Stephanie Danler on the revelations of Vegas

John Gregory Dunne spent much of his career as a writer in the shadow of his wife, the great Joan Didion — and in 1970, he briefly left her and their three-year old child for Las Vegas. The memoir he wrote there, Vegas — “the best book about Sin City ever written” (Esquire) — has been quietly influencing younger writers for years, despite being out of print.

One of those writers is Stephanie Danler, author of the international bestseller Sweetbitter and the acclaimed memoir Stray, who wrote the forward to the new reissue of Vegas. Ahead of her upcoming reading and conversation with Dunne’s nephew, the actor Griffin Dunne (Thu, Jun 12), Danler sat down to talk to us about her longstanding obsession with the Didion-Dunne mythology, the understated power of Vegas, how Dunne stands apart from other writers from his era, her own Vegas stories, and more.

You’ve written that you initially came to John Greogry Dunne’s writing because of his marriage to Joan Didion — but what was initially a voyeuristic curiosity deepened as you began to read Vegas. This experience seems common for many Dunne devotees. If the Didion connection brought you to his body of work, what made you stay?

The dialogue and the humor. He had such an idiosyncratic voice and a real ear for how people speak. The trick of his nonfiction is that he never sounds judgmental about the people he’s observing, but he keeps his authorial distance. Vegas is the best example of that — he writes about misogynists and the scumbags of the earth without being condescending.

What does Dunne capture about Las Vegas that others who have written about the city, like Hunter S. Thompson, do not?

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas doesn’t have the same journalistic quality — Hunter S. Thompson was the main character of whatever Hunter S. Thompson wrote, but Dunne puts himself in the background in a titillating way. You know that he’s there, you know the shape of his biography, but he is more focused on the characters around him. He gives these people a lot of integrity, which isn’t to say that they are good people. But they really believe in whatever it is that they’re doing, whether they’re bail bondsmen, sex workers, professional gamblers or aspiring comedians. They all reek of desperation, and they are not ironic about it — they are not doing an ironic bit about living in Las Vegas. They really believe in the dream of the city, and Dunne walks a beautiful line between making them appear both delusional and earnest.

You wrote the forward to the new reissue of Vegas, and as readers of your Substack know, you have advocated for it to be brought back into print. What makes Vegas, and Dunne, so relevant right now?

I think we’ve mined the relics of New Journalism to death. The idea that the reporter is a character in the story, as practiced by Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, and Didion to an extent — that has informed the voice of contemporary nonfiction in ways that we will be unpacking forever, from the way Michael Lewis writes his books, to Jia Tolentino’s writing in The New Yorker. Vegas is a great discovery for nonfiction readers and writers across the board. It has a fidelity to ugliness that feels refreshingly honest.

At 92NY you’ll be discussing Vegas with Dunne’s nephew, the actor Griffin Dunne. What are you most looking forward to asking him?

I did come to John Gregory Dunne through Joan Didion, but the truth is that I have a literary parasocial relationship with his brother, Dominick Dunne — Griffin Dunne’s father. He was a close friend of my aunt’s and the first writer I ever met. When I was 10 years old, I met Dominick Dunne at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles and told him I wanted to be a writer. He was extremely kind to me. Which is all to say that I am obsessed with Griffin’s family. I love, love, love his memoir, The Friday Afternoon Club — I feel like it was written for me. From what I’ve read, he and his uncle were very close. I want to ask him what he was thinking when John left for Vegas. Did he think he was coming back? Where were they in their family journey? What was his memory of this period of time?

We all know that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but do you have a memory of the city that you’re willing to share?

The classic story: I stopped there on a road trip with my college boyfriend and we almost got married. I’ve been married a lot now, so I’m really glad I don’t have that extra one under my belt from when I was 19! But everything seems like a good idea at 2 AM in Vegas. I don’t remember what restrained us from going through with it, but when we were at the bar, we were very, very serious about it. I woke up in the morning and thought, Oh, thank god.

What do you hope those who attend this event come away understanding about Dunne?

Compared to Joan and Dominick, John Gregory Dunne has faded into the background as a writer, even for those of us who are obsessed with the mythology of the Didion-Dunnes. But he was truly gifted. And I have to say — I think his ear for dialogue is better than his wife’s and better than his brother’s. In his notebooks, he talks about haunting dive bars and court rooms to record what people said there. He had a ravenous journalistic approach to the world.

Stephanie Danler talks to Griffin Dunne about John Gregory Dunne’s Vegas on Thu, Jun 12. Get tickets today.