#30: American Dreams by Peter Carey

Available: The Fat Man in History, Collected Stories

First, I got the recommendation: Ryan told me I should readThe Fat Man in History, and he should know: he's slowly working his way through the back catalogue of Australian short fiction.

Then came the kudos: I told my friend Dave I'd just read American Dreams and his eyes went a little misty. The Fat Man in History, he said, smiling. Awesome collection.

Normally I wouldn't congratulate myself on simply reading a collection of short stories, but this time I'm going to make an exception. I'm congratulating myself because somehow I missed this collection in all these years, and yet, thanks to the kindness of great men (and women too, I'm sure my friend Ingrid would slap me if I told her I'd never read this), I have found a classic.

The Story

"What has happened is that we all, all eight hundred of us, have come to remember small transgressions against Mr. Gleason, who once lived among us."

Someone has offended Mr. Gleason, recounts a boy. it could have been Dyer the butcher, or the people who stole his apples, the boy's not sure. All he knows is that someone offended him.

This town's people dream American dreams. They watch American films at the Roxy cinema, and dream, if not of America, then at least of their capital city. They dream of wealth, of modern houses, and of big motor cars. Their home town, it seems, is little more than a hindrance to their greatest aspirations.

For a while Mr. Gleason is a regular face around town, but once he retires, he builds a ten-foot high wall around his plot up on Bald Hill, topping it with barbed wire and broken glass.

The town grows in the meantime. Tourists come; some make the trek up to Bald Hill. Our main character works at the petrol station, often staring up at the walls high on the hillside.

With Mr. Gleason locked behind his barbed wire wall, the town embraces modernity. The people paint their houses bright only to find the paints quickly fading. The main character hits adolescence and barely thinks about the wall or Mr. Gleason.

Then one day Mr. Gleason dies, and it's time for the walls to come down.

Why it sticks

This story revolves around a brilliant central concept. By having Gleason's walls erected so early in the story, Carey creates immediate curiosity. What is behind the wall? Will we get to find out before the end of the story?

A reader could come away with multiple readings from American Dreams, and I am hesitant to prescribe any. Carey himself said ten years after the publication of The Fat Man in History that "The trouble with academics is that they try too hard to understand these stories .... They should relax. The stories are only about what they seem to be about."

What can be said is that Carey's vision of commercial enterprise seems mostly a reality now. The selling of experience is now commonplace in Australia, and said experiences are often sold as material items. If you ride the Kuranda Skyrail, for example, they'll take a photo of you as you come into the station, and sell it back to you as a souvenir, a memento of your expeirence.

Life, it seems, is to be possessed rather than lived. We live our lives vicariously through ill-fitting fantasies that someone else designated as appropriate for us, and we pay them for the privilege.

Perhaps Carey was trying to warn of this, or maybe he wanted to take his own snapshot of a town at a particular time and place. Whatever the case, in American Dreams, Carey created a modern masterpiece, a story that rewards most simply as an image of beauty, a 'what-if' scenario so lovingly recalled that it deserves to be read and reread whenever the opportunity arises.