Vegas: A Memoir Of A Dark Season

by John Gregory Dunne

Hard cover book with dust cover in vg condition. We ship worldwide from San Francisco bay area.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, American, Biography Memoir, 20th Century, Autobiography, Literature

288 pages, Hardcover

First published June 17, 2025

About the author

John Gregory Dunne was an American novelist, screenwriter and literary critic.

He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was a younger brother of author Dominick Dunne. He suffered from a severe stutter and took up writing to express himself. Eventually he learned to speak normally by observing others. He graduated from Princeton University in 1954 and worked as a journalist for Time magazine. He married novelist Joan Didion on 30 January 1964, and they became collaborators on a series of screenplays, including Panic in Needle Park (1971), A Star Is Born (1976) and True Confessions (1981), an adaptation of his own novel. He is the author of two non-fiction books about Hollywood, The Studio and Monster.

As a literary critic and essayist, he was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. His essays were collected in two books, Quintana & Friends and Crooning.

He wrote several novels, among them True Confessions, based loosely on the Black Dahlia murder, and Dutch Shea, Jr.

He was the writer and narrator of the 1990 PBS documentary L.A. is It with John Gregory Dunne, in which he guided viewers through the cultural landscape of Los Angeles.

He died in Manhattan of a heart attack, in December 2003. His final novel, Nothing Lost, which was in galleys at the time of his death, was published in 2004.

He was father to Quintana Roo Dunne, who died in 2005 after a series of illnesses, and uncle to actors Griffin Dunne (who co-starred in An American Werewolf in London) and Dominique Dunne (who co-starred in Poltergeist).

His wife, Joan Didion, published The Year of Magical Thinking in October 2005 to great critical acclaim, a memoir of the year following his death, during which their daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, was seriously ill. It won the National Book Award.

Reviews

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been a while since I read this one. I learned about Dunne from my obsession with his wife, Joan Didion. We had a copy at the LA Public Library when I worked there, so I checked it out. Dunne is a great writer and he writes profoundly about his time in Vegas. For me, it captured the wonderful darkness of the connection between LA and Vegas in the 70s. There is a self-aware self-destructiveness to it that spoke strongly to me when I read it. This is definitely work checking out if you're interested in a time capsule of Vegas from the 1970s and a look into the life of a writer making it through that decade.

[Gaylord Dold · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vegas: A Memoir of a Dark Season by John Gregory Dunne (Random House, 1974)

On day John Gregory Dunne woke up to the realization that he was terribly unhappy. Married to the brilliant writer Joan Didion, they lived in Los Angeles, wrote for the movies, published books, adopted a daughter named Quintana Roo, and drank and smoked heavily. What's new about all that? To avoid a breakdown once, John Gregory fled to Vegas, where he nursed his life back to health I suppose, though fleeing to Vegas to solve an emotional problem seems counterproductive.

I read Vegas to remember what the early 70's were like and I was pleased and excited to find a mordant, taut, surprisingly noir novel that satisfied my every need for escape. Dunne plunders the noir genre and people's his book (a memoir manqué) with characters--a broken down private eye, dealers, gamblers, husbands-on-the-run (like himself), and a particularly tough and poignant black hooker. They each have a great name, emblematic of something bleak, humorous and lost.

You can read this book in a few hours and come away feeling refreshed by all the bullshit there is in the world. After a quick scotch and a cigarette, you'll know that nothing changes because it can't.

Who cares anyway when we've got Vegas.

[Mel || mel.the.mood.reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

The antithesis to a tourism ad, Vegas is full of such outlandish, larger than life characters that if the book were set literally anywhere else I would be convinced they were made up. Alas, in Las Vegas expectations must be adjusted to account for the bombastic, depraved and depressing misadventures that make up “just another day” in a city that feels assembled out of spite, cigarettes and lust.

Abandoning one’s wife and child to spend 6 months in a rundown Vegas apartment feels like a hard act to follow, yet Dunne exceeds this initial bombshell almost immediately, dropping into the lives of a seasoned sex worker, a jaded PI and a “never gonna make it” comic destined for a life as the opening act in disinterested, half empty rooms. Dunne’s self-professed identity as a voyeur is on full display here, as the writing has a slick observational slant to it that makes him feel cast as the protagonist in a seedy B-movie neo noir.

Vegas is a truly compelling and greasy odyssey, that left me wanting to read everything Dunne ever wrote - right after I take a very long shower.

Many thanks to McNally Editions, who graciously provided me with a free copy of their recent reissue of Vegas in exchange for my honest review.

[John M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not 100% sure why I found this pulpy, sometimes vile, novel so damn compelling, but I could not put it down.

[Celine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book, which managed to be pulpy, weird, funny and lonely, all at once

Set in Vegas, during the period of time in which the author leaves the home he shares with his wife (*ahem*—Joan Didion) and daughter after becoming fixating on his own morality.

There is an element of debauchery to the story being told—main characters that have a certain sliminess to them. At the beginning, the shock value seems to be the point. You behold these people and this place with the same face-value that John does.

And while they, and the lives that they live never change, there is a humanness injected into everything, as time passes. Something to relate to or recognize. It’s strange and unexpected and fucked up and ultimately rewarding to read!

There’s a really great intro from Stephanie Danler for this reissue, which was admittedly a big selling point for me in picking it up. I love the way that she reflects on books she enjoyed!

[Miriam · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know of this guy as Joan Didion's husband. The biography I read about her and the interviews I've seen of him have predisposed me to dislike him. He's pompous and pretentious. He seems to have no sense of humor.

So I read this because I thought I should see what his writing was all about, if there was anything to his pretensions and high opinion of himself. Plus, I'm going to Vegas next month and this book is called Vegas.

Meh. The conceited narrative style irritated me: this is a novel, but he says that the "I" is mostly really him. And he made stuff up but "types" like the ones he describes actually exists. (Having read about how he and Didion competed for who would get to use anecdotes and observations in their work, it hardly surprises me that he barely made up anything, just cribbing from people's lives. Or in his quotation of Didion, which he seems to find accurate and yet still seems proud of it, his "vandalizing" of their lives. Can you tell I don't like this guy?)

So the Vegas part is...fine. His characters are a prostitute, a private investigator, and a comic. Because Vegas. It's so cliche, it's painful. The prostitute is kind of dumb and you can't take her anywhere because she talks about anal sex. The private eye is clever but unscrupulous but good at his job. The comic is ambitious but reaching is tier-two peak. They are Vegas "types," and his treatment of them doesn't feel fresh or interesting. Most of his interactions with them consist of him describing them with barely concealed contempt--can you believe people live like this? The rest is a rumination on his adolescence and early life, complete with the "objective" stories about masturbation and failed romances (incidentally, in The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion mentions that Dunne was reading Sophie's Choice on the night he died, and now I see why he admired it: in among the compelling center plotline are a bunch of asides about the narrator trying to get laid and lamenting how frigid all women are; maybe Styron stole it from him).

Mostly I just thought about what a tool he was and devoured the parts where he discusses Didion (mostly in phonecalls during which she sounds vaguely annoyed at being bothered but still supportive of his "work" in a roundabout kind of way--sounds about right). Whereas I find her detestable but interesting and a unique writer, I just found him detestable and acceptable as a writer. Meh.

[Dana Jerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Vegas Vortex: a phenomenon only understood by those who pay and play and live in it for long enough and by equal turns.
Schills actually still exist.
Junkets kind of remain a thing.
24 hour culture sings its come-as-you-are smarmy ballad like a karaoke queen in perpetual heat. (The desert kind)🔥🌵

If you’ve never been, this book will probably make you want to stay away. It is something of the zenith of nadir points to hungry, sordid and grit-deep emotional memoir.
A three-day old sandwich that tastes perfect because you’re drunk, but you know you’ll need a shower afterwards because some of it is now all over your chest.

[Derek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad, but the stories of petty vice get a little repetitive.

[gvanlan · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I liked to think…that I could learn something about myself from the people whose lives I intruded upon, indeed that was the reason I had taken up residence in an apartment behind the strip.”

I read this book in the 4 week period after I had gone to Las Vegas for the first time, and it’s almost poetic in that way. While there, I was searching for this darkness I had associated with the City of Sin, and trying to pull out the parcels of my experience to fit that narrative. I hoped that it would provide me some kind of an explanation for my curiosities, for my longing to be apart of some greater state of being that’s bathed in money, booze, sex, and lights. All I came home with is less money, a pierced nipple that’s still healing, and a viscous hangover.

Although I disagree with many things the narrator confided with his reader, I found my self emphasizing with him. In places that are so foreign and stimulating as Vegas, it is losing yourself in the peaks and valley’s of other’s lives that allow us the perspective to reflect inward.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Self-loathing in Las Vegas

[Colby · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moving from Goodreads to StoryGraph this year so check out my reviews there under @colbysanders!

I’m torn on this one. On the one hand, I loved some of John Gregory Dunne’s prose — the way he described people’s mannerisms or pointed out some of the absurd irony of everyday situations was really masterful. I was a fan of two of the three supporting characters (I didn’t care at all for “Brother JayJay”), and Dunne was unlikeable to the point of irritation. I understand that his own self-loathing is baked into the DNA of the book (it’s the reason he goes to Las Vegas to begin with), but he allows it to justify some heinous life decisions and I didn’t find any of those sections of the book enjoyable. The lowest point to me was when he spent a chapter discussing his voyeuristic streak and complained that “Jimmy Stewart was the hero of Rear Window, so why am I seen as perverted!?”

[George Sutton · Rating 4 out of 5]

“there is a therapeutic aspect to reporting that few like to admit…Reporting anesthetizes one’s own problems. There is always someone in deeper emotional drift, or even grift, than you, someone to whom you can ladle out understanding as if it were a charitable contribution, one free meal from the psychic soup kitchen…”

[Harry Smith]

wild! fun to read. like SLOUCHING, an interesting example of a writer steeping themselves in some filth and placing themself apart & separate from it. neat

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

Generation crashout, fumbling Joan Didion and hanging with deadbeats in Vegas. Still all in good fun, enjoyed the writing quite a bit

[Natalie Landau · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joan must have taught him how to write! Skillful scene building and compelling stories that show - don’t tell! - Johns internal tumult during this time. I enjoyed it

[J... · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was good. I love taking those temporal trips back. Also the few snippets of his relationship with Joan are worth the price of admission alone.

[Caroline Boattini · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a funny read. Many times I found myself literally laughing aloud. I can see why he and Joan were such a match: both dry, both depressed, both smart, both funny. It was incredibly difficult to get my hands on a copy of this – I ended up renting it through Internet Archives, and I'm so glad I did. The characters he encountered in Vegas are worth getting to know, especially Artha! Definitely recommend.

[lapetitesouris · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In the summer of my nervous breakdown, I went to live in Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada. It had been a bad spring, it had been a bad winter, it had been a bad year."

[Quill (thecriticalreader) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars

Like its narrator, John Gregory Dunne’s Vegas slouches away from responsibility—but it’s still a striking glimpse into a dank, unglamorous historical microcosm that otherwise begs to be forgotten.

“Reporting anesthetizes one’s own problems. There is always someone in deeper emotional drift, or even grift, than you, someone to whom you can ladle out understanding as if it were a charitable contribution, one free meal from the psychic soup kitchen, and just one, no more, any more would entail responsibility, and responsibility is what one is trying to avoid in the first place.”

Vegas is a “fictionalized memoir,” which means that Dunne gets to avoid pesky things like journalistic integrity while indulging unabashed voyeurism served with a healthy dose of self-pity. Lest that description turn you away from Vegas, rest assured that at least Dunne is self-aware. With his marriage (to Joan Didion) falling apart and a newfound fear of dying young, Dunne decided the best way to deal with being a pathetic loser was to seek out the mecca of pathetic losers—Las Vegas. There, he immersed himself in the lives of three “emotionally paraplegic” locals: a prostitute, a private investigator, and a stand-up comic. He recounts the seedy contours of their lives in detail. The journalistic prose results in a detached, snappy style of narration that captures details about their lives, and the broader culture of Las Vegas, in exquisite vividness that otherwise would be lost to time. Dunne lends no glamour to their lives or struggles. He merely lends them his attention, which is perhaps a charity in itself.

Unsurprisingly, you’ll find no shortage of the distasteful in this pseudo-memoir. Slurs, bigotry, and general shadiness abound. But perhaps most distasteful of all is Dunne himself. Dunne lurks in the corners of his own memoir in the pathetic cross-section of enabler and patronizing moralizer. He looks down on the people he observes and yet parasitically uses their stories for his own gain. He freely admits as such; Vegas raises interesting questions about the ethics of journalistic voyeurism. Still, I would have preferred if Dunne took himself out of the narrative. It made me long for someone like David Sedaris, another transient soul with a gift for unearthing the weird humanity at society’s fringes. But were Sedaris balances egoism with humility, observation with wit, and misanthropy with genuine appreciation, Dunne comes across as something of a wet blanket.

If you require plot or insight or purpose in a book, then look for something other than Vegas. But if you harbor any curiosity for the decidedly unromantic side of Las Vegas in the 1970s, you will find no better source.

[David Sheward · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Bought at the Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn): "His office was downtown, near the courthouse, on the ground floor of the parking garage, two rooms and the smell of small tragedy and petty defeat, of insignificant adultery and unpaid bills." I love that sentence from John Gregory Dunne's bizarre memoir of his blighted sojourn in Sin City in the 70s. He clarifies that this book is a mix of fact and fiction, chronicling a mental breakdown when he leaves his wife and daughter in LA and holes up in Vegas to clear his mind, I guess. The crisis which brings his departure about is never clearly explained. He spends his time gathering material for a profile of the gambling mecca and pals around with a private dick (whose office is described in that sentence above), a second-tier comic, a prostitute, and a bail bondsman. He explains these people are fictional; I think they are probably composites of people he encountered. He insightfully explores and lays out the workings of the city from the hotels, the casinos, the day-to-day patterns of life in a community founded on chance, luck, and skirting around the law. I've never read Dunne before, but I have read books by his wife Joan Didion and it's interesting to compare their styles.

Perhaps most shocking is the casual racism, homophobia, and misogyny exhibited in the attitudes and speech of the Las Vegas residents. African-Americans, gays, Jews, Italians, women are called every slur in the book that Archie Bunker used to employ and nobody thinks anything of it. If anyone spoke that way today they'd get slapped down. Dunne does not endorse such language, but he is showing the bigoted, oppressive culture of America in the 1970s and how Vegas exemplifies it.

Dunne acts as a sort of neutral confessor to the denizens of Sin City. He wants to be with people who won't judge him and therefore he won't judge them. It's a colorful, intoxicating journey into a neon-lit Dante's Inferno.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I almost don't even know what to make of this book. It's essentially a *roman á clef* where Dunne acts as a gonzo reporter in sleazy Vegas. There's almost no plot to speak of, just a small cast of characters who come and go in various vignettes, interspersed with flashbacks and Dunne's self-loathing. It's hard to make such a thin plot work, and the characters--while pretty good--weren't enough for me. Buster Mano had the best parts, I did like the stories of his investigative assignments. Artha was okay, I did like the reveal on the deal with the bail bondsman. The rest though, the comic and the Catholic upbringing and the random disconnected stuff... not my thing.

Oh yeah, and this book is vile. Like, the dirtiest book ever. I'm sure that's accurate to 70s Vegas but... Jesus Christ lol.

I didn't find it all that funny. Ridiculous, sure. It sort of reminded me of *The Wolf of Wall Street* in that way. Just "here's more ridiculous stuff". I think my biggest problem with it was how little effect John has on the narrative. There's an interesting theme going on with John trying to escape and "vandalizing" these Vegas denizens with his presence. He's very much an outsider, clinging to his outsider status and observing but not influencing. "No one I know goes to Las Vegas." goes one of the epigraphs in a nice bit of dramatic irony. Dunne *did* go to Vegas, but he almost didn't. Like a ghost, he floated through it, producing this work like an artifact but otherwise leaving it untouched.

But these interesting themes of presence and lack thereof go largely unexplored and is left to subtext and a few scattered conversations with his unnamed wife (Joan Didion). This leaves it as an interesting artifact of 70s Vegas and Dunne's life but it seems like it should have been much more. Memorable, though.

[Glen Helfand · Rating 4 out of 5]

There have been a lot of books on the Didion / Dunne clan, but not so much about John Gregory. Vegas, which has just been reissued, is mentioned in various other books as the tale of a failing marriage. That is the background, but the book is something different-- Didion only enters the frame in a few passages-- she's kind of a complainer, recounting a burst septic tank and her sleeplessness. But Dunne is hardly a model husband. He essentially flees to Las Vegas to engage in some depressive, hard boiled viewing of early 1970s folks who are colorful, and arguably losers. But then, so is he. There's a hooker named Artha who he befriends, a constipated private dick, a comic desperately angling to be a headliner, a bail bondsman who specializes in hookers-- and gets kickbacks. The language and viewpoints are coarse-- fags, schwarztes, and whoors are repeated terms--and the view is richly depressing. Dunne's narrator is clearly distracting himself, and Didion calls him out for 'vandalizing' the characters he meets. He calls up Didion to tell her someone is trying to set him up for sex with a nineteen year old. She seems disinterested. He does go down some more distant past, his Catholic upbringing, his deflowering with an aging sex worker. His views have a journalistic distance that perhaps fits a male literary figures of his generation. The hard boiled language is vivid and often of another era. Vegas may be more glitzy and serves better food than it did in 1973, but its soul remains the same.

[Elena · Rating 3 out of 5]

"En el verano de mi crisis nerviosa me fui a vivir a Las Vegas, condado de Clark, Nevada". Así comienza la crónica de John Gregory Dunne sobre los meses que pasó en Las Vegas mientras luchaba contra su depresión. A ratos invención, a ratos memoria de recuerdos reales e inventados, "Vegas: Crónica de una mala racha" se presenta como reverso del sueño americano. Dunne se fija en tres personajes principales: la estudiante que se prostituye, el detective privado que busca maridos infieles y el comediante de segunda fila. Símbolos de la propia derrota y fracaso del autor. Las escenas se suceden y caen en repeticiones mientras que en las partes más autobiográficas es donde más luce el autor. Así como en las breves apariciones de su esposa, la gran Joan Didion a la que no deja especialmente bien. La repentina muerte de Dunne en 2003 motivó uno de los mejores libros sobre duelo: "El año del pensamiento mágico". Aunque me ha gustado infinitamente más que la famosa y sobrevalorada "Miedo y asco en Las Vegas", Dunne no alcanza la pluma de otros cronistas que he leído: Gay Talese, Norman Mailer o Truman Capote. Las comparaciones son odiosas. En cualquier caso, el tono confesional que utiliza Dunne crea una atmósfera de desgaste continuo que merece la pena leer.

[Vegetarian]

A dry-witted contemplation of the passage of time. The memoir is not one constructed wholly from reality, but rather a mosaic of truth and falsity. Like his wife, Joan Didion, the late John Gregory Dunne's writing style is immaculate. I completely believe that if this man wrote a 1,000-page book depicting the act of paint drying, I would still enjoy it.
"Star light, moon bright, will I save my life tonight? In the stillness of the morn, the question is, why was I born?"
"Talking to her was like opening up a door into an unlit basement."
"Her life was a book whose pages I felt free to turn."
"Love means never having to say you're sorry."
"A man can't be a product, he said. A man's got to be true to himself."
"The answer is to be a person and try to find out who you are and what you are."

[Olivia DiGangi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Let’s bffr I picked it up because I am a die hard Didion fan. But started and continued reading because it was a good book. There’s something so raw, almost cringey, and yet endearing about the honesty of John Dunne that draws me in. He talks candidly about his voyeurism and his insecurities. I, of course, enjoyed the bits about his phone calls with his wife. It served as a compelling glimpse into the sometimes non-glamorous lives of famous authors as well as the every day people living in Las Vegas. The characters were equally lovable and hatable, though I found the stories a bit repetitive by the end. I do think, if nothing else, it’s fascinating to think about the way journalists and authors insert themselves into a community and into peoples’ lives for the story.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick, fun read. Dunne is a wry, acerbic writer who operates in the shadows for this novel. He lets his slice-of-life characters do the talking for him in 1973 Las Vegas. He profiles a cheap private detective, an ambitious prostitute, and a stand-up comedian good enough to open for Elvis Presley, but not good enough to get on Johnny Carson. He also sprinkles in bits of his crumbling home life as well (he was married to Joan Didion), and is honest enough to portray himself as a complete cad.

It’s hard to know where truth ends and fiction begins in this book, but his characters are well sketched, and he absolutely makes Vegas as a town come alive as well.

[Jenny Larsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got to read this for my book club, thanks to another member’s suggestion. I really liked this book, more than I thought I would. I guess being in your 30’s back then is somewhat like being in your 30’s now, you might be having a quarter or mid-life crisis, but there’s always other people that are more interesting than your own problems haha. I liked the writing style (lots of little chapters), it was a fun and easy read. I got annoyed reading about Jackie, though Buster and Artha were fun to read about.

[Peter Trivelas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it better as I got further into the story, and then I really loved it!

I may like it so much because of the similarities to the novel I wrote, Grass Through Pavement. For example, it's a fictional memoir told in the first person, describing events that are unusual, funny, and unexpected. And also similarly, the sexually explicit situations are not meant to be titillating, just detailed and realistic. My kind of story!

[Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 rounded down

A clever, funny and unusual novel that was very 90’s point in time and can feel a bit 70’s-esque in some moments. Our anxious narrator is John Dunne, who runs away from his family for a summer in Las Vegas. The people he encounters is absurd in a fun way and how he meets them can be even weirder.

I didn’t get enough depth from Dunne to make this a higher rating but it stands on its own and I would recommend it if you need a lighter palette cleanser.

[Annie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, John Dunne, get the F over yourself, you balding twat. If this is biographical at all in its nature (which it is) have some more goddamn shame. Oh, you leave your wife and 3-year old to go “work through your problems” in Vegas, not really even fucking or gambling just being a general loaf… “edging” a downward spiral just to see if anyone would care. Be more, dude — anything but the sad sack you are. Joan Didion, your wife, is way too hot, smart, and successful for you. Bleh!