Goodnight, Ms. Dundy

I just got an email from Roy Turner saying that Elaine Dundy, author of The Dud Avocado–one of the funniest and sexiest coming-of-age novels to be published–passed away on 1 May. (Her website confirms this.) I worked with her, briefly, when University Press of Mississippi reprinted her classic biography Elvis and Gladys in 2004, and found her to be an utterly charming and brilliant raconteur. Her prose style–brisk, stylish, quick-witted, and completely unsentimental–matched her speaking method step for step. Turner, her old friend and late-period amanuensis, said that “she died doing exactly what she loved most: she had a heart attack in mid-conversation with someone famous and interesting.”