After Delores by Sarah Schulman

After Delores by Sarah Schulman

 

published 1988

 

 

I always knew that I would one day blog on this book – and if you’ve ever read it you’ll know why.

The iconic opening scene has the female narrator go to a gay club. There on p1 we have this:

That’s when I saw Priscilla. Some girl was dressed up as Priscilla Presley in a long black wig and miniskirt wedding dress that said “I’m a slut but I’m really a virgin”, just the way Elvis liked it. She was so hot in that dress I surprised myself, watching her sashay around the hall handing out autographed pictures of The King and swallowing Dexedrine.

[later]  But by the time I got back, she was gone. Only she’d left her little black purse sitting lonely there like me on a yellow bucket seat. Inside it was her address book and a gun.

It's more than 30 years since I first read After Delores, but it has lived on in my mind, and is to me a perfect piece of character drawing – you know what this girl is like, and you want to know what’s going to happen to her. To be fair, she is not the most important character in the book.

The narrator is racing round Manhattan like a pinball, bouncing off bars, the diner where she works, apartment buildings: she is devastated because her lover – Delores of the title – has left her for another woman, and gets involved with another group of women: Marianne, Charlotte and Beatriz. Someone gets killed. The no-name narrator is trying to find out what’s happening. This book does not resemble a conventional thriller (which is how it is described on the cover) or crime story, but she does keep learning things, in between having bruising or loving encounters with a variety of people. Here’s a couple of random quotes:

I mean, realizing that your lover had a 16 year old mistress who has just been murdered is not the necessarily the first conclusion one jumps to when there’s mysterious discord at home.

And -

Charlotte’s answering machine was sitting on the floor right next to Priscilla’s gun.. I threw a bunch of towels over the machine and put the gun in the refrigerator just in case.

 

It is difficult to describe the book: more than 35 years old but it still feels fresh and innovative. If it was published today it would seem very new and original.

Reading up about Sarah Schulman now – which was difficult back when I first read After Delores – is fascinating: despite loving this book I had not kept up with her subsequent work and activities. there’s a lot about her on the internet, including an article about this book and an interview with Schulman by my friend June Thomas in Slate (the magazine where we both worked). I picked the book up to re-read after reading and posting on June’s own book – blogpost and author interview here on the blog.

Priscilla Presley outfits and pictures were easy to find online.

Since I discovered them in the early days of the blog, I have always cherished a set of pictures by photographer James Jowers (held in the George Eastman House collection) – amazing black and white images of New York. The two women’s photos were taken in Tompkins Park in 1967 (so yes, early, but…). The heart – one of my all-time favourite photos – was taken in Waverley Place.