It's worse than I had thought: Not just cheesy has-been singers performing for huge adulatory audiences, not just zombies sitting for hours at the slot machines, but a street whose length is arcaded with neon lights; a roof-top sprinkler that sprays pedestrians reduced to a 'floppy relaxation' by the night time heat; crowds gathering to watch an unconvincing phoney volcano that erupts every 15 minutes. Begout has a lot to say about Las Vegas. He's sometimes scathing, but the tone is overall one of thoughtfulness and the content is always thought-provoking. The book is a series of essays or meditations (some chapters are 'The Transfiguration of Banality', 'The Conspiracy of Chance,' and 'Offerings to the Fun God') that I suspect I'll be dipping into often.

Like the other Topographics books I've read this one is pretty much unclassifiable. Like the others it's a very personal take on a place and wanders here and there rather than travelling from A to B--and is all the better for that.

Begout sometimes over-generalises to the point of unfairness--how can he possibly know what all those passers-by are thinking, or how they passed the bus journey to the city?--and reaches some conclusions that are arguable: The appeal of gambling may indeed as he says lie in that moment of 'pure possibility' before the outcome is known, but does it follow that the secondary goal is to lose? But it scarcely matters, and he makes excellent points about fun and the spectacle. 'Fun' here is the puerile as opposed to the youthful, the fleeting thrill that leaves no trace as opposed to recreation, which heightens vitality. In Las Vegas, one can have all the fun one desires because all desires are fulfilled there. Because these desires are surveilled, as it were, they are controlled and the spectacle of fun is all one does desire even while it sucks out the essence of and replaces real life. Begout's solution: High-tail it outta that place, boy, while you still can.

One other thing about Reaktion publications--the books themselves are often very nice things, with end-flaps, thick pages, and a good feel. And this one has many gorgeous photographs of the grotesque.For me, it would be well worth buying Zeropolis new rather than slightly battered.