An American Playground

All the opposite instincts which we consider moral, including the refinement & imbuement of culture, are absent in Atlantic City, because the people in Atlantic City are rude, they have no culture, & they certainly do not visit here to acquire culture. Atlantic City is a playground only for the artists, because they see the raw richness of life on permanent exhibition, the abundance of situations in which people are placed under extreme conditions & tests, no matter how offensive or nauseating the results may be. The entire spectrum of human emotion--courage, fear, hope, desperation, lust, superstition (how superstitious an animal man is!)--all these interact most vividly right here at the craps tables in Atlantic City: not in New York or Washington, not in Paris or Venice, not in Tokyo or Moscow, not in Jerusalem or Johannesburg, but right here on this remarkable little island, which lured more than thirty two million visitors last year. Nowhere & nothing else on earth today, not the Monuments of Europe, not the Pyramids of Egypt, not the Grand Canyon or the Rockies, not even Disneyworld, attract as many visitors as Atlantic City which has replaced New York as the center of the universe. Our casinos are the most graphic Whorehouses of Emotion in America.