Make a Movie out of The Dud Avocado!

Sad news this week if you like idiosyncratic characters: Author and bon vivant Elaine Dundy passed away  on May 1st, in Los Angeles. She was best known for writing an indispensable Elvis biography, Elvis and Gladys, and a dishy autobiography, Life Itself! which discusses her life as an actress in Paris and England and her stormy marriage to theater critic Kenneth Tynan. Weirdly, there's no obituary up on the New York Times page yet, but writer and critic Terry Teachout has a nice tribute on his site. More tributes and obituaries can be found here and here.

I was introduced to her work last year when her delicious, slightly autobiographical romp, The Dud Avocado was re-released in a saucy New York Review of Books edition. Avocado follows the adventures of Sally Jay Gorce, a young American in Paris. In order to stoke sales upon its re-release, some of the pre-buzz compared it to Bridget Jones and chick lit; but don't believe the hype. Avocado is a wacky comic novel on the first order, a cousin to the best works of Evelyn Waugh or P.G. Wodehouse, riddled with puns and jokes and dizzying dives into social mores. It surprised me and grabbed a place in my heart. The book has a wonderfully liberated spirit for its time; Gorce has sex (outside of marriage, quel scandale!) and isn't punished (or knocked up) as a result, which is downright radical.

According to Dundy's website, Avocado has been optioned for the sake of a TV movie (and by New Line), however, I'm not sure of the current status. You, gentle reader, should go ahead and make a frothy version of Avocado into a film, after reading it and having it rock your world. I promise that it will be magnificent.

Here's an interview with Dundy from last year. Here's Dundy's foreword from The Old Man and Me, which is due for a re-release this year. Fun fact: The pictures of Dundy at the bottom of that page were taken by Richard Avedon.