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The Casino Millionaire, the Unwritten Novel, and the Big Fat Cheques

NEW ZEALAND -- As reported by Stuff: "Glenn Schaeffer is the sugar daddy of New Zealand literature. He makes millions in Las Vegas and sends chunks of money south.

"...Schaeffer recently pocketed $19 million when another Vegas behemoth took over his company. He hopes his new firm, Fontainebleau Resorts, will enable him to give more money to culture.

"'I haven't lost my zeal for the literary enterprise,' he says, neatly conflating his two passions, the business of business and the business of fine writing.

"...Schaeffer is aware of the paradoxes of his position. The gamblers of The Strip are subsidising high art in America and Down Under. He even helped turn Vegas into a City of Asylum, a refuge for writers fleeing persecution in their own country - 'casting against type,' as he puts it.

"... As for problem gambling and ruined lives, Schaeffer dons his hat as a founding director of the Centre for Responsible Gambling and its research institute at Harvard Medical School. The research showed that compulsive gamblers are only a tiny percentage of the population and that the vast bulk of the industry's revenue "comes from people who gamble responsibly".

"...The millionaire founded the Inter-national Institute of Modern Letters at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, whose board of advisers includes literary stars Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco and Gore Vidal. The Nigerian Nobel Prize laureate Wole Soyinka, a friend of Schaeffer's, is director of literary arts.

"...Schaeffer says one reason he donates to writers is that 'literature can be a tipping point for social change'..."

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