[.ca] Leaving Las Vegas (ISBN 2743600985)

From Amazon.com:
The wrenching but compelling story of unconditional love between two lost and disenfranchised souls. Sera, a prostitute, and Ben, an alcoholic, stumble together and discover in each other a respite from their unforgiving lives.

Yo Eisenberg:
I've got my bio-ears on in Ohio.

The greatest love story ever told:
no-joke exploration of two terminally wounded souls whose demons find near-transcendent solace within each other

The greatest love story ever told:
no-joke exploration of two terminally wounded souls whose demons find near-transcendent solace with each other

Despairing irony & over the top subtlety a great novel makes:
Leaving Las Vegas is a unique novel destined to (and already has) become a classic of American literature. It succeeds by forcing you to care on the deepest level about Nick and Sera, 2 of society's casualties. The narrative starts off with Sera, a Las Vegas hooker and O'brien's original writing style takes the 1st part of the book to get used to. We get inside 1st Sera's mind and later Nick's, a man who has given up on life and arrives in Vegas to literally drink himself to death. Camus has said that a good book doesn't give every detail of a life, but rather implies the whole by focusing on a significant part. This novel implies alot that it never goes into. It implies 2 lives with intricate and tragic pasts, that converge in a city at the last possible moment. Nick's line that he forgot why he wants to die, he just knows that he wants to implies or inspires a whole tragic past the reader must manifest in his/her own mind. Sera's need for love with Nick as the vehicle implies the tragedy of a loveless past of prostitution. Both have taken wrong turns in life and ended up here in Vegas. To me this novel is not about alchoholism or prostitution on any level but the surface. It's about tragedy, loss, despair, love, injustice. The author's suicide can only imply a few things. 1, he got so much into the characters he created he sank into those characters' despair himself and/or 2, this was too autobiographical to deal with it becoming so big (major film and all that), and/or 3, alchoholism....but most alchoholics don't die at 34, especially when as successful as O'brien. The final part of the book, though, seems abbreviated too much. We get many short vignettes toward the end (half of the film only uses about the final 10 pages). Therefore, my only criticism is that the book is too short.

A Love Song of Misfit Outcasts...:
The title "Leaving Las Vegas" conjures up an image of a victorious departure from the 24-hour city of sin. The late author John O'Brien wanted no such transcendence in this tragic story of a young professional bent on drinking himself to death and of a lonely prostitute who shares with him a higher love that cannot last. Ben, a raging alcoholic, has just been fired from his high-paying job in Los Angeles. What he needs is professional help. Instead Ben goes on one last drinking binge in LA before making his final stand in Vegas. Whatever personal belongings he does not bring with him he burns in his back yard. Sera has been a Vegas prostitute for years, and she hates the danger of the job, the beatings, and the rip-offs. But she loves the fast money and the sizzling energy pulsing nonstop through the neon city. It's her town. And when she gambles in the classy, all-night casinos, she feels alive, validated. The two meet when Sera stumbles upon Ben passed out on the sidewalk. They strike up a casual friendship, one that soon blossoms into a love affair built on complete acceptance of the other's seamier side. Ben's boozy genteelness and childlike honesty are among his more endearing - and disturbing - traits. He tells Sera that he has come to Las Vegas to drink himself to death. If she wants to stay with him, she must not try to stop him from completing his fatal task. Sera agrees. Although she can't stand the sight of Ben swilling gallons of hard liquor and falling down drunk and blacking out. Even worse are the days when he's lying in bed, grotesquely sick and pale. Sera knows Ben is buying death on the installment plan. She also knows there is nothing she can do. O'Brien's existential view of alcoholism and vice is reflected in a glaring lack of heroes and villains. There is only Ben and Sera, two misfit outcasts who experience a few rare moments of love and humanity, moments doomed by their utter futility. I recommend this novel, but only if you're in the right frame of mind. Leaving Las Vegas requires that you be in a light and emotionally stable place. Another book I need to recommend -- in fact a good counterpoint - is the novel, The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition by Richard Perez, which is down-and-out, but somehow manages to balance out the darkness with enough unexpected comedy. So I would recommend Leaving Las Vegas and The Losers' Club -- together.