Review: The Dud Avocado

The New York Review Book Classics series publishes fiction and non-fiction that has been out of print for awhile, previously only available in a foreign language, or too obscure to be published elsewhere.  The covers are all eye-catching, and they all have that same square in the top 3/4 with the title, author, and info.

Elaine Dundy’s The Dud Avocado was first published in 1958 and published by NYRB in 2007.  If all of their titles are hidden gems like Avocado, I’ll definitely pick up more.

“Edith Wharton and Henry James wrote about the American girl abroad, but it was Elaine Dundy’s Sally Jay Gorce who told us what she was really thinking,” the back of the NYRB copy states.  I’ve read Daisy Miller, Henry James’ 1878 novella about an American abroad, but nothing by Edith Warton.  But between a book like Daisy Miller, where the American girl is frowned upon for her flighty nature and ultimately meets a tragic end; and something that can be reasonably defined as “chick-lit”, where Americans abroad are treated like royalty and find true love and great shoes, there is The Dud Avocado.  It’s fun and funny, like the latter, while also honest and more “literary”, a la James.

Protagonist Sally Jay Gorce is, as she describes herself, one of “les compliqués”, or the complicated ones.  She’s 21, she wants to see the world, she’s charming yet flighty.  And what makes the prose sparkle, aside from Elaine Dundy’s descriptions, is the fact that Gorce laughs at herself.  Presenting her problems with a shrug and a laugh, we can only laugh along with her.

Like Daisy Miller, the conflict is primarily that Gorce is an American in a foreign country, searching for some magical life in a place that isn’t much different from her home.  The plot starts out with Gorce involved (in one way or another) with a couple of men, and she goes to parties a lot.  The self-deprecation, the light wit, and the description make what could be really tedious scenes (I find all party scenes that don’t end in a whodunit tedious, frankly) fresh and alive.

But describing Sally Jay’s motives is difficult.  The reader doesn’t really know why she decides to do this or that (I’d explain just what that is but the book reads best when you know little about the plot).  So instead of me ascribing a motive to her, here’s a quote:

“I gave up wondering if anyone was ever going to understand me at all.  If I was ever going to understand myself even.  Why was it so difficult anyway?  Was I some kind of a nut or something?  Don’t answer that.”

Gorce is introspective yet not really sure what’s she’s inspecting; she has an idea of what Paris should be but can’t seem to find that image.

I imagine a rather literate and intelligent girl trying to describe, in a frothy way, an evening she can barely remember.

“I awoke the next morning with a series of explosions popping off in my head like flash bulbs.  ‘Sunday!’  That was the first one.  Then, following close upon it, and each more agonizingly vivid than its predecessor, scenes from last night’s debacle re-staged themselves with relentless accuracy for my edification.”

When I read Daisy Miller I couldn’t emphasize with Daisy.  The novella is not told from her point of view, of course, but her flightiness is not portrayed as attractive.  Daisy does what she wants, dammit, and that doesn’t turn out particularly well for her.

Sally Jay has a much more bubbly ending.  I use bubbly because it’s not particularly plausible.  The ending wraps up in too neat of a bow, I believe, for what the story could be.  But I’m apparently a snob for endings, and for The Dud Avocado to have a Daisy Miller ending would have been completely implausible.  The ending fits the tone, if not exactly the “lesson learned” quality, of the book.

I enjoyed the prose, the story was light, there was enough intrigue to keep it from being just another expatriate story but enough literary devices to keep it about the level of barroom gossip.  A little over 250 pages, it makes for one fun afternoon.

by Danielle Bukowski