Kate Braverman said:
"I once said that “Tall Tales” is my version of “Little Red Riding Hood” at the millennium in Los Angeles. It’s an ancient story, an archetypal tale, set beneath the tattered palms in the ruined California tropics under all that vivid and tawdry blue. It’s about predators in a cutting-edge city at the end of a mean thousand years.
'Tall Tales' is about the legacy of Vietnam, which continues to infect the American conscience, often in unexpected configurations. It’s about tarnished consciousness and some unspeakable sordid pulse at the core of the American Dream. On one level, its about the irresistible lure of evil, it’s strange sheen. It’s about relationships between men and women itself. It was here before us and it will remain when we are gone. It has something to do with sexual obsession and the glamour of danger and the fragility of ordinary life. It’s about power and survival in a landscape where the boundaries between dream and reality have dissolved, probably to a rock-and-roll beat."It's a good story. I found it intensely creepy and disturbing in no small part due to the fact that I "know" that guy. I "know" Chameleon Lenny. I've met him and interacted with him and I know what he is about. I left him behind. I like him back there. In my past, not my present or future.
So yes, the story reminded me of guys I've known in my own life, as well as points made in recent essays I've read for class including one by Marita Sturken (who referenced Freud and his theory of "screen memories") and others we have read about history and cultural memory (American Political Lit). It reminded me of the current conversation going on in my Black Lit class about pimps and whores and playing the (psychological) game. The story reminded me of the lyrical significance of sense memories and sense descriptors used in “The Gangster We Are All Looking For” by lê thi diem thúy (more readings from class). Here so much is blue, blue, blue. “There is only this infected blue enormity elongating defiantly. The blue that knows you and where you live and it’s never going to forget.” Blue is like a screen memory. Her addiction, the chameleon, is a load she can replace, but never put down. Much like the death of Lavender for Cross in “The Things They Carried" (another reading and a fantastic story.)
The story reminded me of movies by Adrian Lyne and Zalman King. Stories about dysfunctional desire that is as much of a game as the one in the pulp fiction books we’re reading for that Black Lit class. 9/12 Weeks, Wild Orchid, Fatal Attraction. Chameleon Lenny and what he offers are a fatal attraction for the narrator of “Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta.” Hollywood glorifies him. Society makes him a kind of hero. This woman takes him like a drug.
The story reminded me or made me think of a lot of stuff, which I suppose is the mark of a good story or an indication of where my mind is at, particularly being in the midst of a bunch of analytical lit classes. Of all the stuff it reminded me of, though, it reminded me most of men and situations I have known in my own life. I know this guy. I have sense memories stored in my body too, which is why I felt a little sick reading “Tall Tales From The Mekong Delta.” I understand the draw. I understand the consequences. I also want to reach through the story and stage an intervention. I know Chameleon Lenny. I’ve met him before. She should run, not walk.
Links:
http://www.katebraverman.com/talltalesfromthemekongdelta.html
http://www.katebraverman.com/talltales.html
http://www.amazon.com/Tangled-Memories-Epidemic-Politics-Remembering/dp/0520206207
http://wrt.syr.edu/pub/reflections/19/salibrici.html
http://lozoquals.blogspot.com/2010/12/book-review-tangled-memories-by-marita.html
http://ushistory.wikispaces.com/Sturken+-+Memories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gangster_We_Are_All_Looking_For
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Things_They_Carried
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_O%27Brien_(author)
http://www.rajuabju.com/literature/thingstheycarried.htm
The part I'm *supposed* to be focusing on is this:
ReplyDelete"'Tall Tales' is about the legacy of Vietnam, which continues to infect the American conscience, often in unexpected configurations. It’s about tarnished consciousness and some unspeakable sordid pulse at the core of the American Dream."
Since I'm in an American Political Lit class and we are currently reading American lit covering the Vietnam War.