Addict writer experiences addiction and lives to tell about it: goodby to Elaine Dundy.
Sometimes, it takes an addict:
Writer Elaine Dundy, born Elaine Brimberg and married (1951-1964) to theater critic and New Yorker writer Kenneth Tynan, dead from a heart attack at age 86. Dundy was best known for her novel, The Dud Avocado (1958), and her memoir, Life Itself! (2001). The former chronicled a young woman coming of age through a series of alcoholic-fueled sexual misadventures in the decadent Paris of the 1950s, while the latter revealed, among other frothy anecdotes, her sexual exploits with Tynan, including having sex while being caned. She explained she stayed in the relationship partly because of a fear he would commit suicide if she left him and partly because of her own "sickness,"which she described as "the ...
