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What is hidden elsewhere exists here in quotidian visibility. So when you fly out of Las Vegas to, say, Milwaukee, the absences imposed by repression are like holes in your vision. They become breathtakingly perceptible, and, as a consequence, there is no better place than Las Vegas for a traveler to feel at home. The town has a quick, feral glamour that is hard to localize—and it arises, I think, out of the suppression of social differences rather than their exacerbation. The whole city floats on a sleek frisson of anxiety and promise that those of us addicted to such distraction must otherwise induce by motion or medication.

A Dave Hickey quote from this Hedgehog Review piece about Las Vegas by Isaac Ariail Reed. Intellectuals writing about Las Vegas tend to crack a little bit. It’s unsayable. Michael Herr’s The Big Room is my favorite.

Previous coverage of Las Vegas