Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
NYRB Classics (2009), Paperback, 248 pages
Description
In The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy revealed the life of the young expatriate in Paris in all its hilarious and heartbreaking drama. With The Old Man and Me, written when Dundy was living in England in the early 1960s, she tackles the American girl in London, a bit older but certainly no wiser. Honey Flood (if that's her real name) arrives in London with only her quick wits and a scheme. To get what she wants, she'll have to seduce the city's brightest literary star, no matter how many would-be bohemians she has to charm, how many smoky jazz clubs she has to brave, or how many Lady Something-Somethings she has to humor. But with success within her reach, Honey finds that in making the Soho scene, she's made a big mistake.
Media reviews
Her desire to entertain is never cheap or self-involved — her characters are drawn clearly and vibrantly and she never loses sight of the plot. When Dundy sets a scene you can see it. She knows how to size up people and places with a jolting turn of phrase; she knows how to cock her eye and get
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the shot. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member Marensr
Elaine Dundy’s The Old Man and Me is a whimsical slightly askew glimpse at expatriate life in London in the 1960’s. It is also a sort of fantasy and satire on a type of modern female who is both liberated and bound and terribly flawed.
Much like The Dud Avocado, her comic look at expatriates in
Honey Flood has come to London to meet or accuse or seduce or murder middle-aged British literary critic, code-breaker and man about town, C.D. McKee and she might succeed in doing all of the above.
Unlike some other New York Review of Books selections The Old Man and Me may seem like lighter fare, and it is. However, the comedy and shallowness of the characters should not undermine the funny, brutal and brilliant portrayal of selfishness and pretense amongst expatriates or the British better classes. She also manages that rare thing, finding a core of humanity in distinctly dislikable characters.
It also offers a little linguistic glimpse into a moment in time, with Dundy’s use of jazz slang in the cafes and descriptions of late-night, pill-popping, nightclub crawls. It feels like an old movie of the 1960’s shot in that slightly sepia yet Technicolor film with brilliant location shots and fabulous clothing.
Also of note, is Dundy’s introduction to her own work and it is worth reading her musings looking back at the novel and the time period. It was a highly enjoyable read.
Much like The Dud Avocado, her comic look at expatriates in
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France. The novel walks a line between believable fiction and a slightly exaggerated world seen through a prism of selfishness, competing motives and transatlantic misunderstanding. In both Dundy novels it feels like you might be getting a roman à clef and a bit of autobiography thrown in except that Dundy takes the novels to such splendid and ridiculous heights.Honey Flood has come to London to meet or accuse or seduce or murder middle-aged British literary critic, code-breaker and man about town, C.D. McKee and she might succeed in doing all of the above.
Unlike some other New York Review of Books selections The Old Man and Me may seem like lighter fare, and it is. However, the comedy and shallowness of the characters should not undermine the funny, brutal and brilliant portrayal of selfishness and pretense amongst expatriates or the British better classes. She also manages that rare thing, finding a core of humanity in distinctly dislikable characters.
It also offers a little linguistic glimpse into a moment in time, with Dundy’s use of jazz slang in the cafes and descriptions of late-night, pill-popping, nightclub crawls. It feels like an old movie of the 1960’s shot in that slightly sepia yet Technicolor film with brilliant location shots and fabulous clothing.
Also of note, is Dundy’s introduction to her own work and it is worth reading her musings looking back at the novel and the time period. It was a highly enjoyable read.
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LibraryThing member Capybara_99
Somehow I had gotten the idea that this book was not ultimately very successful, a sophomore effort to recapture the spirit of The Dud Avocado that came out stale. That was all wrong. While The Old Man And Me shares with The Dud Avocado a witty author with a sharp eye for local social folly, the
The narrator is fascinating, and the effect on her of "the old man" is the heart of the book, and the portrait of him through her eyes memorable, and loving despite the narrator's best efforts that it not be so.
P.S. -- If you leave the book too close to the lightbulb on the reading lamp on your bedside stand, the cover melts.
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book is quite different. The narrator of The Old Man And Me is much more damaged and unsettling than Sally Jay Gorce was. And the book a sharper satire, and more interesting for the warp of the characters.The narrator is fascinating, and the effect on her of "the old man" is the heart of the book, and the portrait of him through her eyes memorable, and loving despite the narrator's best efforts that it not be so.
P.S. -- If you leave the book too close to the lightbulb on the reading lamp on your bedside stand, the cover melts.
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LibraryThing member DieFledermaus
The Old Man and Me is a funny, vivid look at a young American woman taking on London. Inevitable comparisons will be made with Dundy's other novel, The Dud Avocado, which featured another young American in Europe - this time in Paris. The first person narration is used to great effect in both books
The Old Man and Me has much of the same pleasures as The Dud Avocado, but the main character is somewhat more complex. While Sally Jay was your typical enthusiastic American college grad who wants to find herself and see the world in Paris, Honey Flood uses the innocent American stereotype as a cover for more sinister intentions. Sally Jay makes plenty of mistakes, but most can be excused by ignorance, carelessness, youth in general. Honey Flood has a plan, which makes her much more desperate - though she has to hide the desperation under a pleasant facade. She's much more cynical, a characteristic that she fails to hide, but is constantly surprising herself by having genuine emotions.
Honey's goal in London is to land in the set of the famous C.D. McKee and she doesn't mind using people to get what she wants. Her quest takes her among the slumming rich, the well-heeled crazies and bar-hopping druggies. Some of the characters are almost Dickensian in their monomanias, but this is easily accepted, since they're described from Honey's POV. Again, the narrator's sarcastic take on the city and its inhabitants carries the novel, even with the occasional too-coincidental occurrences. And unlike the Dud Avocado, I was not disappointed at the end - there was no false happiness, but something very appropriate for the tone of the novel.
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- probably the best part of the latter novel was Sally Jay Gorce's hilarious, twisted, biased take on all the dramatic and mundane events that occurred during her time abroad. Though The Dud Avocado was set in the 1950's, the social and romantic complications still felt fresh.The Old Man and Me has much of the same pleasures as The Dud Avocado, but the main character is somewhat more complex. While Sally Jay was your typical enthusiastic American college grad who wants to find herself and see the world in Paris, Honey Flood uses the innocent American stereotype as a cover for more sinister intentions. Sally Jay makes plenty of mistakes, but most can be excused by ignorance, carelessness, youth in general. Honey Flood has a plan, which makes her much more desperate - though she has to hide the desperation under a pleasant facade. She's much more cynical, a characteristic that she fails to hide, but is constantly surprising herself by having genuine emotions.
Honey's goal in London is to land in the set of the famous C.D. McKee and she doesn't mind using people to get what she wants. Her quest takes her among the slumming rich, the well-heeled crazies and bar-hopping druggies. Some of the characters are almost Dickensian in their monomanias, but this is easily accepted, since they're described from Honey's POV. Again, the narrator's sarcastic take on the city and its inhabitants carries the novel, even with the occasional too-coincidental occurrences. And unlike the Dud Avocado, I was not disappointed at the end - there was no false happiness, but something very appropriate for the tone of the novel.
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LibraryThing member scohva
In the introduction, Dundy talks about how one has to be either a monster or a doormat. The primary plot concerns a young American woman trying to fully embrace her monster side in order to get what she believes is her right. The differences between British/American cultures and youth/age are also
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discussed throughout the book. It was interesting to see in the early '60s how little Great Britain had changed from earlier in the century. For the most, part it seemed like I could have been reading a novel that took place in the interwar period. The book was enjoyable, and had shifts of tones that were abrupt but effective. Certainly not as charming as The Dud Avocado, but still a good read. Show Less
LibraryThing member entropica
Having previously read The Dud Avocado I can't quite separate it from The Old Man And Me. One is not better than the other - both are hilarious and poignant. Due to my own experiences, Sally Jay Gorce (Dud Avocado) reminded me so much more of being both more than, yet still, a young American girl
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in Europe. In Old Man, Honey Flood is urbane, passionate but still an occasionally naive young woman. She has a plan that is more heartless than even her motives can handle... or is it just the confusion of impulses that she thought she could keep quietly at bay slowly creeping at her? Reminds me of character from Avocado besides Ms. Gorce - to the point that I wonder if she's come back to Europe without much more understanding of herself, but better tactics to take advantage of people. Absolutely delicious. Though I have more affinity for Dundy's first book, The Old Man and Me is riotous and definitely worth spending some time with. Show Less
LibraryThing member dmsimpson
I have mixed feelings about Elaine Dundy's The Old Man and Me. I was determined not to like it after several false starts. Desiring to give it a fair shake, however, I found the more I read the more it grew on me. Maybe it was the story itself that was slightly off putting, but I appreciated the
Dundy herself wrote the 2005 introduction to the novel, which goes a long way in helping understand what she was trying to do. The novel was originally published in 1963.
"My specific aim in writing this novel was to present an anti-heroine in response to all the anti-heroes so popular of the day, beginning with Kingsley Amis's Jim Dixon in Lucky Jim, John Osborne's Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger, and all the anti-heroes who followed in their wake. Loosely bound together as Angry Young Men, they hit out at everything phony, pompous, priggish, prudish, and pretentious. Their anger was exhilarating."
Set in London's Soho just when it was beginning to swing, the "old man" is C.D. McKee who Honey Flood is desperately trying to locate. C.D. is a proper older British gentleman, a decorated war hero with a taste for the finer things in life. Honey calls him "prejudiced, rollicking, monumentally greedy (and covetous and avaricious, and eager and hungry)." It's hard to tell at first exactly why Honey is trying to find him. She professes to be rich, yet she bums a room from a young woman she meets who's recently been dumped by her husband. She dresses well enough, in the "American style", though her shoes and handbag are dead giveaways that she's not what she seems. When she does track C.D. down she tells him she's in London to receive psychiatric treatment for a failed love affair that led to a nervous breakdown.
Inveigle her way into C.D.'s life she manages to do, though. There's something seductive about this young American, though she's also scheming. Of herself she says:
"I was no femme fatale, no trained courtesan; neither a Lorelei, nor an enchantress, nor a witch. I had no feeling for, and absolutely no belief in, the extra-mystical powers of my femininity. I was (yes, indeedy, I still am) a plain, ordinary American girl. All-right looking; all right--even good-looking, attractive when well groomed, but in an entirely unreminiscent way."
She says she's nothing special, but she's determined. She's determined to get back her inheritance, which C.D. is now in possession of. Betsy Lou Saegessor's stepmother went off and married C.D. and then willed all her money to him when she died. The money Betsy Lou's father worked so hard to make. Betsy Lou is an Angry Young Woman. She travels to London in the persona of her friend, Honey Flood, to get her money back. The plan is to meet, then seduce and then kill C.D. Honey gets more than she bargained for, however. It's her mission to bed the great C.D. McKee, but she finds she may feel more than hate for him after all.
In her autobiography, Life Itself! Dundy writes about the reception her book, which was very mixed.
"Although I'd unsparingly attacked the Anglo-Saxon attitudes of bohemia and the aristocracy in my novel, I continually showed my protagonist getting tripped up by her adversaries, no match for their sly cunning nor for their sly tolerance. Still, something told me I was going to ruffle some feathers, even though Gollancz reassured me that the English are famous for being able to laugh at themselves."
It was more or less panned by the British and only sold tepidly in the US. Only a year and some months after the book's publication copies were being remaindered. As a new fan to Dawn Powell's work I was interested to read what Gore Vidal and Edmund Wilson had to say about Dundy's book.
"'It's not everyone's cup of tea. It's more like caviar to the general,' he (Gore) said in his blunt way. Was I becoming that dreadful thing 'a small circle writer's writer'? I'd better find out. I ordered twenty copies and sent them ten to authors whose work I admired and asked them why the public had rejected it. Among them was Edmund Wilson, who gave it to me straight: 'The reason it doesn't sell is undoubtedly the reason Dawn Powell doesn't sell. The American feminine public doesn't want to read abut women who are too tough and with little romantic appeal'."
Interesting. I for one, rather liked Honey Flood/Betsy Lou. She was one of the high points of the novel. I will say Dundy was excellent at drawing strong and complex characters and creating such a colorful backdrop against which they enact their comedy of manners. I do hope the newly issued NYRB edition does better this time around than it did in the 1960s. I'm already looking forward to reading "The Dud Avocado" next!
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way she told it. It's very much a black comedy, a clash of cultures (American and British), though all told very much tongue in cheek. The prose is peppered with wonderful hipster, jazz-speak, but also tart asides and caustic dialogue to balance out the whole. Dundy herself wrote the 2005 introduction to the novel, which goes a long way in helping understand what she was trying to do. The novel was originally published in 1963.
"My specific aim in writing this novel was to present an anti-heroine in response to all the anti-heroes so popular of the day, beginning with Kingsley Amis's Jim Dixon in Lucky Jim, John Osborne's Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger, and all the anti-heroes who followed in their wake. Loosely bound together as Angry Young Men, they hit out at everything phony, pompous, priggish, prudish, and pretentious. Their anger was exhilarating."
Set in London's Soho just when it was beginning to swing, the "old man" is C.D. McKee who Honey Flood is desperately trying to locate. C.D. is a proper older British gentleman, a decorated war hero with a taste for the finer things in life. Honey calls him "prejudiced, rollicking, monumentally greedy (and covetous and avaricious, and eager and hungry)." It's hard to tell at first exactly why Honey is trying to find him. She professes to be rich, yet she bums a room from a young woman she meets who's recently been dumped by her husband. She dresses well enough, in the "American style", though her shoes and handbag are dead giveaways that she's not what she seems. When she does track C.D. down she tells him she's in London to receive psychiatric treatment for a failed love affair that led to a nervous breakdown.
Inveigle her way into C.D.'s life she manages to do, though. There's something seductive about this young American, though she's also scheming. Of herself she says:
"I was no femme fatale, no trained courtesan; neither a Lorelei, nor an enchantress, nor a witch. I had no feeling for, and absolutely no belief in, the extra-mystical powers of my femininity. I was (yes, indeedy, I still am) a plain, ordinary American girl. All-right looking; all right--even good-looking, attractive when well groomed, but in an entirely unreminiscent way."
She says she's nothing special, but she's determined. She's determined to get back her inheritance, which C.D. is now in possession of. Betsy Lou Saegessor's stepmother went off and married C.D. and then willed all her money to him when she died. The money Betsy Lou's father worked so hard to make. Betsy Lou is an Angry Young Woman. She travels to London in the persona of her friend, Honey Flood, to get her money back. The plan is to meet, then seduce and then kill C.D. Honey gets more than she bargained for, however. It's her mission to bed the great C.D. McKee, but she finds she may feel more than hate for him after all.
In her autobiography, Life Itself! Dundy writes about the reception her book, which was very mixed.
"Although I'd unsparingly attacked the Anglo-Saxon attitudes of bohemia and the aristocracy in my novel, I continually showed my protagonist getting tripped up by her adversaries, no match for their sly cunning nor for their sly tolerance. Still, something told me I was going to ruffle some feathers, even though Gollancz reassured me that the English are famous for being able to laugh at themselves."
It was more or less panned by the British and only sold tepidly in the US. Only a year and some months after the book's publication copies were being remaindered. As a new fan to Dawn Powell's work I was interested to read what Gore Vidal and Edmund Wilson had to say about Dundy's book.
"'It's not everyone's cup of tea. It's more like caviar to the general,' he (Gore) said in his blunt way. Was I becoming that dreadful thing 'a small circle writer's writer'? I'd better find out. I ordered twenty copies and sent them ten to authors whose work I admired and asked them why the public had rejected it. Among them was Edmund Wilson, who gave it to me straight: 'The reason it doesn't sell is undoubtedly the reason Dawn Powell doesn't sell. The American feminine public doesn't want to read abut women who are too tough and with little romantic appeal'."
Interesting. I for one, rather liked Honey Flood/Betsy Lou. She was one of the high points of the novel. I will say Dundy was excellent at drawing strong and complex characters and creating such a colorful backdrop against which they enact their comedy of manners. I do hope the newly issued NYRB edition does better this time around than it did in the 1960s. I'm already looking forward to reading "The Dud Avocado" next!
Show Less
LibraryThing member Kasthu
I’ll be honest and say that I couldn’t finish this book. The narrator in this novel is just another Sally Jay Gorce, in a different city, older but certainly no wiser. And since I found Sally Jay to be annoying, it stand to reason that I’d find Honey Flood annoying, too. I suppose this book
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was risqué when it came out, but now it just seems retro. Don’t waste your time. Show Less
LibraryThing member LadyintheLibrary
Somewhat odd. Didn't care for it.
LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
Introductions to books often bore me, I'll admit it. I'm the one who will skip them nine times out of ten. For some reason I didn't skip Dundy's introduction to The Old Man and Me and I'm very glad I didn't. I appreciated her explanation of who Honey Flood is, why Honey is the way she is (think
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Jessica Rabbit, "I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way"), and why she wanted Honey that way. Dundy wants her reader to know the purpose of Honey in Old Man is as a response to the male anti-heroes of the era. By creating the female counterpart, Honey Flood is the Angry Young Woman who hates everything English. Additionally, Miss Flood is opinionated, hot-tempered, easy annoyed, more often than not, sarcastically irritated and a liar to boot. As Dundy explains, "But what I hope I had going for me is that Bad Girls are more interesting that Good ones" (p ix). Amen to that. So, about Honey...she's out to seduce an older man. She'll go to great lengths to land an interview with him, including befriending people she can't stand. Why? He married her stepmother after her father's death and by default (stepmum later committed suicide), has all Honey's inheritance. In short, Honey wants her money back. True to Dundy's intro, Honey is nothing short of nasty. There were surprises within Old Man and Me that popped up unexpectedly. Show Less
LibraryThing member Gregory_Buford
It's been a long time since a book surprised me as many times as this one. Very refreshing. And what an interesting snapshot of a place in time! The Old Man and Me was quirky, unusual and altogether fun.
LibraryThing member Gregory_Buford
It's been a long time since a book surprised me as many times as this one. Very refreshing. And what an interesting snapshot of a place in time! The Old Man and Me was quirky, unusual and altogether fun.
LibraryThing member TomMcGreevy
A genuinely fun read about the relationship between a young American woman and a middle-aged englishman. The range of passions is wide, the outcome always in question, but the prose, the dialogue, frees one to enjoy oneself thoroughly.
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1964
Physical description
248 p.; 7.94 inches
ISBN
1590173171 / 9781590173176