["Vegas"] is an exercise in journalism-as-therapy. Dunne makes no bones about that. (p. 6)

Dunne set himself up in a ticky-tacky Vegas apartment and began to roam the Strip, in search not so much of adventure as of the company that misery loves. He found plenty of it, most notably in the persons—all pseudonymous and to some degree fictitious—of a prostitute named Artha …; Buster Mano, an amiably cynical private eye with a special knack for tracking down fled husbands; and Jackie Kasey, a "semi-name" comedian who grossed over $100,000 the year before, yet, in spite of that and his bluster and bustle, remained resolutely unknown and mediocre.

Their stories are funny, poignant and fascinating, and Dunne tells them with sympathy but without sentiment. He understands that no matter how sordid or desperate or even meaningless they may at first seem, there is something distinctly honorable in their dogged struggle to stay off the scrap heap. Dunne also has a marvelously keen eye for Vegas itself…. His portrait of the city is sharp, at times painted in acid; yet, again, there is compassion in it as well, for he recognizes that people are drawn to Vegas's tawdry tinsel in search of comforts more complex and elusive than quick gain at the gaming tables or sex in an air-conditioned hotel room.

Dunne himself was one of those people, and interwoven with the story of Vegas and its people is his own story—perhaps the most intriguing aspect of which is that this lapsed Catholic from an upper-middle-class New England background should have chosen Vegas to straighten himself out in the first place. As personal journalists tend to do, Dunne injects himself into the book more than really seems warranted—the catalogue of his sexual escapades and hangups, though frequently amusing, ultimately is wearisome—and indeed seems more interested in himself than in the other people he writes about. The problem is compounded by his admission at the outset that "Vegas" is "a fiction which recalls a time both real and imagined." What, one cannot help but wonder, is reportage, and what is invented to serve Dunne's private purposes?

But those are familiar complaints against personal journalism, and there is not much to be gained by dragging out all the old arguments against it. It does seem to me that Dunne indulges himself in a semi-truth when he says, "There is a therapeutic aspect to reporting that few like to admit…. Reporting anesthetizes one's own problems," but at least he has the candor to admit that his journalistic motives are ulterior.

What, in fact, do those motives really matter? What does matter is that Dunne has written a fine, wry, perceptive, graceful book that does as much for the dark side of the American funhouse as Hunter Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" did for the manic side. Neither side is pretty, but each has produced an entertaining and disturbing book. (pp. 6-7)