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Fiction. Literature. HTML:A smart, funny classic about a young and beautiful American woman who moves to Paris determined to live life to the fullest. 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. �I had to tell someone how much I enjoyed The Dud Avocado. It made me laugh, scream, and guffaw (which, incidentally, is a great name for a law firm).� �Groucho Marx "[The Dud Avocado] is one of the best novels about growing up fast..." -The Guardian.… (more)
User reviews
The trouble is that she's in the wrong book. First of all, she needs a foil -- a Horatio to her Hamlet. There are a number of characters here who, even if they stand no chance of matching her, could at least have stood next to her, but the book picks them each up and discards them before they have the slightest of chances of gaining a foothold. Uncle Roger, Bax, Judy, Max ... Dundy needed to give a damn about one of them for more than a few pages at a time.
Secondly, the plot. The passport, the white slavery/prostitution ring, the fascination with bullfighters, the backstory behind "Running for my life," the whirlwind romance and marriage to Max. Maybe it's just me, but this is not the material for young Sally Jay. There was the germ of something really great here, but it just gets lost beneath an avalanche of material. Maybe it could have worked as a madcap, goofy bit of fluff, but it's taken just a little too seriously, dragging the reader along a path that doesn't really need to be trod.
Don't get me wrong. This is a delightful little read, and I'd happily pick up a sequel. It's just that there's something a little off about The Dud Avocado. I'm a little bothered by the fact that it didn't manage to be other than it was.
Although I must confess that I'm more than a little in love with the line, "I thought of sex and sin; of my body and all the men in the world who would never sleep with it."
What I liked:
- The voice; it's true to itself.
- The woman's perspective evident throughout the book, in the small things like how men look at her body, or in larger things, like relationships, and the conflict between desire and guilt. Or in somewhat random things, like how long it takes to prepare, cook, feed, and clean while entertaining, or the awkwardness of reacting at a 'nude show' as a woman in order to not appear prudish, jealous, or lesbian.
- The feeling of "oh to be young and in Paris"; on coming of age and the joy of travel. And, while abroad, the observations on 'ugly Americans' as well as European haughtiness and pretentiousness.
- Humor; the book is not laugh-out-loud funny but it has its moments, and is entertaining in a light kind of way.
- The expression of female sexual desire, which I imagine must have been a little shocking in the 50's. I get a kick out of reading it a half a century later. "You know how it is. Some people can hack and hack away at you and nothing happens at all and then someone else just touches you lightly on the arm and you come ... yes, I mean that's what happened, I mean I came." Or: "I thought of sex and sin; of my body and all the men in the world who would never sleep with me. I felt a vague melancholy sensation running through me, not at all unpleasant."
- The title. :-)
What I disliked:
- At times the book is muddled in the sea of characters being lampooned.
- In the worst of cases the voice is true and real, but banal (especially evident in the diary of part two, e.g. "I sit for hours afterwards staring idly at the snails clinging to knife-blade leaves growing in our garden. Sometimes I pick them off. They make a sucking noise and there's a small round wet spot where they sat.") Hey it ain't Doestoevsky folks.
- As the book goes on, the writing style becomes a bit tedous at times, e.g. "And Angela - well, Angela was just Angela, and I ain't never seen the likes. Whoever called the English reticent must have had his ears full of golf balls."
- A couple of the book's less-than-PC references. While one could say they reflect true voices and perspectives from the era, and while it's common to run across these things in fiction from the past, the casualness of how club members were "white enough" to do someone a good turn made me cringe a bit.
Favorite quotes:
"Read! I didn't want to read, it was just a substitute for living." (I got a laugh out of typing this one in for folks on LibraryThing :-))
"It's amazing how right you can sometimes be about a person you don't know; it's only the people you do know who confuse you."
"I mean, the question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don't we all anyway; might as well get paid for it."
"The vehemence of my moral indignation surprised me. Was I beginning to have standards and principles, and, oh dear, scruples? What were they, and what would I do with them, and how much were they going to get in my way?"
"Frequently, walking down the streets in Paris alone, I've suddenly come upon myself in a store window grinning foolishly away at the thought that no one in the world knew where I was at just that moment."
She tries to disentangle herself from her Euro lover and
This is an odd, funny book with engaging twists at the end and a weird, lovable main character. It's a little Movable Feast-y, Great Gatsby-ish, and Breakfast at Tiffany's-esque. I'm glad it's back in print, and glad to have read it, finally.
The novel was also very funny, but don't be fooled by the cover into thinking this is all light-hearted fun.
I wasn’t keen on this book. It’s written in a chatty, breathless tone,
It's not until the second half of the novel when SJ and three friends leave Paris and travel south where they encounter a film crew looking for extras that this novel actually develops a plot enough to keep the story moving forward.
I picked this up because it is a New York Review of Books edition and was recommended by NPR. So while I may not have completely enjoyed this novel, it is a good example of its time and of some of the modern literature that was being read at that time.
That’ll teach me to believe a book jacket or publisher’s blurb.
In fairness, I think the whole concept would be considered romantic and comedic in the late 1950s (originally published in 1958). But I don’t think it really translates well today, when readers have been entertained by Sex and the City and the reality TV (and internet) escapades of Paris Hilton and the Kardashians. It’s not bold enough, or shocking enough, or entertaining enough.
Sally is an ingenue, and somewhat naïve, but she is full of life and eager to experience all of it. Bankrolled by a wealthy uncle, she has two years of freedom in Paris to do whatever she wants and she rushes headlong into whatever strikes her fancy – mistress to an Italian diplomat, acting in a play, posing for photographers, playing an extra in a movie, drinking champagne and dancing the flamenco. She seems never to have the right outfit for the occasion, but that doesn’t stop her. She stumbled from one mess to another, but manages always to land on her feet. She falls in love with one wrong man after another, but escapes unscathed (and apparently not learning her lesson very quickly, either).
There are some scenes where Dundy really captures my attention – the way she describes a perfect cocktail, or the guests at a dinner party, for example – but I was bored with most of it. Sally has no real purpose and I just didn’t care what happened to her or her “friends.”
This description will also probably give one a pretty good indication of how much they'll enjoy the book. If you've always been enamoured with Capote's Holly Golightly, you'll be equally enamoured with Dundy's Sally Jay Gorce; but if, on the other hand, you're irritated by such flightly, incorrigible types, well you're not going to be any less irritated by Sally Jay.
I, however, am firmly in the former camp, and relished The Dud Avocado for that reason. Sally Jay is a wonderful character to get to know, and the first-person narration offers an intimacy and closeness you never get with Holly Golightly. This has its pluses and its minuses, of course; part of what makes Holly so appealing throughout Capote's work is her distance and the feeling that she's always out of reach, and the third-person perspective of Breakfast at Tiffany's works to emphasize that. With The Dud Avocado, that sense of intrigue and mystery is lost, and regrettably so. Yet how tantalizing to have that veil be lifted!
Unfortunately, the plot of The Dud Avocado is wretchedly overwrought and contrived, and I ended up wishing the second two parts of the book never got written. (This is also a problem for Breakfast at Tiffany's, of course, but nowhere near as severe.) Indeed, most of the charm of the novel can be gotten from the first chapter alone. Nonetheless, that first chapter is so good, and the character of Sally Jay so unforgettable, that I can't dismiss the book outright. Though far from a perfect novel, there's something very special about The Dud Avocado, and something worth checking out.
The book was funny in places. The last half of the book was a quick read as there was more going on. While the book was good it never really pulled me into it's world. I didn't really like Sally Jay. She's scatter brained, always losing things and making bad decisions, but I got the feeling that the reader is supposed to think that she's intelligent.
About the title: " His avocado arrived and he looked at it lovingly. "The Typical American Girl." he said addressing it. " A hard center with the tender meat all wrapped up in a shiny casing." He began eating it. "How I love them" he murmured greedily. "So green - so eternally green". Sally Jay declares herself a dud.
Yes, the protagonist is catty and vain. The gradual self-awareness is earnest in its portrayal. I found the book closer to
I don't think I've read another novel
Paris is a glitzy ordeal swallowed whole. From the giddy,
"I sat down and tried to read, but I couldn't. After ten pages I was in a state of cold fury. Read! I didn't want to read, it was just a substitute for living" (141).In the modern mid-century, a young American girl goes to live abroad, in Paris, France, to presumably live and have an Adventure. And
The heroine has a rich uncle benefactor, natch. And a sad elusive childhood, of course. She arrives in Paris and lands herself an Italian diplomat lover. She then falls into unrequited love with a fellow American she knows from home. There is another American, a painter, who provides quiet steadiness when love with the Italian goes sour. She is also the object of desire of a rugged and grounded Canadian. While all this sorts itself out, there are plenty of cafes and wild drinking, outlandish characters and frenemies. She even has a job, kind of, acting in a local theatre. It’s the romantic life we all wish we once lived when we had youth and beauty. The punchline is one last wild adventure that leads to an epiphany and concludes with safe and happy resolution (spoiler: marriage).
This story is not one I can relate to much: kind of old school, and reeks of Americans abroad in its heyday. That said, it’s a good yarn. It did have a slow start where I was becoming acquainted with the language and scene. And then I got into the rhythm and it swept me along. I felt very much like poor Judy, a sickly American unable or unknowledgeable how to live Sally Jay’s bold and carefree existence and must settle for the stories Sally Jay brings back to her in gossipy detail (this is also a great device well employed by Dundy). The last third whipped through pretty brilliantly and I was simply charmed. (And of course, at a personal level, I relished in the librarian-as-reoccuring-nightmare bit.)
"...the Ancient always began a table. It was his one dignity. He would come into the Select and sit down, and the table would start growing around him with friends and acquaintances. Even though he knew all the people there already, he never joined a table. When he arrived they moved over to him and that was that. So it was always his table" (82).
"Now here's the heavy iron. So I went back to New York to become a librarian. To actually *seek* out this thing I've been fleeing all my life. And (here it comes): a librarian is just not that easy to become" (236).