Literature comes to Vegas very rarely. Each week at Las Vegas Weekly, where I am on staff, we recommend the week's hot tickets and interesting events in Vegas.  I joked at our last editorial meeting that we should note that Jonathan Lethem's plane next week would be flying over Vegas as he travels between cities on yet another hipster author book tour not stopping in Vegas.

 

As for our local literary scene, well, Las Vegas literati have pride and lots of it. As for the talent.... In fact, back in 2003 I had the most outraged response I've ever received to a review I wrote in Weekly: an account of a reading by local poets. The dustup continued for weeks in letters-to-the-editor and such. Las Vegas Weekly's competitor, City Life (who employed some of the 'poets' as prose editors and prose freelancers), even labeled me one of the worst print journalists of the year for my critique of what they gingerly called  "well-meaning local poets."  I survived, of course, and to this day I stand by my view of the literary culture and poets of Vegas. I love a lot about this city; but there is no James Merrill in our midst.

 

Yet, briefly, at least, two major novelists will be appearing in Vegas this week: Tim O'Brien and Robert Stone will give a free reading together at 7 p.m. Thursday at UNLV's Barrick Museum Auditorium. I am planning to be there despite a fear of being swarmed and beaten by the local poets.