American Dreams in Australian Towns

Peter Carey's "American Dreams"

One of the most surprising things to come out of last year’s US election was the discovery that Australians were interested in it. Some of them even took the day off to follow the results. Now, don’t misunderstand me. I don’t begrudge people their cheap entertainment – but if they’re going to destroy their minds with nattering narcotics, they ought to use only the best stuff: SpongeBob SquarePants, Judge Judy, The Bold and the Beautiful.

Generally, I like American television and cinema. I love American music. While a student at Cambridge, I had American buddies and even an American girlfriend. I later found out that two other American ladies had feelings for me. Like everyone, Americans have their flaws, but I can’t fault their taste in men.

So, unlike some of my compatriots, I don’t dislike things just because they’re American, nor do I dislike every collaboration between our countries. What does annoy me is when American values are taken to be the highest, when the ballyhoo and razzmatazz of American media taint all important discussions. It’s doubly insulting. First, because Australia has a very different history and system of government. Second, because all intelligent Americans are trying to rid their lands of the moronic babble that now passes for analysis. Yet, Aussie pundits imitate American babytalk.

Peter Carey exposed what happens when people are seduced by tawdry glamour in his short story “American Dreams,” published in 1974. The inhabitants of an Australian country town feel limited by their lack of opportunities. The narrator, a young boy, expresses how listless they feel, their marginal existence, their quest for meaning and validation which can come only from somewhere else:

My father says we have treated the town badly in our minds. We have used it, this little valley, as nothing more than a stopping place. Somewhere on the way to somewhere else. Even those of us who have been here many years have never taken the town seriously. Oh yes, the place is pretty. The hills are green and the woods thick. The stream is full of fish. But it is not where we would rather be.

For years we have watched the films at the Roxy and dreamed if not of America, then at least of our capital city. For our own town, my father says, we have nothing contempt. We have treated it badly, like a whore. We have cut down the giant shady trees in the main street to make doors for the school house and seats for the football pavilion. We have left big holes all over the countryside from we have taken brown coal and given back nothing.

The commercial travellers… care for us more than we do, because we all have dreams of the big city, of wealth, of modern houses, of big motor cars: American Dreams, my father has called them.

This passage adumbrates the main themes of the story: the father represents the traditional authority of the town, wise enough to provide moral guidance but old enough to be powerless; the mixed blessing of an American commercialism that raises aspirations and lowers comradery; the sad acknowledgement that economic and infrastructural growth destroys the environment in a process like sexual exploitation – maximum indulgence and minimum humanity.

A mysterious Mr Gleason withdraws from the town and spends years building a wall on top of a hill. The community first opposes it but then accepts it. Having forgotten about Mr Gleason’s wall, they get on with their lives:

We became very keen on modernization. When coloured paints became available the whole town went berserk and brightly coloured houses blossomed overnight. But the paints were not of good quality and quickly faded and peeled, so that the town looked like a garden of dead flowers.

The initial enthusiasm for these paints contrasts with the sight they create, the “garden of dead flowers.” The people yearn for an ideal they can’t have. The allure of the modern has no lasting substance and stains the identity the town once had.

After Mr Gleason dies (survived by his wife) his wall is destroyed, revealing a perfect model of the town:

And between us and Mrs Gleason was the most incredibly beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. For one moment I didn’t recognize it. I stood open-mouthed, and breathed the surprising beauty of it. And then I realized it was our town. The buildings were two feet high and they were a little rough but very correct. I saw Mr Dyer nudge my father and whisper that Gleason had got the faded “U” in the BUTCHER sign of his shop.

I think at that moment everyone was overcome with a feeling of simple joy. I can’t remember ever having felt so uplifted and happy. It was perhaps a childish emotion but I looked up at my father and saw a smile of such warmth spread across his face that I knew he felt just as I did. Later he told me that he thought Gleason had built the model of our town just for this moment, to let us see the beauty of our own town, to make us proud of ourselves and to stop the American Dreams we were so prone to. For the rest, my father said, was not Gleason’s plan and he could not have foreseen the things that happened afterwards.

For the first time, the inhabitants feel an uplifting allegiance and love of their neighbours. The beauty of their small town is reflected back at them, and they no longer look elsewhere for validation or respect. But the feeling is temporary. In Gleason’s model they find some of their more sordid activities. The narrator confesses, “I was the one who took the roof from Cavanagh’s house. So I was the one who found Mrs Cavanagh in bed with young Craigie Evans.”

This makes them nervous: “If Gleason knew about Mrs Cavanagh and Craigie Evans (and no one else had) what other things might he know?” The council resolves to destroy the model.

Too late!

The city papers have already found out about it, and the minister for tourism comes to give a speech:

He said it would be an invaluable tourist attraction. He said tourists would come from everywhere to see the model town. We would be famous. Our businesses would flourish. There would be work for guides and interpreters and caretakers and taxi drivers and people selling soft drinks and ice creams.

Be careful what you wish for!

Gleason’s model turns out to be, in the words of Nicholas Dunlop, a “cartographic time-bomb.” Like a malevolent genie, Gleason punishes the townspeople by making their dreams come true. They become famous; people travel from all over to see them. Like Hollywood, they are the world’s cynosure. They become merchandise.

Australia – America’s sycophantic ally in Vietnam, and later in Iraq and Afghanistan – cheapens and prostitutes itself for foreign money. The natural rhythms of the country town are valuable only when they can be frozen and commodified. The people become mixed with their representations.

Infatuated with idols, we’re disappointed by the world. In Carey’s story, the irony is that the townspeople are reduced to a standard that they then can’t fulfil.

The narrator knows the tourists will be disappointed when they find him because he’s older than his eidolon:

“But this is not the boy.”
“Yes,” says Phonsey, “this is him alright.” And he gets me to show them my certificate.
They examine the certificate suspiciously, feeling the paper as if it might be a clever forgery… “No,” they shake their heads, “this is not the real boy. The real boy is younger.”
“He's older now. He used to be younger.”

The narrator tries “to look amused as I did once. Gleason saw me looking amused but I can no longer remember how it felt.”

Even the narrator’s father, embodying the old spirit of the town, is numbed by fame:

I watch my father cross the street slowly, his head hung low. He doesn’t greet the Americans anymore. He doesn’t ask them questions about colour television or Washington DC… Often they remember the model incorrectly and try to get my father to pose in the wrong way. Originally he argued with them, but now he argues no more. He does what they ask. They push him this way and that and worry about the expression on his face which is no longer what it was.

Such tourism even damages the tourists:

The Americans pay one dollar for the right to take our photographs. Having paid the money they are worried about being cheated. They spend their time being disappointed and I spend my time feeling guilty, that I have somehow let them down by growing older and sadder.

So presciently, the story highlights how globalisation and international travel can be both stimulating and stifling. It’s not against America itself, but the foul dust that floats in the wake of dreams; the sacrifices people unwittingly make on the altar of American ambition and grandiose futures; the immolation of local pride in the hopes of winning global fame.