Kit at the Casino

[Michael Bailey]

Being used to more of a saloon type of atmosphere, Kit found the
European manners here oppressive, not a heck of a lot of bluffing,
slandering, cheating, or getting into fistfights, it seemed.  Where
was the fun?  Except for a scream now and then whose polarity was hard
to read, high emotion had to wait either for later or maybe for some
other offstage room set aside for pain, lost souls, and canceled
futures, for everything that must not go on out here, for this was a
temple of money, wasn't it, even if that did lead back to its own
Unspoken, to figures like Fleetwood Vibe, to rubber and ivory and
fever and black African misery whose awful depths were only beginning
to appal public sentiment elsewhere in the civilized world. (AtD, 536)

-- 

sure can set a scene, or should I say a context?

a) "temple of money" - harkens back to Ishmael Reed's _Mumbo Jumbo_,
where They start the Great Depression by saying, "Let's close some
temples - er, banks"  (I think They were concerned that "Jes' Grew"
was reaching dangerous levels a-and had reached the point where Their
spiral notebooks (like the famous spiral notebook, or something like
that, in that Neil Stephenson book, which the Tadjikistani shopkeeper
used to determine all his activities to keep the store running, or
also the omnibus documentation that Blatnoyd referred to in
determining how to deal with Doc) called for suppression -- like
Cheech & Chong said, "recession, repression, same thing, man")

b)  if the money behind a Wild West saloon were traced, it, too, might
lead to figures like Fleetwood Vibe or his ilk, though perhaps the
local satraps were not as connected and thus not as able to shunt the
overtly brutal elements out of plain sight?  and this was what Reef
'n' them were prone to call the freedom of the frontier?

c) but the "manners" here in Europe indicated a separation or
purgation of the nasty elements necessary to a gambling den, a
division of labor ruled by more mature capitalism and ineluctably
separating the money from many who have previously separated the
workers from their money -- both Kit and the author seemingly in
accord on this point, all pointers in the text I can perceive agree --
and although the next paragraphs go on to regale us with more details
of the scene and Kit's meeting a lovely lady with unmarred symmetry,
still the primacy of the money-brutality linkage suggests we might
take that as the base, and the lovely casino and lovely lady as the
superstructure!

d) as a casual tourist without self-destructive gambling urges, i
think i'd feel safer in the European den -- ie, maybe there's
something to be said for mature capitalism?