The Evelyn Variant
For my part, I never grew weary of the narrative I was in. Each time, no matter how often it had happened before, I grew nervous as I saw the surveillance cameras swivel to follow me, and then the inevitable sound of heavy metal doors opening and shutting in the distant reaches of the annex (whatever annex I happened to be in), and then the echo of footsteps on the smooth concrete floors coming closer, and then the confrontation with the guards in their pale blue uniforms and belts with billy clubs and mace who took me–my arms gripped tightly by their hands in surgical gloves–via a series of elevators, to the deepest and farthest reaches of the annex to a small room where I waited in silence for hours before being summoned into another room, identical to the first, except larger.
By Nicholas Rombes.
Inland Empire
I was writing from a certain outsider’s perspective of Memphis, an artificial experience conjured by and sustained for the consumption of the tourist. Sometimes I think there is too much emphasis on the value of authenticity when it comes to narratives of the South. The farmer hero, sons of the soil, the courtly gentleman, the religious zealot. But a city like Memphis, as an idea or as a narrative, is as indebted to the tourist attraction or fantasy as it is to the populist’s history. A history from the street can be as much a projection of desires, fantasies and connivances as it is a ‘real’ description of the past.
Andrew Stevens gets deep fried with Erik Morse.