The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy

[Music] So much to go and skip. It's a furniture, a starter stuff, loads of stuff. Have you had a kind of Marie condo moment? I brought that at her home and had it thrown at me by Rachel. Do you want to raise them? Do you think everyone is moving house? How long have you lived in that place? Eight years. And the other thing is that garage is two other people who said, "Oh, we've got loads of space. Can we put our stuff in your garage?" And of course you say, "Yeah, no problem. No, I've got loads of space." One of them has moved left the village and they said, "Well, can you not just sort of sort of sort of out?" Well, the answer is, "Yes, but it's probably going to cost me money to do that." With the books arriving, I see a tweet photograph of two bags that arrive every day. I know. Just one with the joys. I live in a badly converted flat and just, you know, the creaking every now and again. Because I sort of read books and sometimes you get like three copies of one book. You get an early proof, you get the proof and then you get the finished copy. There must be a more sensible way of doing it. I suppose it would be netgalley and eat readers, but you know, I'm not of an age now, which is can't read on screen. It's one of the laws of this that I inevitably, whenever I do a clear out of things that I've been very kindly sent, as soon as I get rid of a book, the next day it will appear on a short list or a friend of mine will recommend it to me. Do you sell or donate? I do, actually, I'm not just saying that. You're looking at me as if to say, what do you have to say that? Because this is being recorded. What I found when I just cannot go into Oxfam books with another thing, I put a big box out on the guards and more. It's a must-were hill, big readers, you know, have a book. How brilliant. You see the thing is that's what we're all going to have to do because charity shops are beginning to turn away books, aren't they? Totally, yeah, it can't be booked. There's a little library box around the corner for me, on a street. Yeah. But people just give and take books like this quite sweet. Well, in fact, we have, as many stations now do, a place where you can leave your books and people can pick them up. And by a staggering coincidence, when I was coming in this morning, somebody had left a. That is. and I'll hang win books, vintage coffee of our book, the Dada Vicardo by Lane Dunley, for this episode. This is pretty almost impossible for that to happen. And yet, indeed. I know, isn't it incredible? I had never heard of the book we're going to discuss. And now, since you mentioned it to me, I can't move for people mentioning it. It's always very odd that. I feel a bit ashamed that I hadn't heard of it. It's very beloved of women of a certain age. I can see why. But also fascinatingly was a best. It's not like it was an obscure book in its era. It was a huge best seller in its era. But I'm with you. I've heard of it. I haven't read it. It's such a great time. Shall we start? It's weird though, isn't it? It was a fashion for Vicardo. As you think it would have come back. I think we might have to talk. avicardo, yeah. For the millennial. Are we going to toast the Dada Vicardo? Let's have some. Hello and welcome to Backlist It. The podcast that gives new life to old books. Today you find us jiving in a dive bar of the boulevard Montpannas. Deep in the Perusian night, down in large Martinez with lost Americans, still hoping to find a cafe that's open for a bowl of late-night onion soup. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, the platform where readers crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of the Year of Reading Dangerously. And joining us today is Sarah Manning. Hello, Sarah. Hello. Sarah Manning is an author and journalist who has written a constellation of Adolfo. And Y.A. novels. Young Adolfo. And as contributed to the Guardian L. Stylist Harper's Bazaar, and is currently the literary editor of Red Magazine, her latest Adolf novel, The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp, was published last week by Harper Collins. And. And in high in the charts, I know just in the Kindle charts. Yes, I've got that little orange bare salad tag. I'm refreshing my outfit in the page every half hour. And couldn't really be. I was thinking there aren't many books that could be much more bad listed than what you've done with The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp. Could you just tell us what it is? Well, the clues in the name, really, in that it's a modern retelling of vanity fair, which is one of those books that everybody says they've read, but they haven't read it. Though I have actually read it now three times. Yeah, I see on Twitter, was somebody was accusing you of not having read the book? I think it was Lisa Evans just saying how many times have you read it? She was worried that I was going to say, "Yeah, it's my favourite book, like 20 billion times." It was a bit of opportunistic publishing. I have to say that they announced that they were doing a television adaptation last year, and a publisher approached me and said, "Would you like to do it every red vanity fair?" "Yeah, it's my favourite book." As I first read it at university, it wasn't even a set text, but I was in love with this very well-readed boy. So I just positioned myself in the coffee vanity fair when he was likely to pass. Very Elaine Don Deer, if I'm based on this. Very Elaine Don Deer. That in the CCS common room. Sorry, and I were at the same university approximately the same time. Yes. Anyway, we keep interrupting you. So it's a modern retelling of vanity fair, and it's very modern. It starts when Becky, Sharp and Amelia, said, "Leave the Big Brother House." There's Instagram influencers. The crawler's an acting dynasty. The tool the crawler is. She's not Maggie Smith, because that would be Leibor. She's not that ill. And then you can't give me a character called George Osborne and not expect me to make him a conservative MP, although we then had to change his name to the more Thackerian, George Wiley, so I didn't get sued. Not saying, is that a medium-mogal? It's very much a faithful retelling of vanity fair, in that if you put my copy over the original, kind of all the beats are hit, but it's very much a sort of satire of modern manners and celebrity. And in terms of writing it, presumably because, as you say, the story beats are all there. So you're not having to reinvent the wheel. Was it fun to try and think your way through what you were going to do? Or was it scarier than that? I had seven weeks to write it. That was quite scary. Oh my god. So I had two weeks of just sheer sort of panic, and like, what can I do? And I'm just writing commercial women's fiction, and I can't rewrite a classic. And actually, I swim a lot, and I sort of do all my best work in the pool. So I'm going to have a swim, and I actually sort of said to the receptionist at the gym, "Oh, I'm just in terrible trouble. I'm going to have a swim, and if I don't have my epiphany, I'm just going to have to call my parents, and say, "I can't do it." And as I was sort of doing my laps, I just sort of thought about Thackerian, kind of when you read vanity fair, and you just tell that this is a man who is just enjoying himself immensely. And kind of once I thought, "What would Thackerian do?" I just really just enjoyed myself so much, and just kind of cackled all the way through writing it. My favourite bit actually is one of the many crawlies. So they're all actors now. It's pit-yonger. He's the one crawly that isn't a successful actor, but has found himself in an L.O. L.O. style sitcom, which of course I had to call Good Morning. It's just things like that. Towards the end of the book, it was when Times Up and Me Too were happening, and I took the opportunity to kind of make Amelia saidly woke. So it was just a choice, right, actually. Such fun. Got the sounds great. Is anyone read it who hasn't read vanity fair? Lots. I'm kind of like, come from a commercial women's fiction background. So they have these some reviews saying, "It's a pitch-perfect retelling of vanity fair, but it doesn't have the heart of like your other books." There is a whole thing in commercial women's fiction. You've got to make the hero in likeable. Relatable. Famously, it's the novel without a hero, as Thackerie said. So there was a lot with my editor saying, "Can you warm her up a bit?" "Do something really nice out of the goodness of her heart." No. No. Although my Becky hasn't, is it responsible for anybody's death? You know, I've spoken earlier. Well, we're here to talk with Sarah about the Dada Vicardo by Elaine Dundee, first published in the UK by Delance in 1958, and an immediate bestseller. But before we flannere our way down the Shonser, we're delighted to welcome back our sponsor, Spoke, the Sharp Online Men's Wear Company. Spoke designed men's trousers, and now also shorts and polo shirts with a difference. They fit you and not the other way around, with their online fit finder. and to a few simple details in an under a minute, you'll have a perfect fit. You can choose from almost 200 size combinations. Spoke, obsess over every detail, the fabric, the lining, the fastness. Ordering from Spoke is like going to your own tailor around a hassle or expense. You get sharp, personalized design delivered in just two working days. Why am I telling you this? Because there's a back listed listener, if you go to www.spoke-london.com and place an order, you'll get 20 pounds off your first order. Just use the code "back listed 20" terms and conditions inevitably apply. But first, from stylish hose to stylish prose, Andy, what have you been reading this week? (laughing) - You're usually flair here. - So I'm gonna talk for three minutes on the subject of the novel "Daniel DeRonda" by George Roberts. - All 880 pages of it. So I started reading Daniel DeRonda five years ago. And I got to about page 360, 880 pages long in my Penguin Classic Edition and I gave up. Or rather, I didn't give up 'cause I never gave up, but I put it to one side because it was proving quite chewy. And I thought, "Well, I'll come back to that." And then what happened is what always happens with you do that. Of course, then I didn't go back to it. And instead, I sort of had a vaguely guilty feeling about it for five years. And then I decided, because we had a few weeks off from recording "Back listed and reading books about listed" that I go back, start again, and make sure I finished it this time. So "Daniel DeRonda" is, "Eleot's final novel." And it's the novel that she wrote after "Middle March." And it felt quite strange reading it in the summer of 2018. Ezra Pound's famous phrase that literature is news that stays news. If you had to describe what Daniel DeRonda is about, it's a novel about anti-Semitism, men's power over women and social inequality that was written 150 years ago, not a bad trick to pull off good line. But I've also been reading this year in search of lost time by Proust. And you could also say that that's a very long novel about anti-Semitism, men's power over women, women's power over men, and social inequality. And I made me think, actually, that Ezra Pound thing has repounded to himself a new thing, a two-packed anti-Semitism. Nonetheless, news that stays news, absolutely. Has anyone around this table read Daniel DeRonda? I have. When did you read it? I read it in that ridiculous period when you read a lot of 19th Century fiction when I was at university. So I'm confident in that practice in none of it. And I'm confident that. I mean, had I been liking it? Had I read it when I was at university, I would not have. I'm not saying I understood all of it now, but I'm not saying that I. I think I would have understood much of it then. It does a very strange thing, very forward thinking for the era, certainly, of being. It appears to be a novel about a young woman called Gwendolyn Harlow. And then at the halfway point, it turns into a novel about the Jewish community in Britain and the early philosophical points about the founding of the State of Israel. And she manages to bring those two seemingly. quite separate subjects together in an ending, which is, again, sort of fascinatingly. neither happy nor unhappy. It felt incredibly modern while simultaneously being written in that beautiful, Elliot prose. I found it quite challenging. I don't mind challenging books, in fact, I rather like them. But it's certainly a book that I feel. I feel that I have improved as a reader, even in the five years since I first started trying to read it. And I found it very, very rewarding. Not just rewarding to finish it, but rewarding to stop and think about it and have the time to contemplate it. I don't think there's much point. I'm not going to read anything out from it. It's an interesting one, though. You know, took thinking about our discussions about what you actually remember from books and the Pierre Bayard episode we did recently. But if I go back to that book, you know, the idea that we incorporate the story into our own autobiography, I can't remember anything. I think there's a. Remember the opening where it starts the story in media rays, which is that start the story in the middle of the action. Now remember that being quite a strong way to start. She's in a casino. And then she's run away and she's in a casino. And then she's spotted by Daniel D'Arundre on the point of gambling away a necklace. Yes, that's that. And she's pawned it and he buys it back from the pawn shop. The first Jewish reference in the novel and leaves it for her. And she thereafter, for the whole of the novel, feels under a moral debt to him. So the part of the story of the novel is how is that moral debt paid out? Which in and of itself is highly eye-faluting and sophisticated theme to introduce into your novel quite early on. Certainly it doesn't have. It has love stories within it, but it does not have the middle march sense of predestined lovers. In fact, if anything, you could read the book as a reaction to middle march as trying to push the novel in directions that it hadn't gone. It did make me think the devaluing of the word genius in the book world. But when you're talking about Elliot, you're dealing with someone who is palpable genius. So I always say this in regard to Elliot. You know, if you read middle march or you read Elliot, you don't get on with it. You're not a genius and cheap. You've got that marvelous sentence that is the epigraph to normal people. Well, I hadn't clocked that, but yes, it's the. The epigraph to suddenly release normal people is taken from Daniel D'Arundel by George Elliot and I think actually at whatever level it must. Because I loved normal people so much. Yeah, I probably pushed me back. Yeah, pushed me back in that direction. I wanted to ask people whether they. So it took me five years on and off to finish. What is the book that it has taken you the longest to finish? I'm only on this earth for a short time, so I just feel like I've got a very low tolerance for books and not enjoying. So 50 pages and I'm cutting you off. Having said that every now and again, I think I'm going to do Anna Karenina. I'm going to do it this time. And then just to drop the Russian names, do for me every time I just can't keep track. I love Anna Karenina. I just can't. I look at you with my most puppy-ish eyes and say, "Do it, do it, do it." I might do something like, "Daily lit, where you sign up, that's how I did. What's the bouse app I did?" Literally they would just email you a chunk every morning and while I'm sort of using my cheerios, I would do a bit of bouse. Really? It's a really good idea. To kind of get through a classic that you kind of want to read, but you know. Do you follow the to the lighthouse account on Twitter? No. Somebody is currently tweeting all of to the lighthouse, like raised by phrase. So you can read that in a highly dissociative way. That can be soaked up quite easily. I haven't got anything quite like the Daniel DeRonda book that I'm sure. Actually, I don't think I've ever finished a mutual friend and I've meant to because I wasn't enjoying it. I often do that. I've got a lot of books that I know of. And there are some I've intentionally stopped reading. I stopped reading about 20 years ago. What am I doing here by Bruce Chapman? Rather touchingly at that time, I thought, well, I don't want to have nothing new to read by Bruce Chapman. And I stopped myself reading Muriel Sparks last year because I, for the same reason, I didn't. Because you thought you were binging on them. I thought I'd just have to, I'd read too many too quickly and then there wouldn't be any new ones to read. But actually, that's sort of stupid thing. And I'm going to ask you, because regular listeners might want to know how you get. How are you going on now? We're in September with. Oh, I'm on track. I'm on track. It's weird. You know, you have that early morning or middle of the night, sort of, terrors dread. And you feel, I just can't deal with anything. And I can't bear to look at Instagram. It's making me feel sick. I can't bear any of the people who are. I don't know what you mean, John. So, I just find Pol is. Or pal, where we'll help. Pol is the perfect thing. It's the perfect thing. Back in Nick's head, dealing with stuff, and it's the war. It's very reassuring and witty without being. anointingly mugging for laughs. It's just. Well, we'll talk about it. We're going to do a Christmas special. We are. In addition to that, though, John, what have you been reading this week? I've been reading a book which I really, really love. As you know, still reeling from the experience of reading normal people, which I thought was a. I think I can say, I thought it was a masterpiece. So, I wasn't really thinking. I'm reading another book by an Irish woman called "Miltment" by Anna Burns. And it's fatter than normal people. And it has come with a lot of it's her third novel. And she's think, I think Anna Burns's second book. or no bones her first book was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. But I really love this. 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Mae mae aeon a fe et Capt Hyneddfaol i'rÊ appelle wedi gwci, a rhyd a diegondullor[ kosimog 그래wn si un Barian] Mae a Pearson Ols y rubber a hefn eto榾 y rhaffoel i hyn adu a darganem'n beri wedi beth yn y Rh length >> Mae'r rhaffoel i hyn o'r rhaffoel i hyn o'r rhaffoel o hyn o'r rhaffoel i hyn o'r rhaffoel i hyn o'r rhaffoel o hyn o'r rhaffoel i hyn o'r rhaffoel o hyn o'r rhaffoel i hyn o'r rhaffoel i hyn o'r rhaffoel i hyn o'r rhaffoel i hyn o'r rhaffoel i hyn o'r rhaffoel o hyn o'r rhaffoel i hyn o'r rhaffoel i hyn o'r rhaffoel Ew'] Pues rhwis atchilyn dipyddust i bod ac ganyg iawn synsor Cronal Mae'n cyf honn er amdaf y byddianosol Ieithad Rhytall Mae'n cyf yn diall yn gallitr i'r Maintenes o'rBYn layithio i bo tepus i'r 'Bab postured ''U yna a new興ol, chy Isla'' am ôl a Stream Mae'u rhai cwchrigru 이것 iawn " vendor i'r 'dewetta si brai' " Mae'u 90w i troau'r 'dewetta' 'dewetta' Whey o'riferio'r es Onwood Grعمwch genna o ddeil yw ilysus i symud i s perimeter ramdrums. O'r tungllifortum na cael siodu i'r Ifach i gyda; Mae dynoc trelog treatment o bardzatgau darig sy'n barpleoregi, local bellen yn adeg hynothau pan o ard ierscheg forming, sy'n barpleoregi aid Cyfelinesyn ac ofydder toort iín gyfer. Wchyd yn bwysdarum hwnnots yn yuly o'r lapon acgadithu yn cael Ysbyn cy Omnau'r ffumbir eraith considoliad yr Ysbyn. Ond gweld trwy sicrhau mynd yn cymdewl a dosidd uncyllti gallud llysd牛 osисor. Tói hydrygu hynny hyngynny bod, rydym yn fplegu yn llestyn fascolio'rnosio gyfan i gyllind cyfreibigod焁hu aолcoreion o littwdd fan o brag yn yr coldo'r hynny. Mae'n ffordd o'r hynny hynny, mae'n ffordd o'r hynny, mae'n ffordd o'r hynny. Mae'n ffordd o'r hynny. that Gullance when she hated the title, he said it sounded like a cookbook. [laughs] I love the scene. He said it needed a subtitle, "Lovey Amaroas of Sally J. and Paris." It's such a publisher thing to do. It's basically having got confidence in this. We have to tell people that it's like the argument's over a chick, let's cover. We need to make them know. -No, the compromise they reached was. -I've got to say it really, isn't it? -So it's on the front cover that he's subtitled. It's not inside the book. Inside the book, it says, "The subtitle on the cover is the decision of us to publish and not the order." [laughs] The old man and me is the novel that she published six years after the "Dada Vicardo." I hadn't read either of these books before and I have to say, I really like the "Dada Vicardo." It's a very unusual moment on that list. We almost never do this. I really like the "Dada Vicardo." I preferred the old man and me and I'm happy to say that there are personal reasons for that. One of which is it's set in London in the early 1960s. What I found so fascinating about it was I'm used to reading London novels of that era by British people, usually men. So to read a swinging London, quote unquote, novel by a woman, who not only that doesn't really like swinging London as an incredibly rude about most of the things that's happening and Britain at that time, I found incredibly funny. It's also a very black comedy. All the stuff that I think is held back in the "Dada Vicardo" is pushed up to the surface. It's got a plot. No, it's got a plot as well. It's got a proper three-at structure to it. I disagree. I think we're going to have a heated debate now. Good. I like the old man and me and it does have a plot in that there's this American girl called Honey Flod, who's come over to London to meet this guy called Seudy McKee, who basically was married to her stepmother and when her stepmother died, he inherited her fortune, which was actually Honey Flod's fortune. And she's going to basically kill him and get her money. And she's not fussy how she does it. She thinks she might bed him to death, then she thinks she might poison him. So I kind of, that is a plot. There's lots of things going on there. And I did sort of like the Becky Sharp aspect. She said when she was writing it, she wanted to create the fashion for the angry young man in literature, British literature at that time, Jimmy Porter. What you've got here is an anti-hero who is constantly testing your patience. I really like that. I see the "Dada Vicardo" as kind of the debut album. Well, you just think we might never get a chance, so you just know everything that's it. It's just, it just sings. There's just a sort of beauty to it. You know, Sally J. Gors is just one of those characters that you don't meet very often. And I think it's why so many sort of people love it. Whereas with the old man and me, I mean, I love 60- Difficult second album. Exactly. I love 60-swinging London as much as the next girl. But I did find. Paris in the 50s. I just found it, Boole and it. I just found that it's where people were saying clever things to each other at parties. Sarah, I'm just saying, Doris Lessing said it's as full of Roy Charms, the "Dada Vicardo". But I don't like Doris Lessing. Gov'ed out, sir. It's a witty black comedy of manners. I sort of hips to Daisy Miller. Well, John Davenport and the Observer said it's a kind of a car that is rich in invigorating and deceptively simple to the taste. One force for Sally Dave, a great guy. And Gratio Marx said about that. "I'm coming out, Dover, Dada Vicardo. Lossy because I haven't read the old man and me. I'm just instinctively coming out. I had to tell someone and it might as well be you since you're the author. How much I enjoyed the Dada Vicardo. It made me laugh, scream and gov'ore, which incidentally is a great name for a law firm." He was a heavy way. He said, "You found your voice because you. " He said, "You know, it took me a long time because I never listened to anybody. Whereas the diary section has some of the funniest writing I think I've read for a long time. May the 11th Saturday, still raining. Larry and Missy just don't appear anymore except occasionally for meals. Here is the story of Bax's life. He was born in Canada. He was raised in Canada. He went to Rontor University and has never been out of Canada before. He doesn't know what he wants to do, but would like it to be something artistic." She's just so great at writing people. Just that real knack within a couple of lines. She can just sketch out somebody and you know exactly who they are. It's a great bit when she has this her first real relationship with a painter called Jim who thinks she's terribly sophisticated. And she says, "The trouble was of course and she's kind of bored by him and ends up leaving him." But she says, "The trouble was of course that what Jim really ideally needed at that point was some nice simple outdoor Bohemian girl, brown head with rain in it." As I said, "I don't know what he saw in me, but then I don't know what on earth I saw in him either for that matter. It seems incredible that I who had spent all this time in Paris had drift, so to speak, in an uncharted ocean of raging passions should be knocked over by so small a wave." And yet he was, I suppose, my first real relationship. The disagreement we always had, quarrel would be too strong a word, was about my refusing to go and live with him, move in with him under his roof. There it was seem to me something so sturdy, sweated and durned all skirted about living with a man you're not married to. I mean it was too intensely domestic the one thing. The next thing you knew you were darning socks and cooking and to be quite honest there were some phone calls I wouldn't have wanted to take with him in the room and some that frankly I couldn't. It's just great. I just think of the Dodd-Avacado, it is just that tragedy, comedy, it's light and shade, and I just want to always love a novel and cheer for novel, but it's just somebody trying to figure out who the hell they are. I mean it reminded me a bit of kind of catcher in the ride, just that whole sort of thing about how you're doing. I can see that. And everybody's kind of obsessed with people being more fencing. And she used the precursor, I know it gets trotted out in the reviews I've read, but she is the precursor to Carrie Bradshaw and possibly even Bridget Jones in terms of that kind of, I think she's much more joyous than either of those two characters. She's younger as well. It does remind me so much of my early 20s, just being that girl that, thank god you sort of grow out of, when you lock yourself out of your house, regularly, you know. There's just. Yeah, I mean she's hopeless, like a genery, it's heroin, in that sense of being undone by alcohol and forming kind of liaisons that she's not really getting much out of. And just making really bad decisions, like I like that. Let's hear a clip now of Elaine Dundee talking about what it was like to be in Paris and London in the 50s and 60s. How did I get to England? When to Paris? When to Paris is an actress, I thought I can get work there because it was American's end doing off the films, you know, the supposed tour. The post-war was an absolute. The 50s was an absolutely wonderful, wonderful time. We'd won the war, we were alive, and there was an explosion of culture. Okay, went to Paris. Then I thought, yeah, it's hard, I speak French well, but you know, but I can't get away with it. An England that's based, you know, speak English. And so I better see what I can do over there. I went over there. I was in the poetry reading on the BBC, all of this led to my meeting, Ken with Kenneth Tynon. Well, he opened the door for me and I walked through. It should be in London, you know, they had particularly one of the walkers. They stood alone for a while, if you remember. And it was an explosion of culture. And the point was everyone wanted to meet him. I mean, Ava Gardner would call and say, I'm here because I'm doing Magambo, but we've got a break and I've come to England. Can I come over? You know, I mean, that just kept happening. Yeah, if you like a name to be dropped from a great height then the life of yourself is the book for you. I'd like to say something else about the Old Man and Me, and I was sort of psyched to say to listen, I think the book, the two books are worth reading together, because in a sense, the Old Man and Me is like the evil twin of the Dada Ava Cardo. It's like the Dada Ava Cardo from the darkest timeline. Something bad has happened to what we could call the Elaine Dundee heroine, as we were called the Jean-Rise heroine, in the five or six years between these two years. And we kind of know now what it was. I'd just like to read a little bit. This is from the Old Man and Me. This is quite near the end. And I thought this was just a tremendous piece of writing. She and her lover, CD, aka Cyril Connolly. All right, well here we go. They're in pretty bad shape. We were in pretty bad shape by them, both CD and I. I was smoking the roof off my mouth. I'd lost 15 pounds and any interest in food, I ate about every other day. On the other hand, I was drinking a great deal. Drink had become important to me. It kept me going for long stretches at a time, although in the end, passing out around every three nights as I did, it tired me dreadfully, so that I was sleeping well into most afternoons. Actually, I kept myself going on a blend of nicotine, caffeine, alcohol, barbiturates, stimulants, and a modest use of narcotics. Only four or five puffs per evening on the communal mario-anastic, never more than one spoonful of hashies jam at a time. After a while, I was able to balance one stimulant or sedative against another, rather like Alice nibbling on the two sides of the mushroom that made her grow or shrink. With such deafness that by a dash of this a few grains of that and a puff of the other I could play the most indescribably delicate heirs on my psyche. Heard melodies sweet but those unheard. I cry now at their memory blurred though they be. Sometimes I would arrange my pills neatly on my bureau top. Dexadrin Dexamil Drinamil Benzadrin Librium Secondal Veginin etc. Anything I could get my hands on in neat rows, spansules to the front in their pretty two-tone capsule jackets, deep green and white or plum and bright blue, the tiny pill grains of contrast in colours sparkling through the transparent celluloid. Then the shorties, those heart-shaped happy pills of soft musty-move pale blue or apple green with that faint incision down their middles, a scattering of the stark white bennies and finally the vitamin pills, vitamin C forte just for the hell of it tailored in chic yellow and brown costumes and looking at them I would feel within them or rather within me the possibilities of a whole symphony, first movement, gulp, dexadrin, allegro, second movement, slurp, gin and tonic and dante, spansule, pff, minuet, third movement, benzadrin, skirtso, rondo and collapse are that skirtsoid rag or how about going along with those program notes of Beethoven's sixth, awakening of serene impressions on arriving in the country, a soups on a hashish jam, seen by the brook, a touch of drinamil, a merry gathering of peasant folk, a couple of scotches, thunderstorm, a couple of hundred more, glad and thankful feelings after the storm, a mill town and a second owl, I don't know, something like that. And that paragraph, is first of all that is a real tour to force that paragraph but also capping it with the I don't know something like that. You see for me that's the writer of the dud avicado but she's turned it all up a notch. But that I think for me though the old man and me is just a novel without hope, that what you know we know what she likes. I like it. But just the dud avicados just some de on the cast and you just root for her. I mean ironically from the woman that wrote sort of anti-fair, re-wrote anti-fair, I was sort of really adamant that I wasn't going to sort of warm becky sharp up. I just I don't root for honeyflard in the way that Sally J. Gors is just you know my girl. Yeah, yeah. And you just you just want her to be all right whereas with honeyflard I don't want to sort of give away the ending but even when she gets what she thinks she wants it's just despair. I feel like with the old man. What the ending of the old man and me? Yeah. It's bleak. I feel like that is just we're going forward to it. She means at the end of the end of the year. Yeah, this is our these are our different temperaments. That is I that's I think one of the reasons I prefer it because it's blacker things of curdled but then I'm that sounds like you have to choose one or the other. I don't know you do have to choose one or the other. I'm I'm fascinated that the old man and me was not a commercial success. But I found even though we've just sort of said that the plot in the other card. It's kind of mostly incidental. I found the old man and me quite woolly read actually. I just sort of found it went off on tangents. Me, even in the dark avocados, she is a writer who is a very fond of just people saying clever things to each other. Yeah, yeah. Like several pages and just sort of you know and again it's just a lot of men talking at her which I don't have a lot of time for really. But I just sort of love that sense of you know his a a girl sort of finding herself and you just sort of feel that she will find herself and that herself that she finds will be fabulous. Where do you think she is now? Sally J if she's still here where is she what did she do? She's just she's got several which every husband was rich and there's no way Max. She's not a boo you know she's a bit sort of de-credible she looks fantastic and poochy caftan. She's saying to Jorge the poor boy I'll teach you to tango if you can make me laugh again. There's so many gorgeous details in it when she goes to see her friend Judy and she's always pacing around in the room. But there's that brilliant bit where she says that she's pacing around and then she's going they're corrupt. Corrupt. I kept saying to myself over and over again as I paced around the room. It was the first time I'd ever used that word about people I actually knew and again the idea that I could take a moral stand or rather that I couldn't avoid taking one filled me with the same confusion it had that morning. I mean she's got more depth and a lorally lee or you know yeah I mean one of my sort of favourite bits um so Andy sort of read out the start of it and it's going back to that scene about cooking so she's with this artist Jim Bright who's just really pulling her down and um and they mix with other sort of artists and their girlfriends so she's just somebody that shouldn't be sort of proud so he says we must have the awards to dinner here next week said Jim to me one afternoon after we'd spent a weekend in their wind swept heart just off the coast of Brittany. Why can't we take them out? It's not the same. What about the cooking? What do you mean what about the cooking? I mean I can't cook. You can't cook. Why good lord Sally Jay. I thought every girl knew how to cook. He looked at me his little flora doora girl and gave me a very rye sort of some women that are made for only one thing smile then he shook his head hopelessly. Marion DeWald cooks he said grimly she does all the cooking and looks after two kids as well. I tried to remember one minute that whole weekend when Marion and I went either feeding people or clearing up from doing it or preparing to do it again and presumably she never stopped doing it but I couldn't quite see why just because she did I should. I mean here I was practically fresh out of the egg. Everything was so new to me and here was everybody telling me to stop drifting and start living in this world telling me to start cooking and sewing and cleaning and I don't know what and that to me is just the crux of Sally Jay course and the dad of a cardo that she's just this free restless chaotic spirit and just all the men that she meets just kind of want to put the law on the street and narrow. She's got the she's you know what the thing about the dad of a cardo is it's really got that life force hasn't it it's got in the same way you're the comparison with catcher in the rise a good one because it's got that same that add less and need to be right you know that that kind of forcing your way on because you have the energy and the will to express yourself. Well it's interesting this book keeps getting reprinted and reprinted it's a classic isn't it. I mean I like to me sort of the old man and me I had it on myself for ages and this was the thing that made me yeah it will never be a reread because yeah yeah the dad of a cardo I just keep coming back to it. All I want to say my final word on the old man and me is I can see that if you read and loved the dad of a cardo you might not read of this but if on the other hand you're absolutely love it's absolute beginners or the low life or the capital by Maureen Duffy yeah you should read the old man and me because it's a book about London from a perspective that very rarely gets written about. I think that we've got to unfortunately say Au revoir to Sally J. Gorsfield I do feel that you it's a friend for life thing isn't it you find characters like that and you think I will go I will go back to this book I can't imagine anything more fun to read in in Paris so anyway. It's a anywhere anyway. Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's what Britain's going to be. Yeah oh six months from now. Anyway that's all we have time for. Huge thanks to Sarah to our producer Nikki Birch to unbound and to our legging Hansing sponsor spoke. You can download all 74 backlisteds plus follow up all the links clips and suggestions further reading on our website backlisted.fm and of course you can still contact us on Twitter, Facebook and boundless. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we all have if so please consider leaving a review with stars if you feel so moved on iTunes or whichever platform from which you obtain your oral pleasure. Well thank you all folks we'll be back in a fortnight until then it's so mulligan. You can choose to listen to backlisted with or without adverts. If you prefer to listen to it without adverts you can join us on our Patreon. patreon.com/backlisted where you also get bonus content of two episodes of lot listed the podcast where we talk about the books and films and music that we've been listening to over the last couple of weeks.