Vegas, list trouble etc.

[Joseph Tracy]

On Nov 15, 2009, at 12:05 AM, Michael Bailey wrote:

> Joseph Tracy wrote:
>>
>>
>> What happens in Vegas in IV?
>> Puck Beaverton is in Vegas. Why?  To gamble where he is not  
>> welcome with the
>> magic fingered Einer, OK. zatit? Hide from police/Doc ? Is he on  
>> an errand
>> for A Prussia? Is that why Riggs has a gun?
>
> Riggs is expecting to be laid waste by USAF jets, isn't he?
> I didn't suspect any threat to him from Prussia.
>
Paranoia strikes deep, and into your heart it will creep. He says he  
is afraid of M W but that seems extreme. Maybe there is a question of  
who owns what is there in the desert. Anyway he sees himself as a  
dead man.
> If in any respect Riggs is to be read as Pynchon (I just can't let  
> go of
> that quadrille paper, I even went out and bought some) - then perhaps
> the zome-town is the "road America didn't take" and Riggs is in the
> state of frightened seclusion surrounded by his own creation
> that some anecdotes ascribe to Mr Pynchon during that time frame.
I like that. and the idea is amplified by the move to the toobfreex  
motel, the road taken.
>
>>
>> What is Vegas about?
>> The novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas accounts for two trips to  
>> Las
>> Vegas, Nevada, that Hunter S. Thompson and attorney Oscar Zeta  
>> Acosta took
>> in March and April 1971. The first trip spawned from an exposé  
>> Thompson was
>> writing for Rolling Stone magazine about the Mexican-American  
>> television
>> journalist Ruben Salazar, whom officers of the Los Angeles County  
>> Sheriff's
>> Department had shot and killed with a tear gas grenade fired at  
>> close range
>> during the National Chicano Moratorium March against the Vietnam  
>> War in
>> 1970. Thompson was using Acosta — a prominent Mexican-American  
>> political
>> activist and attorney — as a central source for the story, and the  
>> two found
>> it difficult for a brown-skinned Mexican to talk openly with a white
>> reporter in the racially tense atmosphere of Los Angeles,  
>> California. The
>> two needed a more comfortable place to discuss the story and  
>> decided to take
>> advantage of a Sports Illustrated magazine offer to write photograph
>> captions for the annual Mint 400 desert race being held in Las  
>> Vegas. ( the
>> novel has little to do with these reasons for going to Las Vegas,  
>> but is
>> more about the descent of the 60's revolution into drugs, self  
>> absorbtion
>>  and irrelevance)
>>
>
> interesting background, and much of it news to me!
I thought the parallel issues made it worth noting. I think there is  
some degree of homage to Thompson in IV.
>
> Bill Murray made a movie called "Where the Buffalo Roam" (1980)
> which shows a different side of Thompson as he's faced with some
> of the factors that drive the disillusionment that F&L showcases
>
> ------------- digression -----------------
> (another interesting Bill Murray role
> was in his remake of "The Razor's Edge" (1984)
> http://www.allmovie.com/work/the-razors-edge-40413
> - "Apparently Murray said he'd film Ghostbusters only if
> Columbia would let him do Razor's Edge")
>
>
>
> -- 
> - "The whole point of life is to have a story" - Jeremy Cioara