Article: Why avocados? My father was...

Why avocados?
My father was a commission merchant in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He handled apples, peaches, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, strawberries… Nothing as exotic as avocados. He did, however, rent warehouse space to a man from the Calavo (California Avocado Growers) Company) whom I always thought of as the Avocado man. When I was working on The Sixteen Pleasures I made a connection between the Avocado man and some delicious guacamole my wife and I were served at a local Mexican restaurant. I asked the waiter where the avocados came from, and he said his grandmother had brought them from Mission, Texas. That's what led Rudy to buy an avocado grove in Texas rather than in California. In the original version of The Sixteen Pleasures Rudy had three chapters of his own, including a chapter set in Texas. I eventually deleted these chapters because they impeded the forward momentum of the novel, but I felt I had some unfinished business with Rudy, and this unfinished business turned into Philosophy Made Simple.

Why an elephant?
Several years ago I heard a spot on NPR about elephants painting and thought immediately of a circus elephant named Norma Jean, who was struck and killed by lightning in Oquawka, an old Mississippi river town not far from my home in Galesburg, Illinois. Once a year or so we drive over to Oquawka to have a look at the river and to stop at Norma Jean's grave, which is in a little park near the center of town (right where she died). I put this elephant information together with the fact that Rudy's middle daughter was already (in The Sixteen Pleasures) engaged to an Indian, and decided to include Norma Jean in Philosophy Made Simple, which was just a rough sketch at the time.

Favorite stories:
The Iliad, The Odyssey, Anna Karenina, Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift, Gail Godwin's Finishing School and Father Melancholy's Daughter, Sue Miller's Family Pictures, Jane Smiley's Horse Heaven.

Copyright © 2006 Robert Hellenga