AMERICAN DREAMS
by Peter Carey, 1974

Peter Carey is acknowledged as one of the most exciting writers to have emerged in Australia since the 1970s. His reputation is due largely to his adoption of various styles and disregard for traditional modes of Australian fiction, which Patrick White once described as "the dreary dun-coloured offspring of journalistic realism." His stories in particular draw on science fiction, surrealism, fantasy, and magic realism, and Carey readily admits to being more influenced by American writers than by Australian. Yet he has succeeded in making his work accessible to a wide audience both at home and overseas by writing in a simple, straightforward, but engaging manner.

Carey has asserted that he is "always writing about how the world is now," and the contemporary flavor of his material also accounts for its popularity. "American Dreams," however, seems to break away from current issues and take the reader back to an earlier Australia—the Australia of the 1950s. This story was written later than others published in his first collection, The Fat Man in History, and lacks that cold, occasionally surreal quality found in, for example, the title story, "Crabs," or "A Windmill in the West." There is a softer tone here, even a hint of nostalgia. Carey admits that he drew on memories of the town where he grew up, Bacchus Marsh, for such details as names of characters and his childhood love of bicycles. He certainly succeeds in recreating the atmosphere of a small Australian town of nearly 50 years ago.

From the beginning, however, it is evident that this tale is not merely a personal trip down memory lane. It opens with the narrator trying to work out what he and other townsfolk might have done to offend an unassuming little man called Mr. Gleason. The reader is immediately intrigued to find out what Mr. Gleason did to warrant such self-examination. And so a strange story is launched of this man's retirement project of building a large, forbidding wall around a plot of land on a hill overlooking the town. The townsfolk are initially puzzled, but given their Australian habit of reticence are reluctant to question the man, and eventually they put the project down to oddity. For years no one knows what lies behind the wall, even though there was clearly some reason to build the wall high and keep the project a secret.

Another label applied to Carey's work is "fabulist," and a reading of "American Dreams" illustrates why. Gradually what is disclosed here is a fable for our time. When Gleason dies, his wife has the wall pulled down to reveal a miniature version of the whole town with every building and person carefully constructed. The narrator had earlier mentioned in passing that the people believed their town was second-rate. They had seen films of the "outside" that had filled their heads with dreams, "dreams of the big city, of wealth, of modern houses, of big motor cars: American dreams, my father has called them." The revelation of the miniature town prompts a question in the narrator's mind: was this why Gleason built his model, to encourage the locals to take pride in their town and keep it untainted by outside influences? Or did he realize that such an elaborate model could have tourist potential, that in fact it would lead to an influx of outsiders, so that the people might fulfil their American dreams without going away? Part of the story's intrigue is that no one can ever work out what Gleason's motives were.

More significantly for the outcome of this fable is that the tourists do come. Americans with their dollars arrive, and their needs are met by locals who become entrepreneurs. But while businesspeople make money and generally "get ahead," for most there is no sense of fulfilment. The narrator and others become weary from having to act like performing animals for the eager tourists. They also change while the models remain timeless. And strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, the tourists come to prefer the models. They seem more real than the living people who are turning into specimens of humanity similar to the tourists themselves. The story concludes with the narrator sadder and wiser, feeling that some irreversible process has been started, some dilution of Australianness.

Carey once commented: "Everybody [is] believing in change, chance, another go; somehow they think it will all get better. It's a drugged-out society. Everyone believes in newness." He rails against this obsession Australians have with the largely tacky, barren, destructive values created elsewhere. For him, these values are summed up in the word "American," and he believes that Australia has been colonized, as it were, by America, socially, culturally, and economically. In this story located away from the cities, he seems to suggest that the nationalist myth of sturdy pioneers venturing into the outback and establishing communities with a distinctive ethos is no longer valid. Modern Australians don't want to be different; they just exploit their land while dreaming of being elsewhere. It is a bleak picture, although one can read into the fable's conclusion a message for Australians that they must resist colonization and reassert their own identity.

In a discussion about the writing of "American Dreams" Carey said that it started from the idea of "this guy building this wall." His stories usually begin with ideas, not people, and the ideas always remain prominent. The townsfolk are rarely more than names. Yet he never loses sight of the need to keep readers entertained. There is a strong narrative line here that makes it all the more likely that Australians might listen to his message.

—F.C. Molloy