Since it was reprinted, the topic of Mame Dennis has crept into a
lot of online reviews and conversations over cocktails. I recently
got into a screaming match on an airplane over the topic of Mame's
relevance today. Even some of the reviews on this site are less
than flattering and I want to answer them all by suggesting that
the authors (and readers) read the book again.
Mame is an icon, even today. She is our Alice in Wonderland all
grown up, smarter, wittier and more interesting than Mary Poppins,
and I wish that she had been sent to Oz instead of that Dorothy
girl or allowed to poke around the back of C.S. Lewis' wardrobe. No
other heroine of modern fiction would have kept the Japanese Ito in
her employ, or stood up to such ugly anti-Semitism in polite New
York society. She rallies behind a pregnant Agnes Gooch and looks
after her nephew (and a whole lot of other children during the war)
as few other figures might have; dominating four decades as no
other could have, she knows the benefit of a good drink and the
power of humour in bleak times. This book and its title character
are as remarkable today as when the book was first released, and I
daresay that she will be for a long time to come.