Although not its most salient point, the two main settings of Memento, a run down exurban commercial strip and an abandoned industrial park, continue the familiar strain so far this semester of postmodern writers inquiring about the degradation of america’s natural environment. Pynchon, Le Guin, and Whitehead all have something to say about failing urban areas, commercial sprawl, military pollution, and overpopulated cities, etc. Sometimes I find it helpful to think of what’s not present in film or book settings. In Memento, there are no woods, lakes, parks, grass, animals, etc. There are a lot of drugs, bloody body parts, cars with broken windsheilds, bullets. Nolan chose his setting with a purpose. Its Californiaesque, and shares characteristics with Lot 49’s landscape and plot.
It occured to me last week, as i was driving through man made fog spewing from a semi truck engine fire on 395, that this whole postmodern condition of ours can be both an economic one, as Jameson argues, or an environmental one, as many people probably have already argued, but only just recently dawned on me. i’ve never read Delillo, but from what I hear, this question will keep arising again and again.
John, very good point about the British and Canadian make-up of the film. I disagree with the Bush Administration that we shouldn’t claim everything for ourselves. I would point to Nolan’s use of setting to consider it decidedly american in feel. Im interested in what people had to say about the form, structure of the film, with some saying how creative it was to put the audience in Leonard’s shoes in trying to put together the pieces of his wife’s murder, and another saying that it was, oh what’s the word, cliche? 
i agree with jarrod’s comments that there was truth for the viewer to grasp. I almost thought that we would find out who killed his wife! Look forward to tomorrow’s discussion.