As soon as the former Las Vegas resident Lee Scrivner released his latest book “Casinolabs”, he began to get people to ask if he had seen the hit show “Severance” from Apple TV+.
“My sister was the first to insist that I was looking at it,” said Scrivner, who grew up in Las Vegas, “so I finally broke down and looked at it and wow what a show.”
To Scrivner’s surprise, both his satirical novel and “departure” are a surreal, nostalgic look at the office culture, with his book set in both a Roman themed Las Vegas Megaresport and the mysterious casino design company where the main character is paired with three other colleagues who work on top-home projects.
“Severance” on the other hand follows four colleagues who navigate in a similar secret world where their work is separated from their normal lives in a 90s environment, just like “CasinoLabs.”
Scrivner said this fits Las Vegas because the city always tries to be something else.
“It has become axiomatic, almost clisy, that Vegas has always had an odd relationship with the past, with history and with civic memory,” he said. “Just like the characters in ‘Severrance’ have limited access to their memories, in Vegas we delete ours. We implodes our monumental past, such as Dunes, et cetera. There is also a kind of implied memory loss in the 1990s marketing of catch phrase, ‘what happens in vegas stops in vegas.’ ‘
Both “CasinoLabs” and “severance pay” handle a number of office culture themes, and draw on modern arts such as back rooms, limal spaces and post-covid office spaces where empty corridors and desks are the new norm.
Scrivner, who went to Bonanza High School and taught at UNLV before lecturing around the world and worked for the American Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow on two separate occasions (which partly influenced the story), said that the book also dives into the casino culture and looks at Las Vegas self -replicated cultural theme
“There is plenty about casino culture in the novel, and since it is a satire, it can definitely be interpreted as a broadcast or falsification of that culture,” he said. “It only takes playful goals against the casino culture, not in an openly hostile way. It is a bit of a forgery on Vegas casinos in the 90s, where all themes had to refer to any distant civilization such as Luxor, Venetian and Excalibur. This tendency started in the 60s, of course with Caesars Palace and The Alladin.
At present, associate professor at National University in San Diego, Scrivner said that much of his novel is taking place in a megaCasino called “Caesars Empire”, clearly a famous Las Vegas megare variety.
“All other casinos retain their real names,” he said. “And then there is Fake Casino Theme Design Company, called CasinoLabs, which in this fictional world introduced the idea of making casinos family -friendly and Labyrinte to keep the guests inside. These are the 90s marketing memes that I play with in the book.”
Scrivner said that the book is not supposed to be taken too seriously because it is a “Zany, satirical literary novel”, but he definitely believes he should start shopping the novel around considering the success of “Severrance” and the similarities to his work.
“I wonder if I would try to adapt the novel as a script or teleplay?”
Contact Patrick Blennerhassett at pBlennerhassett@ theplayerlounge.com.
