The Universe Told Me So

Six incidents in a reading life

1. August 2015, Washington, D.C.

We’re in a new apartment in a new city and I go to the local library to find a book that isn’t still in a stack of boxes. On a shelf of novels, I see a title I can’t resist: The Dud Avocado. I’ve never heard of it or the author, Elaine Dundy, but it’s part of the New York Review of Books Classics series, which is always a good sign. On the back cover, I find all the major details: debut novel from 1958, about a naive American in Paris, beloved by Groucho Marx. I check it out. I read it. I love it. I return it.

2. May 2023, Boston, Massachusetts

I’m visiting for work and spending the evening hours reporting a story on the Elvis postage stamp wars for 99% Invisible. One night, I join a video call with Paul and Joan Gansky. We spend almost two hours talking about their love of Elvis and their work advocating for the stamp in the ‘90s. They’re charming. They’re also very patient with my questions.

I always become fixated on whatever topic I’m writing a feature about, but the Elvis stamp has become an obsession. I’m listening to Elvis records, browsing old stamp collector magazines, and reading about the culture and politics of the early ‘90s. At each turn, I find some connection to an old memory or a past fascination. It’s like the story I’m writing was always there, and I’m just now seeing it.

As we wrap up our call, Joan mentions that she and Paul know a lot of people who have written about Elvis, and she mentions one of these writers: Elaine Dundy. More than twenty years after The Dud Avocado, Dundy had an assignment to write an article about gospel music. Her research took her to Elvis, and her article turned into something larger. “She said ‘I fell in love with him,” Joan told me. “She said ‘I decided I'm going to have to write his biography.” The result was Elvis and Gladys. I couldn’t find a copy of it in time to read before my deadline.

3. August 2023, Mascoutah, Illinois

I’m making my final preparations to move to Switzerland. This mostly comes down to stockpiling things that will be hard to buy in Basel, like English-language books. I see there’s a sale on NYRB editions, and I load up my cart with titles I’d been meaning to read. I see The Dud Avocado is available, too, and I buy it. I figure the story of an American moving to Europe will be fun to read if I get homesick.

4. August 2024, Nancy, France

We’re taking a long weekend and I need something to read on the train. I have a bad habit of giving myself homework on trips like this, and I grab some books that I think I should read as research or inspiration for my own writing. One is Dwight Macdonald’s Masscult and Midcult, which I bought in the same NYRB sale where I picked up The Dud Avocado. It stays in the bottom of my bag and I spend the train trips watching movies.

5. September 2024, somewhere outside Schönenbuch, Switzerland

I’m on a jog and I’m desperate for a podcast to listen to that isn’t about the news. I open Overcast and look at the playlist I keep of shows I’ve been meaning to get around to. I see the nine installments of Not All Propaganda is Art, a miniseries inside Benjamin Walker’s Theory of Everything. I put it on and keep running.

In the first episode, Walker says that the series will be focused, in part, on Dwight Macdonald. Later, Walker covers a contemporary of Macdonald, the critic Kenneth Tynan, and Walker mentions Tynan’s wife…Elaine Dundy.

I didn’t know Dundy and Tynan were married, mainly because I didn’t read the afterword of The Dud Avocado, in which Dundy says Tynan was resentful of her success, despite encouraging her to write a novel (they later divorced). Walker plays some recordings of Dundy from the ‘50s and ‘60s. I’ve never heard her voice. I’ve never seen a photo of her, beyond the tiny one on the back of The Dud Avocado. Even Dundy’s Wikipedia picture is a painting.

6. Now, Here

I just finished rereading The Dud Avocado. It was funnier the second time around; I recognized the European references, and understood the lines written in French. In one scene, a character jokes about how Americans lose their mind when they encounter a public restroom with a hole in the floor instead of a toilet. I’ve encountered this plumbing exactly once, in Nancy, France, a month ago.

After I finished The Dud Avocado, I picked up an old copy of the Times Literary Supplement. I opened to a review in which the reviewer quoted Macdonald.

All of these coincidences have, at times, felt like a sign. What are the odds that I would come across the same small group of people in such short time?

Maybe the odds aren’t all that slim. Finding The Dud Avocado in the library was happenstance, but the rest seems like a natural progression. Lots of people have written stories about Elvis, and the Ganskys were in one of the largest Elvis fan clubs in the country. Macdonald’s book is very widely read, especially by the type of people who are prone to give a book a chance because it’s on the NYRB imprint. I suspect a lot of those readers might also be the type to subscribe to the TLS and be drawn to a podcast like Benjamin Walker’s Theory of Everything. I suspect I’m exactly that type of person.

I started Masscult and Midcult. It’s on my nightstand. When I woke up, I noticed a familiar name on the back cover. There’s a blurb from a review written by Larry McMurtry, the author I’ve read the most this year, taking in both The Last Picture Show and Lonesome Dove. His essay collection Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen is next on my reading list, right after Macdonald.

Odd.