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The Old Man and Me (1964)

par Elaine Dundy

Autres auteurs: Voir la section autres auteur(e)s.

MembresCritiquesPopularitéÉvaluation moyenneMentions
2961988,201 (3.45)62
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.… (plus d'informations)
  1. 00
    L'ingénieur culturel par Muriel Spark (mambo_taxi)
    mambo_taxi: Both novels feature highly dubious lead characters who will have you rooting for the more delicate side of evil in the end.
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» Voir aussi les 62 mentions

Affichage de 1-5 de 20 (suivant | tout afficher)
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. ( )
  TomMcGreevy | Sep 29, 2023 |
Not what I was expecting. I thought it would be some sort of scandalous affair and its after effects. There was certainly gossipy scandalous behaviour with some sex and drugs thrown in. There were messy relationship changes and dramatic consequences to family members. The narrator's delayed revelation was well played, I was wondering what she was up to for quite a bit.

I waited to read the author's Introduction (added to the reprint) until after I had finished the novel. That was a good choice and gave me more to think about as well. I find I can't discuss much without spoilers so I'll put those after the divider below.

===============

The book is very un-admiring of Brits and Britain. So much so that I felt a little lost at the beginning. I'm such an anglophile and this person didn't seem to like *anything* she was experiencing. At the same time I recognized the desperate loneliness of staying in a hotel as a foreigner with no roots, no resources in an unfamiliar city. The Introduction makes it plain that there was some sincere un-appreciation of post war London.

The jazz folks in the last third are racist caricatures, they are given some personality but the names Jinkie and Jimbo are hard to swallow.

I expected the young woman / older man steps of seduction story. But the way that she was so in his thrall and admired his faults as much as his virtues was surprising. I liked the semi-justice at the end of his gifting her half the loot and shutting off the affair. She takes her loot and her broken heart and goes back to NYC to apparently pace the floors and write this memoir. Is that what an anti-hero does? Maybe she had run out of anti social behavior by then.

The Betsy Lou / Honey impersonation and overtaking happens in lots of layers. How does our protag really feel about Honey Flood taking over her publishing job in her absence? That was an interesting bit of reversal and over-writing at the end. ( )
  Je9 | Aug 10, 2021 |
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. ( )
  Gregory_Buford | Oct 7, 2018 |
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. ( )
  Gregory_Buford | Oct 7, 2018 |
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 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. ( )
  SeriousGrace | Jan 21, 2015 |
Affichage de 1-5 de 20 (suivant | tout afficher)
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 the shot.
 

» Ajouter d'autres auteur(e)s (2 possibles)

Nom de l'auteurRôleType d'auteurŒuvre ?Statut
Elaine Dundyauteur principaltoutes les éditionscalculé
Dundy, ElaineIntroductionauteur secondairequelques éditionsconfirmé
Haas, HertaTraducteurauteur secondairequelques éditionsconfirmé

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There is a sort of coal hole in the heart of Soho that is open every afternoon: a dark, dank, dead-ended subterranean tunnel.
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It is a drinking club called the Crypt and the only light to penetrate it is the shaft of golden sunlight slipping through the doorway from time to time glancing off someone's nose or hair or glass of gin, all the more poignant for its sudden revelations, in an atmosphere almost solid with failure, of pure wind-swept nostalgia, of clear airy summer houses, of the beach, of windy reefs; of the sun radiating through the clouds the instant before the clouds race back over it again - leaving the day as sad and desperate as before.
The genuinely old-fashioned bad service that was being meted out impartially was instantly recognizable as the real thing: a subtle sophisticated Old World incompetence we Americans can never hope to emulate, the best our rustic efforts can produce being a superficial smart-alec surliness not to be spoken of in the same breath as this lofty disdain which was both thoughtful and thorough and would not disintegrate suddenly under a pleading word, a plaintive gesture, or a large tip.
And on she went allowing her placid egotism full reign; in constant communication with her own importance. It was literally impossible to tear her away from herself for a moment.
These English. Didn't they get anything right? The sole purpose of my remark had been to enrage him. I most certainly would have his American equivalent from whom I could have expected anything from a dead faint to ordering me out of the house. I felt like pouring my soup over his head. But that was out of the question. The soup was too good.
The bitchiness was something beautiful to behold, nevertheless I felt compelled to inject a bit of dissent at this point if only for its nuisance value.
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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.

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NYRB Classics

2 éditions de ce livre ont été publiées par NYRB Classics.

Éditions: 1590173171, 1590173910

 

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