Vivian’s latest contribution to the Girl Scout Nookies universe currently resides in the Moderation Center. While I do not wish to give away the story line, I do wish to be the first to review it.
With the story codes {girl-scout, cookies} significantly adding to the length of this interesting flash story, and with a disclaimer as long as the story itself, Vivian has broken new ground in the GSN universe.
I enjoyed the subtle interplay of the emotions of the characters, ones that are driven by internal needs and desires. Jenny Sue’s attempts to better herself and to improve her future reached deep within me and pulled at my heartstrings the way Itzahk Perlman played pizzicatos on his violin.
The need for the narrating character to get on with her life despite the events of the story was both uplifting and compelling.
I thought the wholesome moral of the story displayed a respect for family values and was deftly handled, being realized through the believable actions of the characters rather than through unsubtle pontificating at the end, the way it was handled in bad 1950s science fiction film productions.
On the Hoisington scale (Pepsi, urine, water, beer, gin & tonic, Bombay Gin & tonic), I reluctantly give it a gin & tonic. Unfortunately, I had to deduct points for punctuation.
But don’t let the score keep you from reading it.
It is amazing how two people can read the same story and come away with a totally different impression.
To me, the strength of the story did not lie here. If we look carefully at this epic, we see that there are many unanswered questions raised by this narrative. Where did these cookies come from? How thin were the mints? She says she wants to be a better citizen, but such a statement is fraught with a multitude of interpretations. What scene was the narrator reading in Hamlet? Was the bill that was given to the girl old money or one of those funky new bills with the colors and watermarks on them?
With so many questions dancing around the reader’s head, I would say that the strength in this story is just the opposite. Rather than depth, we are given a glance, a mere flick of the eyes into the lives of the characters, all building up to a radical, raw nihilism that makes this story like a tall cactus in an endless expanse of desert, at once prickly and deterring the reader, but holding the promise of the water and inexorably drawing the reader to it anyway, knowing that the reader may become stung and satisfied at the same time.
At first I hesitated to submit a story which represents such an enormous divergence from the central themes of the series. But the difficulty of such a work, both in the struggle to give it birth, and in the mind of the reader, could not possibly preclude my overwhelming sense of its importance as a contribution to the oeuvre.
Disturbing indeed, are the possibilities it raises. Suggested by the transfer of wealth so graphically depicted, the spectre looms ominously, of the possibility of future purchases. These in turn could lead to an enduring albeit uneasy interdependency between producer and consumer, reflecting a culture which on the whole is severely cramped by the model of materialistic consumerism.
Needless to say, the implication of caloric content is a blatant reference to the energy economy and its associated politics and policies, implying a scathing critique of the petroleum industry as instigator of war, and thus rationalization of the military-industrial complex, an interpretation which attains crystal clarity when one considers how it is underscored by the ‘military green’ uniforms worn by girl scouts.
And what is the meaning of the label “Thin Mint,” affixed to an object of desire, if not to imply that value is “Minted” in terms of physical emaciation? Thus plundering those of more voluptuous stature of their sense of value and self-worth.
Yet underlying the entire scenario is the interplay of shadow themes emerging from the irony that an institution which masquerades as elusive ‘self-empowerment’ for young girls simply places the girls at the whim of a cookie manufacturer who reaps all profits, tenuously predicated on the dubious assumption that monetary gain is equal to empowerment.
Further deepening the absurdity and sadness is hidden reliance on the sweatshop labor of young girls in the countries exploited to produce the chocolate, underscoring the motif of class and race struggle, and cultural and economic Darwinism, merged with a poignant angst of the poor young child who is simply attempting to better her situation in by any means available, aided and abetted by the mysterious “consumer,” who feeds the entire corrupt and contemptible system by indulging in a “purchase,” thus coddling the helpless child’s self-deception; rather than behaving in accordance with what any thinking mortal should immediately grasp to be the moral imperative, the noble course of action, to wit making genuine effort to deconstruct the travesty by whipping out a thesaurus and smashing the boxes of cookies in symbolic protest, thus shattering the shackles, liberating the slave of oligarchy, setting free the innocent from the wearying chains of capitalistic oppression.
But how pointless these ramblings for, indeed, the quintessence of the narrative lies not with the intent of the author, but in the imagination of the reader.