I used to think Atlantic City would make a fine study for an artist. Now I just hope everyone forgets about the place. Woe to those writers trapped there by work or untreatable fascination, who by continued unregulated exposure have convinced themselves of its realism and essentialness, the endless panoply of human drama, the raw mix and rough-hewn shape of the sublime, etc., when indeed it is nothing such. A setting like a character must be inherently likeable or at least have some inner agent reaching towards its redemption. But there is nothing redemptive about Atlantic City. Even the gulls there are surly.

How gratifying to be able to prohibit someone, for their protection, from doing something they may enjoy.