Timothy O'Grady has a long history of working with other voices, other artists; from the earlier, lesser known, Curious Journey: An Oral History of Ireland's Unfinished Revolution (1982) co-authored with Kenneth Griffiths, which features nine powerful interviews with 1916 veterans, to his acclaimed I Could Read the Sky (1998), its poetic vernacular of an Irish emigrant matched with Steve Pyke's stunning photos.
Children of Las Vegas's fine production includes 10 Steve Pyke black and white portraits forming a counterpoint with 10 interviews. Further counterpoint is provided by a prologue and a series of interleaved short essays by O'Grady. These profound meditations operate like a chorus or cinematic device that pulls back from the up-close, intense interviews to provide a bird's eye view of Vegas: "a small galaxy throbbing on the desert floor. Las Vegas may like to take away your sense of time and space but it will always remind you of what you are there for".
O’Grady came to University of Nevada Las Vegas for a writing fellowship and stayed on for a second year to teach. “It was among the last places I expected to be at that stage of my life, but there I was.” Out of O’Grady’s class of 26 students, all but one worked, “full time mostly at the casinos. One occasionally missed class because of a conflict with his shift as a stripper. Some worked through the night or did double shifts at the weekends. They carried debts, some up around $40,000, lived with their parents and were legally considered dependants”.
One day, when not a single student had read the assigned story, a conversation opened up between O’Grady and his students. They began to talk about the difficulties of their lives, overwhelmingly overshadowed by the parents who came to the world’s greatest playground to make their fortune, only to be sucked into cycles of intense addiction which rendered them capable of sacrificing everything, and especially their children.
“I let it run. It seemed to feed on its own momentum, like testimonials in church. They spoke of routinely losing their homes, of raising themselves, of having their identities stolen in credit card frauds committed by their parents. There were overdoses, desert shoots-outs, suicides … as if a jail door had opened for a time.”
The seed was planted for the book. One by one, the 10 eventual subjects came to O’Grady’s apartment, where he began to record their stories.
Christopher Erle, although caught up in a variety of Las Vegas “proffered vices” was cured of gambling at 16, “walking through the casino pushing the cart with the little box I folded myself into and my hand balancing canes and I stopped dead … this woman at a slot machine smoking a cigarette, sipping at a cocktail while she fed in her coins, completely magnetized. Now that’s normally a sight that would make you pause for thought in a casino, but the fact that she was wearing her wedding dress … I mean, happy honeymoon, doll.”
Kaitlin Reaves talks of her mother: “She drank five litres of wine once, over a weekend. She has a nurse friend who had to come over with an IV to hydrate her. She more or less lives in the garage and I think she likes it as she doesn’t have to see anybody. The money just goes, evaporates, likes it’s been sucked into some hole in the earth. My dad’s pay cheques go on debts and what he gambles.” The reader is gripped as the stories follow each other, stepping stones through a dark hell lit up by garish lights.
These are brave, honest, articulate stories, the children wise beyond lifetimes. While the parents bury their heads in the sands of their addictions, on the other hand, the children see everything and they don't look away. A quote from Robert Fulghum precedes the first interview: "Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you." This quote is repeated on the back cover, reminding us that not only is Las Vegas a metaphor for American society or global consumer greed, it is also a mirror of all human desires and failings. Children of Las Vegas is a modern fairy tale, much more than a sum of its parts.
After each interview, the camera pulls back as another meditation slots into place, the list of titles a poem in itself: “Machines”, “Paradise”, “Signs”, “Childhood”, “Time and Water” and “Backstage”, where metaphysics and geography combine once more to illustrate the appalling waste and how thousands of Navajo villages in Arizona were destroyed by the Black Mesa mine. The killer coal leaves by “chute and travels by rail up to the generating station, where it is converted into the power that pumps water to Phoenix and ignites the lights of Las Vegas that shine for you”.
Martina Evans is a poet and novelist. The Windows of Graceland, New and Selected Poems is published by Carcanet
