The Princess of Las Vegas

“Las Vegas is a city built on luck. None of us, even when we are breathing our last, understand fully the role that chance will have played in our lives, the ways that what we supposed was good luck prevented us from experiencing better luck, or the ways that a small misfortune saved us from a far worse one.”

Luck Versus Fate is a central theme in the novel. The setting of the novel—a casino in Las Vegas—stresses the theme of luck, as many people come to Las Vegas to test their luck. The diction in this quote—“good luck,” “misfortune,” and “saved”—creates a tension between randomness and destiny, highlighting the irony of the human desire to impose meaning on chance. The cyclical nature of luck, as described here, mirrors the recurring motif of gambling, underscoring how both sisters gamble with their lives in different ways.

“It isn’t simply that discussing her actual death is a bit of a buzzkill; it would place me—Diana—in some strange, untenable purgatory. Am I speaking to my audience from beyond the grave, or am I but an impersonator? The former would be ridiculous, and the latter would take a wrecking ball to the theater’s fourth wall. I know most of the better sort of tribute entertainers in Vegas—even such also-rans as Blond Elvis and Tighty-Whitey Conway Twitty—and one of the things we who perform in homage to the dead (and to pay the rent) agree upon is this: if you’re bringing someone back to life for that person’s biggest fans, it’s bad for business to kill that soul in the third act.”

Crissy is often confused about where her personality begins and Diana’s personality and story end. Her deep commitment to her Diana impersonation highlights the theme of The Curse and Confusion of Celebrity. The juxtaposition of “purgatory” and “impersonator” emphasizes the liminal space Crissy occupies, where she straddles authenticity and artifice. The reference to the “fourth wall” blurs the line between reality and performance, reinforcing Crissy's struggle to define herself outside of her role. The playful but pointed inclusion of “Blond Elvis and Tighty-Whitey Conway Twitty” illustrates the tension between camp and reverence in Las Vegas impersonation culture.