{"product_id":"vegas-a-memoir-of-a-dark-season-paperback","title":"Vegas: A Memoir of a Dark Season - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eJohn Gregory Dunne\u003c\/b\u003e (Author), \u003cb\u003eStephanie Danler\u003c\/b\u003e (Foreword by)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"The best book about Sin City ever written . . . [Dunne's] grotesqueries aren't drug-induced, they're very real. His is the genuine Vegas.\" (\u003ci\u003eEsquire\u003c\/i\u003e)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\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\u003cbr\u003e\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 \"a fiction which recalls time both real and imagined.\" The remarkable central characters are Artha, a student at cosmetology college by day, 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\u003cbr\u003e\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            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 304\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.9 x 8.4 x 4.9 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e July 22, 2025\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51987407405357,"sku":"9781961341326","price":20.19,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0938\/3185\/6429\/files\/0kwNmJxyv-9781961341326.webp?v=1776178539","url":"https:\/\/ishookbooks.com\/products\/vegas-a-memoir-of-a-dark-season-paperback","provider":"iShook Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}