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You thought, "Why not?"

FB: There's a sense that that's how we felt about this money. There's a distinction made in the book where money that we earned at the university or had in our own bank accounts mostly did not get gambled. Only this money that had come to us. There was no reason to hold onto that particular money. We didn't need it in order to pay the rent and that sort of thing.

Was there something about being writers that drew you to the situation in the first place? Did the spectacle draw the storytellers in you?

SB: I suspect we were drawn by what draws millions of people to Las Vegas every year. And the big part of it is you go and you do win money and it's just amazing.

FB: It's unlike anything you experience. The closest thing to it is you walk across the parking lot in a grocery store and find a hundred-dollar bill. That's the closest thing to what actually happens when you first go to the casinos. You walk across the casino floor and you find $100 or you win $100 on a slot machine, and then from there it's, "Let's go back to that grocery store. Let's walk in that parking lot again."

SB: There's a something-for-nothing aspect to it. To me it resembles getting mail. I always like getting mail and I don't care what kind of mail it is. Junk mail? Doesn't matter. It's like something for free.

What do you think it is about gambling, which is basically just this brisk business transaction, that gives it its power?

FB: It's a sort of mystery religion, it seems to me. It's almost a religious service. If you're playing blackjack in particular, there's one kind. If you're playing slot machines it's another. There are all those surfaces of those things. In the slots you've got the buttons that you have to push, the counters for how many coins you've got available, how many you're betting, the reels as they run.

It's very funny. If you first go to a slot machine and run it, it comes up and pops into place real quick and you really can't tell any difference between when the first one and the last one hit. It seems almost like that. [Snaps fingers.]

But then after you play it for it a while you can actually keep track. Everything is moving in slow motion. You've got actual time to think between when the first and the second and the third come.

"I'm going to win. It's going in my direction. Look, there's a double-bar, there's another double-bar, now all I need is a third double-bar."

You've got time to think all this. And then, boom, it's not a double-bar, it falls in the middle.

In blackjack, it's the same way, because the cards are coming out one by one, and you're holding a certain number and here comes the card. It slows down hugely as you're playing. It really moves very rapidly. If you're not used to playing, it seems to go extraordinarily fast. If you're used to playing, it's much slower. It's some sort of celebration. Some sort of ceremony. Almost religious.

And all these ceremonies, and all this timing, are meticulously planned. There's a point in the book where you talk about the fact that even the inside of a slot machine was probably designed by someone.

SB: It wouldn't surprise me that some thought had been put into exactly how it's supposed to appear when it's opened and the player is waiting.

FB: If you look in a slot machine, you can look in the window where the reels come up and you can see these little counters there. And you think you can figure out what those digits mean. But what you also think is that they know that I'm looking through this window at this counter. They're one step ahead of us, always.

But no matter how much knowledge you accumulate, it doesn't break the spell, does it?

SB: Knowing you're being seduced doesn't really vitiate the effectiveness of the technique.

Policy debates about gambling always focus on the fact that it's exploiting people's monetary needs. Is gambling really about money?

FB: I think it is exploiting people. I think there's no question of that. What can I say? I'm not particularly a proponent of gambling.

Really?

FB: Yeah. The state is very high on gambling because they made a lot of money. A lot of people got jobs. A lot of taxes. Is it healthy for the state of Mississippi? I don't think so.

We're better situated than most people. We've got good jobs. We had some extra money. It was disposable income in some sort of almost cartoonish sense, and we disposed of it. Most people, I suspect, don't have that luxury. A lot of people, even if they lose a little money, probably could have put that money to use in their lives in a way their lives needed.

It really has changed Mississippi, hasn't it?

FB: Yes, it has. The coast used to be sort of this sleepy, decaying coastal town, which was quite charming. And now it's not at all charming. It's garish and gaudy. I like garish and gaudy, but still I'm able to recognize that's what it is. This bothered me for a while until I realized that eventually this too will decay and it will decay in an interesting way. Eventually, the barges will be taken away and we'll be left with these hotels.

Next page | "The bloom is off the rose"

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