The Madonna of Las Vegas: A Novel | 
| Author: Gregory Blake Smith
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
Category: Book
List Price: $13.00
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 2028438
Media: Paperback
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 1400081866
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781400081868
ASIN: 1400081866
Publication Date: August 23, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
It’s the hair-raising countdown to a new millennium, and Cosmo Dust watches in dismay as the wreckage of his life comes into garish focus in the glow of post-Sinatra Las Vegas. Surrounded by the simulacra of Western civilization, Cosmo finds himself strong-armed by the Golden Calf Casino into recreating the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: a task that makes a mockery of both Michelangelo’s genius and Cosmo’s skill.
Just when Cosmo has decided to quit this job to search for something real, Reality trumps him by making him the chief suspect in the murder of a cocktail waitress. Joining forces with the daughter of the Pope of Las Vegas, the local mob boss, he tries to piece together who’s killing whom and why. Navigating a world that subverts rational motivation, Cosmo and the Pope’s daughter encounter film-noir homicide detectives, Gnostic monks, a Vatican Inquisitor, and a baby who may or may not be the messiah.
A masterfully written novel that is part romantic comedy, part dysfunctional detective story, The Madonna of Las Vegas exuberantly explores the quest for a genuine life in a world built on false appearances.
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| Customer Reviews:
A Reality (or Realities) Worth Exploring September 20, 2005
Matcha Bailey
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I'm a former student of Gregory Blake Smith (Greg Smith back at Carleton) and I was curious to see what he's written (I've also read, and enjoyed, his first book, The Devil in the Dooryard). Anyway, I couldn't find a review of The Madonna of Las Vegas, so I figured I should write one.
The book is a postmodern playground: It's lots of fun to run around and play with the various features. Much of the pleasure of the book is derived from the whimsy of virtual reality suicide machines, Death Valley golf courses, and real Sistine Chapel ceiling paintings in phony Sistine Chapels. Meaning, if meaning is to be achieved, must be cobbled together by the reader, extracted from the characters, devices and motifs that populate Smith's simulacra. As a professor of literature, Smith excels at close readings, showing how a single paragraph or construction can offer insight into a book as a whole; in reading Smith's books, contemplation of small aspects is similarly rewarded.
The dramatic structure of Madonna does not come from the plot (it's more a parody of a plot). Instead, it comes from the process by which the main character, Cosmo Dust, and the reader learn about the world that has been constructed around them. Having taken Smith's "Postmodern American Novel" class, I know that his favorite feature of the postmodern novel is its instability, and he keeps his reader in a constant state of uncertainty. Smith wants us to explore, and delight in, the reality he has manufactured, but he makes it clear that it cannot be fully known or understood.
A final bit of insight I can offer from sitting in on Smith's class is the striking resemblance Madonna bears, in style and atmosphere, to Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. The details, characters, etc. are different, but the feel of the books is the same.
Madonna is certainly worth a read, especially if it sounds like the kind of thing you're into. In the world of Amazon grade inflation, I would have given it five stars. But as Professor Smith never inflated me all the way up to a solid A, I give it the four stars it deserves.
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