The Dud Avocado (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

~ (Author), (Introduction)
Key Phrases: casting director, crazy eyes, Sally Jay, Uncle Roger, Hard Core (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Already singled out in O the Oprah Magazine and named an Amazon.com 'mover and shaker,' this edition will...introduce a new readership to the unforgettable Sally Jay Gorce, described by one reviewer as a cross between Carrie Bradshaw and Holden Caulfield." --Los Angeles Times

"Before Bridget Jones, deeply sweet and recklessly intimate Sally Jay Gorce trolled for love (Parisian style) in novelist (and sometime wife of theater critic Kenneth Tynan) Elaine Dundy's The Dud Avocado, a madcap read from 1958 that's finally back in print in the United States." --O Magazine

"The Dud Avocado follows a charming, if blundering, 21-year-old Missouri native, Sally Jay Gorce, who spends two postcollege years sipping Pernod on "la plus belle avenue du monde," the Champs-Élysées; staging William Saroyan and Tennessee Williams with an American theater troupe, and fumbling terribly at love." --The New York Sun

"Think Daisy Miller with a dash of Fear of Flying; My Sister Eileen with a soupçon of Sex and the City; Anita Loos crossed with Allen Ginsberg." --The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Now, this favorite has been re-issued yet again, with a gorgeous black and white nude on the cover. Fair enough, for here is a book primarily about sex and style...few writers ever soared so high and so delightfully." --Los Angeles Times

"The Dud Avocado opens with our beautiful and hapless heroine--imagine the panache of Holly Golightly crossed with the naive knowingness of Holden Caulfield--wandering one September morning through Paris in an evening dress." --Boston Globe

"Elaine Dundy's semi-autobiographical novel The Dud Avocado, which follows the romantic escapades of Sally Jay Gorce--an irrepressible young woman seeking adventure in '50s Paris--contains a lot of what makes fiction fun: charm, wit, and devastatingly sharp insights." --Very Short List

"The gayest and most cheerful novel about Americans in Paris I have read...a dazzling performance--as light as a champagne bubble, as continuously attention-getting as a juggler keeping seven swords in the air at the same time." --The New York Times

"Take one zippy, curious, 21-year-old American named Sally Jay, just out of college. Drop her in the middle of Paris' Left Bank. Add an Italian diplomat, an American theatrical director , a couple of painters and a white slave trader. Mix until all bubbles. The result: a delightful few hours of sparkling reading entertainment. Summing up: Froth and frolic." --Newsweek

"Delightful...her portrait of the Left Bank expatriates is caustically funny." --Time

"A champagne cockail...rich, invigorating, and deceptively simple to the taste...One falls for Sally Jay from a great height from the first sentence." --The Observer

"A first-rate reporter, [Dundy] has made The Dud Avocado into a Baedeker of neo-Bohemiahe...the atmosphere of a French student café; the folkways of hobohemia; the accents of the International Set-all these Miss Dundy has captured with sill and a degree of wit." --The New York Times Book Review

"A cheerfully uninhibited...variation on the theme of the Innocents Abroad...Miss Dundy comes up with fresh and spirited comedy...Her novel is enormous fun-sparklingly written, genuinely youthful in spirit, and exquisitely gay." --The Atlantic

"Elaine Dundy writes a sprightly novel to bring us up to date on the American girl from across the street who goes to Paris looking for Life and Love. Her book is sad and tender, bubbling with fun, spiced with insight...The Dud Avocado is satiric, mostly true, and decidedly sexy...The writing is sharp." --New York Herald Tribune

"[W]itticisms that crackle from every page." --Indianapolis Star

"One of the funniest books I've ever read; it should be subtitled Daisy Miller's Revenge." --Gore Vidal

Product Description

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

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: NYRB Classics; 2nd printing edition (June 5, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590172329
• ISBN-13: 978-1590172322
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (94 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #16,789 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Yay, yay for Sally Jay!, August 21, 2003

By	Megami (Darwin, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dud Avocado (Paperback)

The narrator of this story, Sally Jay, seems to have a lot in common with that other literary single-girl (pre-Bushnell days) Holly Golightly. She manages to combine innocence and world-weariness, rolling with her situation, no matter how chaotic it becomes. If anything, Sally Jay is Holly's older, slightly tougher sister. A young woman who has been running away all her life, gets the chance to run away to Paris thanks to an avuncular uncle, and lives a pink-haired bohemian existence, trying to experience life to the full - affairs with older men, hanging out with artists, nights at the Ritz followed by dingy student cafes. In the odd beginning chapter (it feels like you have missed an introductory chapter, and it takes awhile before you feel like you know what is going on) she meets a boy/man she has always had a crush on, and her chaotic life becomes even messier. One of her descriptions of him - `I didn't know anyone he'd actually been wrong about - except of course me, but then as we know I am totally incomprehensible to everyone including myself' is shown by the end to be sadly true.

This is a well-written book - cleverly hiding its sinister elements in the light and deft descriptions Sally Jay gives of her life. You feel that sometimes she is trying to kid herself and the reader that really, everything's going to be all right. This is a genuinely entertaining read that still manages to encompass some big themes - the search for happiness and acceptance; making priorities in life; disillusionment and what it can do to temperament. Sally Jay is sure to stay with this reader for a long time.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A hilarious 1958 book about Americans in Bohemian Paris, September 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Dud Avocado (Paperback)

Elaine Dundy's book will have you laughing out loud at protagonist Sally Jay Gorce's Parisian misadventures. From the first page, Sally Jay's intelligent, somewhat addled but wildly sarcastic voice entices the reader as she relates her exploits as a young American actress in Paris, complete with stories of drunken carousing, falling in and out of love, dancing in gay bars, dining with aristocrats, coldly sizing up her spoiled Ivy League expatriate friends, and losing her passport along with her temper, among other madcap doings. Just goes to show that, 40 years ago, (who knew?) Americans in Paris were drinking, smoking, sleeping around, staying out all night and hankering for new experiences. This well-written, very entertaining book will be a real eye-opener for readers who think that America in the 1950s was populated exclusively with straight-laced, Ozzie-and-Harriet types.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A funny, witty book with a rare spirit, October 2, 1997

By	[e-mail] "ramonaliberoff" (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dud Avocado (Paperback)

It isn't often that you can read something which qualifies as both a modern feminist classic and makes you laugh out loud. I loved the descriptions of early 20-th century Paris, could sympathise with the heroine's cads and catastrophes. This is a book to read if you want to walk on the bohemian side. For anyone who's ever walked around in evening dress the morning after.