanwhile, the UNLV-based Black Mountain Institute has taken over publication of acclaimed literary journal The Believer, and the Vegas Valley Book Festival celebrates its 16th year this October with appearances by Daniel Handler and Sharon Draper.
You’d think that with all this literary firepower rolling through the Valley, we wouldn’t get upset when another parachute journalist vaults into town and writes a variation on the same Vegas hit piece we’ve been reading for decades, but alas. The latest such article to make the social media rounds is actually quite old: J.R. Moehringer’s piece for Smithsonian, “Las Vegas: An American Paradox,” was published in October 2010, but is a timeless stand-in for all crappy Vegas travelogues. Moehringer goes looking for truth in strip clubs, is amazed to learn of the existence of local libraries and sums up his time here like so: “Vegas isn’t a real city. It’s a Sodom and Gomorrah theme park surrounded by hideous exurban sprawl and wasteland so barren it makes the moon look like an English rose garden.”
It may not seem like it, but Moehringer is doing us a favor. We need to be reminded of where we came from—not because we’re moving on, but because the weaknesses he cites are actually strengths. The “exurban sprawl” is filled with housing we can actually afford. That “Sodom and Gomorrah theme park” supports libraries, cultural events and a fast-growing university. This “barren wasteland” still has room for more people, businesses and city. San Francisco, for example, could do with more city right about now.
Besides, I firmly believe that every Fear and Loathing pastiche like Moehringer’s published nationally equals five that won’t be assigned. Imagine if he’d rolled out the carpet to the snobbish, superior jerks he was ostensibly addressing in that Smithsonian piece. Would you really want them here, ceaselessly complaining that the desert is too desert-y for their gentle breeding, or the city too unsophisticated for their refined tastes? If anything, we need more hit pieces to keep these rubes out. Perhaps the Plympton residents could oblige us, even if they end up liking it here.
