J. P. Donleavy

James Patrick Donleavy was born in Brooklyn, New York, on April 23, 1926. After World War II, he attended Trinity College, Dublin, and was one of the Bohemian group that gathered in the Georgian cellar known as the Catacombs. Other notable habitues were Brendan Behan, Anthony Cronin, and a rather legendary American named Gainor Christ, who was attending Trinity on the GI Bill and who became the model for the protagonist of Donleavy's first and most famous novel, The Ginger Man [Add To Basket]. The book's hero, Sebastian Dangerfield, has much in common, in both eloquence and fecklessness, with John Osborne's angry young man Jimmy Porter in Look Back in Anger. Nevertheless, his story makes one of the most rowdy, raucous, vulgar, funny and thrillingly written books about Dublin in the last 40 years. The Ginger Man established its author's international reputation, but a lively stage version was withdrawn in Dublin in 1959 as a result of clerical pressure.

Donleavy's later novels are either moderately conventional or distinctly odd. Of the moderately conventional, The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B (1968) [Add To Basket] is largely laid in Ireland, and the Darcy Dancer trilogy (Destinies of Darcy Dancer 1977 [Add To Basket]; That Darcy, That Dancer, That Gentleman (1990) [Add To Basket] , is almost wholy laid there. These books may be taken as representative of the best of Donleavy's later works. They are picaresque Tom Jones-like novels, but their exuberance, broad satire, and often effectively exaggerated comic scenes stamp them as inimitably Donleavy's. Another noticeable characteristic of his work is an overwhelming preoccupation with sex, which is often described, in a tongue-in-cheek, apparent parody of the literary pornography of the Victorian Age. Leila: Further in the Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman (1983) [Add To Basket] , for instance, the second of his ambitious Darcy Dancer triology, is a fair example of the best of the later Donleavy. The writing retains its breezy cleverness. The comic details about the hero's moldering Big House are heaped up extravagantly but stay withing distinct hailing distance of reality: the roof leaks, there are holes in the floor, and the whole place is overhwelmed with dry rot, rising damp, and unpaid bills. The lazy, slovenly, incompetent, dishonest, and - in the Irish sense - 'cute' servants have a long tradition in Irish writing, which Donleavy's versions do not transcend but do not disgrace.

One of the more eccentirc of Donleavy's later fictions is De Alfonce Tennis (1984). About half of this quirky book is a facetious description of the rules and conduct of Donleavy's made-up game; the rest is a narrative with some lively writing and little characterization and is basically on the level of undergraduate humour.

That charge of puerility would seem applicable also to his occasional nonfictional books. For instance, The Unexpergated Code (1975) is a collection of reflections ranging from half a line to three or four pages, upon such solid topics as Being Old, Religions, and Euthanasia.

Donleavy has written a number of nonfictional books about Ireland. A Singular Country (1989) [Add To Basket] presents a very limited view of the country, largely from such a position as on the back of a horse while fox hunting. The style is an intermittently amusing parody of colloquial speech, in which many paragraphs begin with "Ah," and even a couple of "bedads" and "begorrahs" are resorted to. His 1994 memoir A History of the Ginger Man [Add To Basket] discusses his own early days in Dublin, hobnobbing with Gainor Christ and Brendan Behan. In is Donleavy comes across as a sort of Wild Irish Boy or Hibernian Hemingway, and there is a plethora of monumental drinking bouts and fistfights.

(excerpted from Dictionary of Irish Literature edited by Robert Hogan, published by Greenwood Press)

Donleavy's most recent books include: The Lady Who Liked Clean Rest Rooms [Add To Basket] (1995) is the storyof Jocelyn Guenevere Marchantiere Jones, sometime resident of Scarsdale, educated at Bryn Mawr, has been brought up always to behave like a lady. But what which chiselling divorce lawyers, fraudulent financial advisors and importunate and oversexed suitors, the patience of even the most impeccable lady might wear thin. Which is why joy ends up with a pair of matching Purdey shotguns across her knees and a .38 Smith & Wesson under her pillow, waiting for the next lying bastard to cross her threshold.

The Author and His Image: The Collected Short Pieces [Add To Basket] (1997) contains pieces of nonfiction from the banks of the Seine to the streets of the Bronx, from the stables of the Dublin Horse Show to cocktails at Claridge's. Donleavy brings an uncommonly objective yet affectionate eye to his writings about his own birthpalce, America, balancing unabashed adoration with good-humoured bewilderment in his depiction of his heart's home, Ireland. He presents the reader with a fresh and engaging vista.

Donleavy's most recent novel is Wrong Information is Being Given Out at Princeton [Add To Basket] (1998). It tells the story of Alfonso Stephen O'Kelly'O, son of rumoured former bootleggers, ex-naval gunner, unemployed composer, student of dairy cattle in Wisconsin and of music in Italy, has little to recommend him as a marriage prospect but his tender heart, his chivalry and his comprehensive knowledge of the great city of New York. So when the exquisitely pneumatic and extraordinarily wealthy Sylvia Triumphington, adored adoptive heiress to a fortune, sets her sights on him, Stephen is rather taken by surprise.

Certainly, Donleavy, as demonstrated in these recent works, has not lost the initial comic brilliance or the glittering prose style of The Ginger Man [Add To Basket].

J. P. Donleavy became an Irish citizen in 1967 and now lives on the shores of Lough Owel near Mullingar, County Westmeath.