Robert Stark and Matt Pegas speak with Lee Scriver about his novel Casinolabs, which is a psychological thriller set in Las Vegas. Casinolabs is published by Imperium Press and is also available on Amazon. Also, check out Robert’s review of Casinolabs. Lee is a former adjunct professor at UNLV, is known for his satirical avant-garde arts manifestos, and is the author of Becoming Insomniac. Subscribe to Lee on substack and check out his Youtube channel.

Topics:

-How Lee found artistic success in London including performing at the Tate Britain-Whether Americans are philistines about culture-How Lee ended up sharing a dressing room with Yoko Ono in London-How Lee’s upbringing in Vegas inspired Casinolabs-Lee’s dad, who dealt with the darker underbelly of Vegas as a crisis counselor-Why explicitly rightwing art fails-How literary agents filter out people on identity issues–The Las Vegas Review Journal’s review that compared Casinolabs to the show Severance-Contrasting GenX alienation in Casinolabs and Bret Easton Ellis’s work with the millennial/zoomer incel trope in Robert’s novel Vaporfornia and Matt’s novel Dragon Day-How Casinolabs is fundamentally a critique of atomization, the breakdown of families, and a lack of meaning crisis-The parallels between the Casinolabs casino design firm deconstructing Vegas history and the protagonist Morton getting his brain fried-Why Casinolabs only partially veers into magical realism-The labyrinths in Casinolabs and Vaporfornia as the backrooms-Philosophical questions about fate vs random coincidences-Lee’s early job at Caesars Palace-Finding deeper meaning out of post modernist themed casinos in Vegas-Minimalist renovations that erase Vegas’s limited cultural inheritance-The symbolism of the Vegas Sphere as a giant phone screen that is malleable-Contrasting today’s Vegas with the older stage of capitalism where every man was a king-Is Vegas dying?–Woke inspired minimalist renovations–Vegas and Disneyland as Baudrillard’s simulacrum-Planned suburbia as the counterpart to the Vegas strip-Robert and Matt visiting Mount Charleston recently-How the overstimulation of Vegas drove Lee to asceticism-Lee’s paganism and thoughts on the pagan professor Wallingford in Matt’s Dragon Day

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