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Around the World With Auntie Mame

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Even we Mame maniacs who've howled our way through "Auntie Mame" and its sequel haven't been able to read the entire "Around the World with Auntie Mame"--until now. The new paperback edition includes, "Auntie Mame in Mother Russia," a chapter set in the former Soviet Union, suppressed when the book was first published in 1958.

Of course, reading this sidesplitting chapter with a pair of today's eyes, it's hard to see just how subversive Patrick Dennis was considered to be... But no matter, this chapter sparkles like a fine gem retrieved from a dusty safe-deposit box.

Even if you already own "Around the World," it's worth buying this new paperback edition for this chapter alone. Eric Myers, author of Patrick Dennis' biography "Uncle Mame," and Dr. Michael Tanner, Dennis' droll son and guardian of his literary estate, deserve much credit for bringing Patrick Dennis to the attention of new and old generations of readers.

What a joyous read! If you haven't read "Auntie Mame" (or have not seen the play, musical, or films) start with that. This will introduce you to the "madcap" Mame and her zanny cohorts. "Around the World" is not so much a sequel, but a series of short stories -- each a chapter in length. Travel with Mame from one exotic place to the next as she gets herself into "trouble" every country she visits. Too bad Jerry Herman and Lawrence & Lee never made this into a musical for the older, but still-so-lovely, Angela Lansbury.

Like most Patrick Dennis books, this book made me laugh out loud in every chapter. What a shame most of his books are out of print! I've read them all, and loved most of them, my only regret is that I don't own them all. This one is a very satisfying sequel to Auntie Mame, and I only wish the series continued. Not to be missed!

Since the first time I read this book, now nearly four decades ago, I've been haunted by the notion that, originally, this was part of AUNTIE MAME and was edited out due to length. Certainly it fits;Mame and Patrick are sailing on the Normandie after yet another hysterical episode. And then the book jumps ahead to a coming war and their apparent return from this trip around the world. No one is ever going to be able to confirm this but for afficianados of La Mame, it's an interesting thought.
Equally troubling is that the character of Mame seems to have changed on that voyage and in ways that are not consistent with how we first came to know and adore her. She's susceptible to confidence people, something anithetical to Mame in New York. That fabulous star of stage, Vera Charles as well as faithful Ito (the Babcocks have an amusing cameo in Paris) are along for the ride, but it's a bumpy one. Yes, the episodes are funny, but not as funny as the first time we met her. These are slap dash, harder edged, politically and socially inept vignettes which aren't consistent with our wise, worldly friend from book one. Editing would have helped-another reason I feel this was part of the original. And, sadly, she seems a bit man crazy. (One would have thought she'd learned that lesson with Brian O'Bannion in AUNTIE MAME) But the men...an Austrian noble and rabid Nazi, a fortune hunter, an old relative. She's too smart, or was in the previous book, not to see through these people.
On the plus side, it's usually funny and that is most of the book. I'm carping only because I want it to be just a notch or two better. Patrick Dennis has a lovely time skewering people just as before. I recommend, highly, her contributions to the 'Middle Eastern powder Keg' if only for its' smack on portrayal of expatriates at their very worst.
Would tighter editing have helped a bit? Maybe. After the runaway success of AUNTIE MAME this was as close to a guaranteed success as could have been possible and it was. Briefly. Another extraneous fact that diminished its' charm was that by then the antic Aunt had hit Broadway, and then the movies, and back to Broadway and yet another movie. (One critic, after smacking his lips over Angela Lansbury as the singing Mame, wrote that the only thing it hadn't yet been was a comic strip.)
Too, Patrick Dennis (nee Edward Tanner) always had fun writing vivid social comedy, sometimes too social and less comdedic. AROUND THE WORLD WITH AUNTIE MAME suffers a bit from that. But buy it, read it, laugh along and keep it with AUNTIE MAME on your bookshelf, they belong together, just don't expect the trip around the world to ultimately be as satisfying. A funny sort of hollow. Much like the Bad Ship Lesbos on which the journey ends.

If you read and enjoyed "Auntie Mame" then this is a must have. Mr Dennis fills in a missing part of the original story, the infamous trip to Europe with his aunt.

The story begins some few years after the end of the first story, with Patrick and Pegeen mourning the fact that their son,Mike has not returned from his trip with Mame. To soothe his wife's anxieties Patrick tells her a (brief) version of his trip to pre war Europe.We get the full version...

Patrick Dennis is always at his best exposing the vulgar,prejudiced and just plain nasty people of the world and here he has a whole new cast of villians to choose from. Mame gets in and out of hot water,assisted on occasion by her friend Vera, with Patrick usually several steps behind. There is a meeting with Beau's cousin which proves that some family ties should be amputated and a tussle with some Austrian Nazis that ends with Mame blowing up a castle.

Altogether a funny,sometimes poignant book, well up to the standard of the original I've read it often and still chuckle. Jane Davitt

It's a shame to know after you read Auntie Mame and Around the World with Auntie Mame that these are the only books in print. Patrick Dennis is a great author and his stories transend time and generations. Hopefully the publisher will get a clue and republish some of his other works. His books will having you laughing out loud so be careful were you read them.

Around the World with Auntie Mame is a superb set of stories with astonishingly timeless scoial observations. Mame takes on all the phonies, crooks, nouveaux riches and hypocrites, while staying very human and fallible herself. It is a crime that the Escapade in the Soviet Union story was suppressed when this book was first published. The story is clearly anti-communist and incredibly revealing about the corruption that lies at the heart of the Great Proletariat. It's a terible thing when hysteria leads to censorship.
I was initailly wary of Dennis' anti-German slant (the book was written in the post-war years, after all), and how he seemingly buys into the famous myth that the Austrians were innocent victims, but the story of Mame and the Tyrolean Schloss shows how Dennis is no dummy. This book is a wonderful collection of hilarious tales: a catalogue of human frailties that remains fresh and true today.

I just finished Richard Tyler Jordan's delightful, illuminating and photo-filled new (2004) paperback original, BUT DARLING, I'M YOUR AUNTIE MAME: THE AMAZING HISTORY OF THE WORLD'S FAVORITE MADCAP AUNT and I learned so much about how the Auntie Mame character was created by Patrick Dennis (a.k.a. Edward Tanner) and how she evolved from the novel to a Broadway play, smash hit movie with Rosalind Russell, Tony Award-winning Broadway musical starring Angela Lansbury and finally a movie musical starring Lucille Ball. That book sent me back to the original material and I'm glad it did, because both AUNTIE MAME and AROUND THE WORLD WITH AUNTIE MAME are gems worth reading. The bonus, long-supressed chapter set in Russia is a treat for all Dennis fans!

This old book still holds up very well as a hilarious take-off on the comparison between the trip to the Contient between an avant-garde like Auntie Mame and a bunch of nouveaux-riches snobs that she encounters. Still hilarious after all these years and nonetheless more relevant with appropriate historical references that make it ring more true. Very funny book.

Two and a half years later, Michael Dennis is still not back from his 'summer trip' with his Great-Aunt Mame. Hoping to reassure his wife, Pegeen, Patrick Dennis relates his own adventures with his Auntie Mame that occurred between his senior year of high school and his freshman year of college. Of course the events he relates to his wife bear almost no resemblance to the reality of his adventures with his Auntie Mame. Happily for us, the reader, we get to experience what actually occurred as Patrick relates his adventures in Paris, London, Spain, Vienna/The Austrian Alps, the USSR, Egypt/Lebanon, and somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Along for the ride are Ito and every so often, Vera. This enchanting sequel to the original continues to delight and offers some more substance to Mame. Some of the things that she says are beyond hilarious/non-PC/crazy - for instance

Cantwell was purring with contentment when Auntie Mame said, "And now, Patrick, you and Lucia may be excused to go to the movies. It's Little Women, Lucy--so sweet, if a trifle dikey.

I only wish that there were a sequel to this book so that I would not have to say goodbye to Mame and to Patrick.