Next meeting: Tuesday, October 13 at 6:30pm
Place:
Santa Rita Restaurant
From the jacket:
The Dud Avocado follows the romantic and comedic adventures of a young American who heads overseas to conquer Paris in the late 1950s. 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. Charming, sexy, and hilarious, The Dud Avocado gained instant cult status when it was first published and it remains a timeless portrait of a woman hell-bent on living.
About the author:
Elaine Dundy (1921–2008) grew up in New York City and Long Island. After graduating from Sweet Briar College in 1943 she worked as an actress in Paris and, later, London, where she met her future husband, the theater critic Kenneth Tynan. Dundy wrote three novels, The Dud Avocado (1958), The Old Man and Me (1964), and The Injured Party (1974); a play, My Place (produced in 1962); biographies of Elvis Presley and the actor Peter Finch; a study of Ferriday, Louisiana; and a memoir, Life Itself!
About the author's style:
In The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy employs a first-person, reflective narrator who self-consciously and self-indulgently records and evaluates her experiences in Paris . The narrator relates her stories in a candid, energetic, witty style, spiced with parenthetical revelations, word association games, and sensory impressions. Her language is often the jargon of the Beat-hipster; audacious, flippant, nervous, saucy. Her tone is the good-humored self-mockery of the cocktail party confession, the stage whisper, the open diary. The narrator is a deliberate storyteller, replaying moments from her past, exposing her naivety and limitations, and benefiting from hindsight.
Sally Jay in The Dud Avocado is the contemporary American innocent abroad, superficially hip to the decadent Left Bank and "running for her life." Caught in the ambiguity between naivety and sophistication, she is in pursuit of "freedom" and the ability "to be so sharp that I'll always be able to guess right … on the wing." She expends her time and innocence in a disorganized, impulsive debauch with the avant-garde of Paris.
The book for November's meeting has already been set. Homer and Langley by E. L. Doctorow. This is a newly published book and the Austin Library has several hardback copies on order. Click here to put a hold on one of those copies through the online library services (library card # and PIN/Password necessary).
