The Inconsistent Insight of Leslie Jamison's Splinters

One definition of living might be the perpetual swapping of story lines," Leslie Jamison writes."We trade in the scripts we've written for ourselves and get our real lives in return." 1 This line appears in "The Real Smoke," from her 2019 collection, Make It Scream, Make It Burn."The Real Smoke" is an essay about Las Vegas, about finding beginnings in the wake of endings, and about the fireworks of falling in love contrasted with the hearth-tending work of staying in love.The essay opens with Jamison recalibrating after a major breakup-but in the shadow of that split appears Vegas Joe.Jamison and Joe are strangers brought together in Vegas by chance, excerpted out of the demands of their daily lives, standing in the cross-glare of the Bellagio fountains and the neon signs of all-night wedding chapels.