Leaving Las Vegas was just republished in Italy by minimum fax. It had been out of print there for some years. For any of my Italian friends who have not read the book, it is a very fine novel indeed.Some months back, the publisher contracted me to write an epilogue, which I did. The contributor copies arrived a few days ago. Seeing John's work and mine back to back was so strange--and in a foreign language no less.
It was very difficult to write the epilogue without falling into a chasm of sentimentality. I tried to follow the model of Tim O'Brien, who so brilliantly scaled the Vietnam War by placing it next to a comic book and a packet of KoolAid in the short story "The Things They Carried." I took John's life, suicide and all the rest of it and scaled it next to his beloved Rolex and a handful of numbers.
Was it right or wrong? I'll never know. I just hope I didn't sully John's fine work.
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