Life Itself!

by Elaine Dundy

Elaine Dundy, a New Yorker born in the 1930s, is the author of The Dud Avocado, based on a year she spent in Paris. Here she presents her memoirs which begin in classy apartments on Park Lane before the Crash, include a wild and funny time as an actress in Paris and London, and reveal all about her disastrous marriage to theater critic Kenneth Tynan. Her literary and theatrical circle—which included Peter Finch, Tennesse Williams, Hemingway, and Gore Vidal—is presented along with poignant remembrances of growing up in America in the 40s, and a literary and theatrical life in Paris and London.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

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!

Reviews

[Laurel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The era between The Pill and HIV/AIDS was wild.

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I have a biography of Kenneth Tynan somewhere which now I one hundred percent have no interest in reading, after reading this.

[Creolecat]

Sister of filmmaker Shirley Clarke.

[Nora R · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm fascinated by elaine dundy's life and mind. she maintained a single degree of separation from celebrity for most of her life - close friends with tennessee williams ("tenn"), ernest hemingway ("hem"), vivien leigh ("vivien leigh") - and she observes the 20th century's rich and famous with such intimacy and insight. deeply integrated into the theater/acting/literary community in london, new york, los angeles. courageous, sexually shameless, brilliant, funny, selfish, an absolute delight to read. i was locked into this book for three-quarters of it, then decided to look up her daughter and learned of the neglect & rage that characterized her childhood. this very quickly killed my idolization of dundy's glamorous life. in the last quarter, she starts to talk a lot about elvis anyway and i was uninterested as well as disillusioned. i will be reading all of her books.

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s wild to me that Elaine Dundy was obviously at the centre of the cultural life of the 20th century - she’s met and been friends with, or at least partied with, an astonishing number of famous writers and actors - but she’s so little known.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to special order this from the UK as it is no longer printed in the US! After reading "The Dud Avocado" and "The Old Man and Me", I knew I had to read whatever else she had written, and to my dismay, there was only one other book of hers to read, her very own life story. I just adore her and found myself instantly recognizing some of myself in her and love her spirit for adventure and all things good.

Favorite Quotes:
- "Time after time it was only through their breathing presence in the room that I discovered what I was trying to say."
- "In the beginning, my life seemed to be divided equally between the things I got right and the things I got wrong."
- "I took exception to the grimness of this path laid out before me, and I was determined to stop the whole process by simply not growing up, not marrying, and not having children. Then I would not die. I was confident I could accomplish this"
- "I ate breakfast at a local coffee shop, lunch at the canteen on the base, and in the evening I was always out on dates in Washington - dining, dancing, drinking in jam-packed cocktail lounges"
- "Like the break that divides Act I from Act II in the theatre, crossing the ocean was the break that divided Part I of my life from Part II."
- "They were just giddy at being alive."
- "Summers of sun, sea, and swimming pools had been potent pleasures in my childhood and I welcomed them back in my life with something like ecstasy in the Spanish coastal towns"
- "One night he said to me coldly, 'if you ever write another book, I'll divorce you.' That did it. Early next morning, I sat down and started my new novel."
- "In autumn I was saved by a happy confluence of events that grew, one out the other, with miraculous speed, good fortune attracting good fortune as money is said to attract money."
- "says Sherlock Holmes, 'we must go to life itself which is far more daring than any act of the imagination."

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't work for me after a while. Some bits were entertaining but others bits were tedious.