Here is a book about how we should all be grateful to the women who came before. It tells the story of a young American woman on what is basically a gap year in Paris in the 1930s (funded of course by family money, try not to feel too enraged). It is just incredible what goes on. People make her dance with them when she has told them no, they expect her to ‘know how to cook,’ some guy announces that:
All tourists are she
And she still falls in love with him. Wtf. Later we find out he was trying to traffic her into sex work but she still has fond feelings for him (?). I mean how did these girls get anything done? The issues are plenty.
The book is fun and insightful. Try this:
It’s amazing how right you can be about people you don’t know; it’s only the people you do know who confuse you
Or this, which I think is true about many people who begin, but do not finish, a career in the theatre:
The thing about him, though, was that he thought he was in the theater for Art, whereas he was really in it for laughs.
Apparently Dundy’s husband, theatre critic Kenneth Tynan, encouraged her to try writing a novel, as he thought her letters good, but was then horrified when THE DUD AVOCADO was a bestseller and instructed her to never write again. Meanwhile he was cheating on her left and right and spanking her though she was not into it. She began her second novel immediately.
I mean I didn’t enjoy this book that much but I am just amazed and impressed this lady held it together for long enough to get it written. Truly earlier generations were fighting some battles.