The Dud Avocado | Thornfield Hall

I am an inveterate rereader. Some favorite books enchant me on multiple readings; others are not fully appreciated on a single reading. I may be eccentric, but I prefer rereading to keeping up with the critically-acclaimed new books.

And by new, I mean hot off the press. After a certain age, one is maddeningly familiar with the trends and tropes. One sees the skeleton awkwardly poking through the prose. I am picky, almost too picky. I approach the latest books in a hazmat suit, like a member of a bomb squad.

Rereading is an intense experience, like revisiting a beautiful landscape and seeing it from a different perspective. On my first reading of Anna Karenina, I barely noticed Dolly, a minor character who lacks the glamour of her vivacious sister-in-law, Anna, or the charm of her younger sister, Kitty, who is excited about attending a ball.

In the opening chapters, the faded Dolly, mother of five children, is devastated because her husband has been cheating on her with the governess. The house is topsy-turvy, the cook has left, there is no milk, and she plans to move back to her parents’ house. She shrieks at Oblonsky, “You are loathsome to me, you are repulsive!” (Yes, Dolly, he’s a toad!)

And so he sends a telegram to Anna, his sister, and she comes for a visit and persuades Dolly to forgive him. Anna says that he really loves Dolly, and that the other woman is nothing to him. And so Dolly forgives him and then fades into the background.

Tolstoy is interested in her as a type, as a contrast to Anna. And yet his portrayal of Dolly is brilliant and believable: his genius animates her. Dolly’s experience is common: the note found in the pocket may be a cliche, but there is always a clue. Statistics on the percentage of adulterers who are careless with their notes, emails, phones, etc. are probably studied by sociologists. Having read Anna Karenina multiple times, I am now moved by Dolly’s desperation, because the thirties are just a vale of tears, as I remember, for all kinds of reasons. It’s the human condition. I identified with Anna and Levin, because these two opposites were my favorite characters.

Sometimes I return to a book I suspect I have not fully appreciated, like Elaine Dundy’s The Dud Avocado, published by Virago and NYRB Classics. On a second reading, this enchanting little novel made me laugh out loud. Sally Jay Gorce, a young American in Paris in the 1950s, is an aspiring actress who wears evening dresses during the day. She tries to be blase when she runs into her old friend Larry, with hilarious results: “I saw a stinking art film the other night” and “I don’t like possessions. I travel light so I can make my getaway.” At a “queer club,” which flabbergasts her, with its dozens of flirtatious sailors, flirting more outrageously than any woman, Larry explains,“Faggotry has reached almost pyrotechnic proportions.”

This is basically a romance: Sally Jay falls in love with Larry. He seems to consider her a younger sister. But how can he resist Sally Jay? She is so funny, like a smarter Holly Golightly. I’d love to go back in time and be Sally Jay myself.

But I did find the book meandering the first time around and asked myself, “Why am I reading this?”

Now The Dud Avocado is one of my favorite books.

And now I’m off to do some rereading, inspired by myself.

Today many Americans will arrive at parks at dawn, having reserved a shelter if they’re smart or snagged a picnic table if they’re lucky. They will spend the day barbecuing chicken and eating potato salad, driving people crazy with their bad music, maybe taking a dip in the lake if they’re brave enough to face the pesticide run-off, or walking in the woods with their bird lists until the fireworks begin at 9:30 or 10.

No, I’m sorry, but I’m too tired to go. Wilted, rustling around in a tattered “Bookish” t-shirt nightgown and slippers, I plan to spend this very hot day alternately napping and reading Elaine Dundy’s witty novel, The Dud Avocado. I adore this smart little book! Published in 1958, it has been reissued by Virago and NYRB Classics, both heavy hitters in the reprint game. Dundy (1921-2008), an actress and writer, wrote brilliant comic dialogue, and her voice is slightly reminiscent of that of the witty Eve Babitz. Elaine Dundy, however, is more “relatable,” not quite as outlandish and “arty.”

I keep giggling at the antics of the quirky narrator, Sally Jay Gorce, an aspiring American actress in Paris who has thrown herself into the bohemian life. She even has a middle-aged lover, Teddy, Alfredo Ourselli Visconti, so she feels triumphantly that she has left behind the stuffy mores of women’s colleges. And she doesn’t consider herself a tourist until she runs into Larry, a handsome American actor she worked with in a stock company. This time around, Sally falls in love with him at first sight, but he is less impressed with her. She has dyed her hair pink and and happens to be wearing an evening gown in the morning (everything else is at the laundry). Larry lectures her on the perils of “going native” and then tells her about the the different types of tourists. Sally won’t admit she is one.

“….the last type is the Wild Cat. The I-am-a-fugitive-from-the-Convent-of-the-Sacred-Heart. Not that it’s ever really the case. Just seems so from the violence of the reaction. Anyhow it’s her first time free and her first time across and, by golly, she goes native in a way the natives never had the stamina to go. Some people think it’s those stand-up toilets they have here – you know, the ones with the iron footprints you’re supposed to straddle. After the shock of that kind of plumbing something snaps in the American girl and she’s off. The hell with all that, she figures. The desire to bathe somehow gets lost. The hell with all that, she figures. Then comes weird haircuts, weird hair-colors, weird clothes. Then comes drink and down, down, down. Dancing in the streets all night, braying at the moon, and waking up in a different bed every morning.”

Sally calls him a bastard and furiously goes on, “It’s a pretty safe bet I bathe about sixty times as often as you…” But then she remembers: “To accuse the American male of not bathing in Paris is merely to flatter him.”

Such a charming book. I hope you, too, have an entertaining book for the holiday. And don’t forget the bug spray if you go to the fireworks!