![\"jpdonleavy\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/jpdonleavy.jpg\" "\\"jpdonleavy\\"")
\n[Image: Sally Soames\/Time Warner Books]<\/div>\n
Down the years, James Patrick Michael Donleavy has been portrayed in the Anglo-Irish press as a gentleman recluse with a roistering life of hard drinking, fisticuffs and harlotry behind him. It makes nice copy: the former \u2018hell-raiser’ sequestered in his Georgian mansion in Westmeath, Ireland. James Joyce<\/strong> wrote about this country pile, Levington Park, in Stephen Hero<\/a><\/em> having, apparently, stayed there as a boy while his father was working in nearby Mullingar. Yet while the \u2018literary recluse’ shtick seems overstated, it may contain a germ of truth. After all, Donleavy has admitted himself that he rarely leaves his home, and once said that, of all his protagonists, the one he most resembles is the sadly humane George Smith from his paranoiac second novel, A Singular Man<\/em>. Smith – a man of independent means – finds our indifference to our fellow beings nullifyingly sad. Protecting himself behind a two inch steel, mahogany-look front door, he makes regular sorties into the world in search of \u201cgood fellowship”. What he finds is casual froideur and brutal stupidity.<\/p>\n In Anthony Cronin’s superb memoir of the \u2018Rare Oul Times’ among Dublin’s literati, Dead As Doornails<\/a><\/em>, it is recalled that Donleavy showed hermit-like tendencies even in the forties. Certainly, there is a sense in the writer’s picaresque debut novel, The Ginger Man<\/a><\/em>, of its hero, Sebastian Balfe Dangerfield, being besieged by an uncivilised world. (Young Dangerfield runs amok through late forties’ Dublin substituting sex and liquor for the love and meaning he fails to find). But then, it is never wise to over-identify a novelist with his characters. Especially as it is well known that the Sebastian Dangerfield character was partly inspired by the author’s heroically caring and courteous friend, Gainor Stephen Crist, a \u201cpagan sensualist” whose \u201cdo-no-evil” stance still renders him a saint in Donleavy’s eyes. Crist is said to have died in 1964, although Donleavy is not convinced of this. At any rate, it is clear in Donleavy’s fictional and autobiographical work that good manners are paramount. Sadly, my progress to Levington Park involves three duff steers from Westmeath locals. These send me miles out of my way, and see me stomping up Donleavy’s muddy drive ten minutes late for our appointment. I rap on the front door wondering how my tardiness will be rewarded. After all, Donleavy is a man who has written the impishly amusing guide to social etiquette, The Unexpurgated Code: A Complete Manual of Survival & Manners<\/em>. Happily, his secretary, Virginia, welcomes me warmly and assures me that I am not remotely late. I am piloted into a commodious hallway, and we then turn right into a large, yet cosy kitchen.<\/p>\n I notice a range stove in the room’s far right side, and across the way from that there is a large round table positioned in front of a crackling turf fire. The turf tints the air with a homely scent of whiskey. J.P. Donleavy – Mike to his friends – sits before this fire with a hearty smile on his face. Instead of the tweeds and plus-fours many people associate with the author, he is dressed casually in a long leather jacket and dark, well-worn trousers. He looks very much the elegantly informal artist. After proffering biscuits to complement my coffee, Donleavy is soon enthusing about his work in progress, The Dog on the Seventeenth Floor<\/em> – a book that delighted his fan and friend, the actor Johnny Depp<\/strong>, when he read it in the mid-nineties. Donleavy even reads me an excerpt from the manuscript of this still gestating work, the third in a trilogy of New York City novels. It sounds promisingly visceral, and in a similar vein to his last offering, the heart-rendingly droll, Wrong Information is Being Given Out in Princeton<\/em>.<\/p>\n “When I met him in New York, Mr Depp asked me what I was working on, so I told him about my story that describes a dog jumping out of a seventeenth floor window. At the time, we were standing by a seventeenth floor window,” laughs Donleavy. His mellifluous Anglo-American tones and quiet charisma suggest a time-ripened thespian. This impression is reinforced later on by his beautiful living room, which calls to mind the stage set of a Terence Rattigan<\/strong> play. Of which, more later. Having finished his brief reading, Donleavy scans me with a benignly searching gaze: “Do you know New York yourself, at all?”, he asks, sounding like he is interested in my answer. When I say no, he responds in fine literary style. “Oh really? Goodness. You ought to just get someone to send you over there so that you can present a new picture of something that you perhaps find out about yourself by exposing yourself to the city. And then you have got the setting and subject for a story, you see. I wonder has murder, for instance, slowed down in New York or not? Or where are the Mafia, and what are they doing these days?”<\/p>\n Wherever Donleavy chooses to set his stories, his protagonists always seem to be existentially adrift. They have a talent for feeling like tourists in their home towns. There is a genuine sense of these stories being penned by an alienated observer. This is strikingly the case in the author’s magisterial and mordantly funny novel, A Fairy Tale of New York<\/a><\/em>, whose main character, Cornelius Christian, would get along famously with J.D. Salinger<\/strong>‘s prep school Hamlet, Holden Caulfield. Having studied in Ireland, Cornelius sails home to New York accompanied by his wife’s coffined corpse. He is then given impromptu employment in the very funeral parlour which buries her so that he may be able to foot the bill. And so begins a state-of-the-human-psyche novel of delightful humour and oceanic depth. I wonder where Donleavy’s strong sense of remove stems from.<\/p>\n \u201cI think, as a writer, you approach the world from an observational perspective, and this is your position from beginning to end. Then you take what you see and shape it into literature. You are almost like a scientist in that regard: taking words and using them for their sound, and using all kinds of technical variations. Of course, every writer has his or her own style. Now, in my own case, I always find that the use of short sentences and a direct approach is a beneficial way to work. Sometimes, when I think occasion demands, the prose would get more flowery.”<\/p>\n Donleavy believes that most people think in the short, telegraphic sentences he uses in his work. The interchangeable nature of the first and third person, along with his habit of allowing his characters to drift into reverie during tumultuous scenes, are two more Donleavy tropes. The writing style is a surging current-of-consciousness, with strategically-placed white water interludes. I ask him what would be uppermost in his mind as he writes fiction.<\/p>\n “On one side, you are thinking of the immediacy of the words in a technical sense, and on the other you are making the story take flight with the descriptive imagery. And I remember looking seriously at the most efficient way one could use the language when those books were written. There was a very purposeful attempt to keep the prose sharp. I remember Brendan Behan<\/strong> [who famously let himself into Donleavy’s house at Kilcoole and \u201ccorrected” the original manuscript of The Ginger Man<\/em>] being very helpful in this respect. He was the first person to read my manuscript, and he came up with a couple of technical insights like that. He noticed that my style was different to anything he had ever confronted. Brendan had been in prison and read prodigiously during that time. So he discussed these stylistic things in detail.”<\/p>\n I’m curious about Donleavy’s earlier scientific simile. Aptly enough, he studied bacteriology and zoology at Dublin’s Trinity College (1946-49). However, this writer’s waxing empirical may surprise readers who regard Donleavy’s work as an ungovernable force of nature. So perhaps there was a sense, during his carousing years in Dublin, of undertaking scientific field work; of observing his milieu through a microscope as if they were cultures on a collection of petri dishes?<\/p>\n “Yes. But I also realised that material was not a thing you searched for: you had to literally let events occur and drift into focus. Naturally. So you would never go around looking for literary opportunities. Things would just come to you slowly and you would allow your imagination to do the rest. Take words, take images and embellish them so they would float away and find their natural storyline. So, yes, a lot of what you find in, say, The Onion Eaters<\/em> [Donleavy’s oneiric, gothic extravaganza] came from my life; the people I encountered in Dublin.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tellingly, the author once described the absurdist world of The Onion Eaters<\/em> as \u201cjust a kind of documentary about Ireland, of Irish life in 1945.”<\/em> Those who have this work down as a Flann O’Brien<\/strong>-esque piece of whimsy – a kind of Gaelic Gormenghast<\/em> – may be shocked by such claims of literalism. This reader certainly is. Moreover, Donleavy also asserts that works such as Samuel Beckett<\/a>‘s Waiting for Godot<\/a><\/em> contain more documentary elements than people may imagine. But then, those who read the author’s autobiographical works, such as J.P. Donleavy’s Ireland in All of Her Sins and Some of Her Graces<\/em>, with its stories of waterlogged burrows of bacchanalia and summarily pissed-upon radiograms (someone’s response to a hated record, in case you are wondering), may notice how little Donleavy had to amplify reality. It becomes clear that we are dealing with a man whose talent for witnessing the exotic is exceeded only by his gift for composing fiction from these experiences.<\/p>\n “For example, if you went to a party, you would be exposed to various kinds of stimulus, or behaviour, which you would store in your memory and then note down, as if you were a reporter. What fiction constitutes, in a way, is a form of journalism. I have always thought that journalists often underestimate the literary potential of the situations they experience in their working lives; that they think there’s something more important they could be doing, or that real life is taking place elsewhere. But they are actually processing fascinating raw material. Just as authors do, they actually use words as effectively as possible to communicate their thoughts to the public.”<\/p>\n This sentiment seems resoundingly relevant when we consider J.P. Donleavy’s influence upon \u2018hyper-journalistic’ writers like Hunter S. Thompson<\/strong>, who once wrote Donleavy a touchingly sweet fan letter, and Iain Sinclair<\/a>, who was, apparently, so inspired by The Ginger Man<\/em> and James Joyce’s proto-psychogeography, that he went to study at Trinity College Dublin.<\/p>\n “Yes, I believe that Hunter S. Thompson did write to me”, says a seemingly gratified Donleavy. \u201cWell, no matter how elegantly an author sculpts his subject matter, he is nothing more than a high-flying journalist. One that is probably wasting more paper than most people in order to express themselves!” Such resistance to self-aggrandisement once led Donleavy to assert to an apparently incredulous interviewer that authors are no more sensitive than garbage collectors.<\/p>\n Elevated journalist or author, there is a sense from the first paragraph of his masterly early novel The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B<\/em><\/a> that you are in the deft hands of what his brother, T.J. Donleavy, once described as “a natural writer”. There is a prophetic passage in the The History of the Ginger Man<\/a><\/em>, where his smiling watchfulness inspires a friend in the navy to predict a literary future for Donleavy. His habit of ghost writing his classmates’ assignments in the Naval Academy Preparatory School – a quirk which led to a teacher detecting a talented anonymous writer and devotee of James Joyce in the class – may have buttressed this impression.<\/p>\n Also, in The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B<\/em>, a cockle-warmingly kind working girl called Breda tells young Balthazar: “You’re an interested one. Like someone who would write a book.” Did a lot of people in his early life have him down as a writer, or remark upon a certain remove from workaday life? “Well, on a social level, I often felt myself to be in a difficult position. In some ways, I could be pretty outspoken, and would brook no dissent!” he announces in cod theatrical tones. “I know I found difficulty in socialising with Americans when I first arrived back from Trinity College in the early fifties. But then, it was an advantage for my accent to be slightly Anglicised because it would be an explanation as to why I would be a bit foreign in my manner. I tried to get on in America and stay there, but I realized that it was never going to work for me. There was no way you could be accepted as an author and get something like The Ginger Man<\/em> published. Remember, this was the McCarthy era, so America was closed to me in a literary sense.” Lacerated by literary rejection, Donleavy was unable to speak for some ten weeks after leaving America. He communicated by writing things down on paper, and has subsequently described himself as being close to death back then. Donleavy’s self-avowed dogmatic side surfaces to amusing effect in A Fairy Tale of New York<\/em> whose hero, Cornelius Christian, is too sardonically authentic to join the herd in a redneck-riddled land. He also fakes mutism to avoid losing his job.<\/p>\n I wonder if Donleavy set out to expose America’s reactionary underbelly in A Fairy Tale of New York<\/em>? After all, the book contains pricelessly subversive set piece scenes such as the one where Cornelius admits to his go-getting industrialist boss – for whom he writes zippy advertising slogans – that he believes himself to be having a nervous breakdown. Cornelius also opines that black and Jewish folk should be running America. “I would be more like an observer than standing in judgement,” he muses. “I was accepting the situation in America and trying to describe it as best I could; just building a story and writing about the social scenery in New York City. Always describing, rather than judging.”<\/p>\n Although Donleavy favours this anthropological approach, and seems averse to tub-thumping, there are certain recurrent themes in his work, such as a hatred of bullying and a desire for upward mobility on the part of many of his chief protagonists. There is also the oft-repeated recollection in Donleavy’s autobiographical writing that his Irish parents grew up \u201cwithout a pot to piss in”. This yen for the high life appears to be a powerful undercurrent in his work. And yet it seems to run against a passionate rejection of all forms of snobbery.<\/p>\n “That sensitivity to social differences was natural for me, growing up in (the salubrious neighbourhood of Woodlawn in the Bronx) New York City. Back then, my closest pal was a boy called Thomas Gill. One day, I was looking for him, and his father said to me: \u2018Tommy’s not around. He’s at Glen Isle Casino: would you like to go out there?’ I said: \u2018Yes please, I’d like to see Tommy’. So he said: \u2018Come with me – I’m going out there. Here’s the car now. I have to go and do other things, but the car is at your disposal’. So I got into this great big car and I could see the green tint on the window and feel the weight of this huge machine. And you could just tell that the car was bullet-proofed. But what I was not prepared for, as we drove down 59th Street to 5th Avenue, was how the police immediately stopped the traffic. I just could not understand this; that the car belonged to someone who was recognized by all of the policemen. The traffic ahead had been stopped in advance – as I’m on my way to see my pal! So I said to Tommy when I arrived: \u2018What the hell is going on with this car?’ And he said: \u2018You were in the Sheriff of New York’s car.’ No one in New York knew the city had a sheriff for a start! Yet New York City has a sheriff – like in a western town. I was intrigued by this.<\/p>\n \u201cBut then, this respectable American world was also tinged with Mafia murkiness, which was always an uncomfortable and mysterious thing for me. And I had no idea, as a child, that I was growing up alongside the Mafia. There were a couple of Mafia families, who were neighbours, and I would be invited in to have lunch with their children, who were my pals. Years later, whenever I met any of these old friends by chance, their first words to me – which served as a greeting – were: \u2018Is anyone bothering you?’ And I knew that, if I mentioned any names, they were going to be found in some swamp with about twelve bullets in them!”<\/p>\n This Mafia theme bled into A Fairy Tale of New York<\/em>, when some hoodlums attempt obliquely to extort cash from Vine, the successful undertaker who takes the chief character, Cornelius Christian, under his opulently-plumed wing. “Oh yes, that’s right. Also, the passwords and the language that these Mafia people used always fascinated me and would spin me off into another world.”<\/p>\n From where else did he cull influences in his early life? “The other big thing in one’s life was New York Athletic Club. [One of Donleavy’s boxing instructors was Arthur Donovan – the man who trained Sugar Ray Robinson<\/strong>]. It was a fabulous oasis for me. I became a junior member, and I am probably the longest-serving member of that place now,” he laughs. \u201cThat was always somewhere that provided interesting associations, and these surfaced in my work years later.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It strikes me that, while he says that his books are more akin to \u201chigh flying journalism” than political manifestos, early reviewers of The Ginger Man<\/em> sometimes lumped him in with the \u2018kitchen sink’, \u2018angry young man’ writers like John Osborne<\/strong>. This seems strange, given that Donleavy’s anarchic anti-hero, Sebastian Dangerfield, is more clueless conformist than rebel. Dangerfield fails to fit in spectacularly, even while he chases everything that society says a young man should pursue. “No, indeed. It was not appropriate that I should be dragged into that Angry Young Man thing because – just as you notice – it had nothing much to do with my work.” Ironically though, Donleavy attributes the publication of The Ginger Man<\/em> in New York – a city that was proving immune to the novel’s charms – to a John Osborne interview in the New York Times<\/em>. The writer of Look Back in Anger<\/a><\/em> made the point that Donleavy was being seen as part of the English Angry Young Man phenomenon when he was actually American.<\/p>\n Even so, Donleavy’s decision to write a novel was sparked by a fist-shaking fury. A committed painter before he began writing, he resolved to write an \u201cunstoppably” great book after a London gallery owner told him that his undoubtedly \u201coriginal” art work would only have a chance of being seen if he were already famous. These pictorial tendencies mean that Donleavy is unusually concerned with how the written word looks on the page. I ask him about the haiku-like, miniature poems that end many of his early chapters. These look striking and lend the words a certain gravitas. They surely derive from his visual sensibilities. “Yes, I think so. I would exercise anything I could find that was conducive to clarity or emphasis. If there was a practical, functional tool to help the work along, I always felt that one should use it.”<\/p>\n What about J.P. Donleavy and academia? Some critics have applied a Freudian or Jungian analysis to his work. Is this a form of criticism he finds enlightening, given his scientific approach to his work? “Well, I must admit that sometimes critics make judgements that don’t have anything much to do with my initial instincts at all. I would be totally unaware of the psychological connections they would be making. I work instinctively. Events are located entirely within a self-contained world, and they would not have any colouration from the outside world at all.” Bearing in mind Donleavy’s earlier scientific simile, his use of the word \u201cinstinctively” is of interest here. Certainly, all novelists alchemise their lived experience and unconscious drives into art: what really impresses about Donleavy is how unforced and natural his writing feels – even after the application of science.<\/p>\n Do his reservations about applying psychological theories to his work arise from his seeing it as an inexact science, offering insights that cannot be tested empirically? “Partly that, but it’s mostly because I don’t have any real interest in Freudian or Jungian pursuits. I just know that the practitioners live and eat well and have their little gatherings”, he observes wryly. “But I am much more interested in how the human brain can accumulate knowledge, especially as I speak with you about the seventeen books I have written and recall the scenes. Because I have a scientific background, I am fascinated by the electrical impulses that transport thoughts and memories through the brain. I’m surprised at my eagerness to understand any new developments in astronomy that crop up, knowing that – even now – there are so many unknowns. We are increasingly aware of these scientific unknowns. But then you think: \u2018Hey! Where does it all stop?’ What does space actually mean, and does it have a diameter?’ You are then confronted with the apparent limitlessness of space. If, for instance, I point to the sky over there and ask: \u2018How far does this go?’, that’s a problem that no scientist has been able to get anywhere with. Where does space stop? As far as we know, it never stops.”<\/p>\n All this scrutineering, and Donleavy’s drive to anatomise rather than criticise, makes the accusations of sexism and anti-semitism that greeted The Ginger Man<\/em> and, subsequently, his endearingly madcap 1979 novel, Schultz<\/em>, seem rather dull. Schultz<\/em> introduced readers to the riotously randy Jewish theatre impresario, Sigmund Franz \u2018Isadorable’ Schultz. The novel also gently sends up members of the English aristocracy, but few readers accuse Donleavy of putting such people down. Moreover, Donleavy readily agrees that any extreme views a character may hold are counterbalanced by the differing views of others. He is soundly ecumenical in his mockery. “You have to leave everything open for examination as far as possible. Each new book has its own self-contained environment.”<\/p>\n \u2018Self- contained environment’ seems apt, given this writer’s ability to teleport his readers into alternative worlds. Indeed, these are literary jaunts that repay repeated visits, and the critic who suggested that Donleavy is \u201csaying something fundamental about the human condition” seems eminently on the money. Yet other critics have mentioned Donleavy’s tendency to recycle certain riffs and scenes. For instance, Leila: Further in the Life and Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman<\/a><\/em>, the second book in the Darcy Dancer trilogy, has sometimes been described as a rewrite of The Onion Eaters<\/em>. However, it seems fairer to compare Donleavy’s oeuvre to that of a great blues songwriter: some of the tunes may echo earlier triumphs, but they are always reinterpreted in intriguing new ways. In any event, the author gave the begrudgers plenty to think about when he published the novella The Lady who Liked Clean Rest Rooms<\/em> in 1995. This Alpine fresh offering was perhaps the writer’s best work since the Dostoevskian novella The Saddest Summer of Samuel S<\/a><\/em>. Both books are succinct treatments of human isolation: from a male and female viewpoint, respectively.<\/p>\n The Saddest Summer of Samuel S<\/em> is a chastening depiction of the interwoven strands of love, social ambition and lust. The novella – which briskly portrays an existential skirmish between Samuel S and a young woman called Abigail (who may or may not represent Samuel’s Jungian anima, or inner female) is a scarily archetypal stand-off between male and female combatants. While some readers may feel that Samuel’s briefly showcased ability to fart in B Flat strikes a discordantly puerile note, there is a strong case for arguing that such Donleavian moments cunningly undercut the thread of despair which runs through this writer\u2018s work like the watermark on an Irish five Euro note. Certainly, it is difficult to disagree with the reader who told me that J.P. Donleavy \u201cwrites the saddest and funniest books in the world.”<\/p>\n In The Lady Who Liked Clean Rest Rooms<\/em>, it is worth noting how Donleavy’s compassionate treatment of Jocelyn Guenevere Marchantiere Jones – a woman who only appreciates her friends’ spiritual bankruptcy when her personal finances crash – makes those old accusations of sexism seem quaintly redundant. But does Donleavy feel the need to keep proving himself, to add more work to his exhaustive oeuvre?<\/p>\n “I think authors should be careful about seeing the novels they have already written as constituting some massive ongoing work to which they add every day. I think you have to write in a natural way. That Dog That Fell<\/em> manuscript over there has been lying around for two or three years and I only returned to it recently. Now I’m toying with the idea of actively working on it again. But looking back on all my work from today’s perspective, I think it would be unwise to start out with the aim of amassing a huge compendium of work. It would be hard to write unselfconsciously if you were thinking about your reputation.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Given that his family were Irish Catholics, was he conscious as he wrote The Ginger Man<\/em> (which was banned in the Republic of Ireland and the United States upon publication), that it would grieve them – or sully their reputation – if he wrote something perceived as disreputable or risqu \u00e9? “Before the publication of The Ginger Man<\/em> I felt that my family would have to disown me, which I was prepared for. I consciously made that choice. They were Catholics. My mother had a position: my father died years before this, so he would have been clear of the scandal. But she had to worry that someone may have read a book of mine that they considered \u2018dirty’. But, as my name became more acceptable, and there was favourable publicity, I became someone you could talk about – or even admit you were related to! I remember that my mother was pretty brave in this respect. She would be someone with a bit of courage in the face of social conventions.<\/p>\n “That said – and this may seem to undermine what I have just said – I remember Gainor Crist coming to stay with me and my family in Woodlawn, New York City. I passed the telephone stand one day and saw that he had left his calling card there. I thought: \u2018Good God, I had no idea that he even had such a thing’. So I said to mother: \u2018Gainor’s left his calling card!’ I was expecting this to be made fun of a bit. But she said [here, Donleavy adopts an imperious Lady Bracknell voice]: \u2018Of course he did!’ As if it was perfectly natural that he should do so. So I realized suddenly just how out of step with social etiquette I was.”<\/p>\n Donleavy has described in his autobiographical work how hard he found it to fit in when he returned to New York after his spell at Trinity College, Dublin. Did he have any feelings of social dislocation before this? “It cropped up when I was still at Fordham Preparatory School (in the Bronx), along with early signs that I may be cut out for a writer’s life. I was chucked out of the place. Expelled! But prior to this happening, I was writing themes and things and enjoying it hugely. And, when I was being kicked out of the place, there was a Jesuit master there who pleaded my case. He said to the principal: \u2018You are throwing out of this school the only boy who is likely to be a celebrated former student.’ Even so, I was expelled for being \u2018a bad influence upon the student body’. I was just a schoolboy”, Donleavy recalls in pleading tones. As he mentions this, it occurs to me that the more risqu \u00e9 elements which crop up in this author\u2018s work may well represent a kicking against his repressive Catholic education. “Then I had to go to a Public – you know, where people don’t pay to go – High School where all these little social snobberies would begin to arise. When I attended this school, I was in another world where I would suddenly be referred to as preppy,” he says, clearly tickled by the word. \u201cI found myself confronting this whole new social situation. I had never had anything like my supposedly being preppy held against me before, you see.”<\/p>\n It is tempting to see Donleavy’s watchfulness and splendid alienation as springing from such uprooting experiences. However, he concedes to feelings of separateness from a tender age. By the time he hit Dublin in 1946 – a beneficiary of the post-war G.I. Bill – he was sensitive to comments on his beard or American accent, and those unwise enough to accost him were often trounced for their trouble. When Brendan Behan called him a \u2018narrowback’ (non-work-hardened, second- generation Irish gentleman) upon their introduction in Davy Byrne\u2018s pub, Donleavy was hardly disarmed. He invited his fellow literary lion cub to step outside. Ultimately, the pair decided not to scrap for the delectation of drinkers who failed to follow the would-be rivals outside. Thereafter, Behan became Donleavy’s \u201cbest enemy”, but others were foolhardy enough to physically challenge the amiable yet assertive Irish New Yorker.<\/p>\n “Well, a lot of my trouble in Dublin came about because people would accost me and, as an American, I was very sensitive. Also, it has to be remembered that there had been a war and I had been in the US Navy, and you did not appreciate people coming up and giving you trouble. But I had such a reputation for giving a good account of myself in a fight that most people left me well enough alone. Oddly, I had a reputation which even seemed to go beyond Ireland.<\/p>\n “There was an incident where someone came from Germany to Dublin in order to search me out, having heard that I would end fights in about twenty seconds. So this guy turns up at Davy Byrne’s pub and said: \u2018Where is this guy!’ So someone points me out and says: \u2018Look! There he is, over there.’ To which the German replies: \u2018What? That little guy?’ And the person who had pointed me out replies: \u2018That’s what they all say!’ So the German guy loses his nerve and comes over and wants to shake my hand. Also, with my having a beard, people would immediately accost me. My position was that I just did not feel like hacking at my face every day. The question was always: \u2018Why are you growing that beard?’ But I was conscious that the punches I learned as a boxer could rupture the entrails. You might have a dead man on your hands. So I was always having to extricate myself from these confrontations diplomatically.” While telling me this, Donleavy bobs up from his chair and demonstrates some harrying left hooks, his hands making whooshing sounds as they part the air.<\/p>\n At one point in The Ginger Man<\/em>, Sebastian Dangerfield mentions gazing up at the Dublin hills and wishing he could be up there. Safely enclosed by a brick wall. Also, in A Singular Man,<\/em> George Smith has the aforementioned mahogany-disguised two inch steel front door to keep the world at bay. He even tries to chivvy his self-esteem along by playing an applause machine to himself. There seems to be a desire to escape a discourteous and even violent world in both your fictional and autobiographical work.<\/p>\n “Yes, that is true. This is still a thing I have. I realise, living here, that the option of having distractions is not open to me. So when people such as yourself come to interview me, it’s a welcome and beneficial stimulus. I view it more as a social opportunity than an interview.” Obviously, though, Donleavy feels that the novelist’s skills which he has developed over the years are an inexhaustible resource. It is obviously not a case of his constantly doing \u2018field work’ to stock up on life material. So, if at this point in his life, he is less apt to visit Dublin, London or New York, he is quite happy to use his present circumstances as material.<\/p>\n “Yes, the reduction of stimulus would, technically, affect you somewhat but, generally, the exercise of your working methods is a muscle that never atrophies. So, as a writer, you have to exercise the power of invention and realise it’s a form of training. Like an athlete running around a track. So I’m aware, as I’m talking with you about various subjects, that we are covering a lot of areas I would not usually touch upon. My trouble, when people come here to interview me, is that they always end up being far more interviewed than I am. Some end up complaining: \u2018Hey, I’m supposed to be interviewing you!'” Here Donleavy duly asks me a couple of personal questions as if to demonstrate the point, but his manner is hardly intrusive. Still, like many a writer, Donleavy watches those he encounters with laser beam intensity, sometimes even repeating one’s phrases to himself in a low voice.<\/p>\n One encounter that proved fateful in Donleavy’s life was the one that resulted from Kenneth Tynan<\/strong> being much taken with The Ginger Man<\/em>‘s buoyant dialogue. Donleavy has described, in J.P. Donleavy’s Ireland in All of Her Sins and Some of Her Graces<\/em>, meeting the supremely gifted theatre critic in London. “Oh yes, he commissioned me to write a screenplay – The Rich Goat<\/em> – and he sent it on to\u2026I think it was Orson Welles<\/strong> who got a hold of it in the end”, Donleavy laughs incredulously at the memory. “Welles said it was the greatest film script that he had ever read. Extraordinary…” Freakishly, the screenplay was never turned into a film, but one hopes it will be excavated from Donleavy’s archive for a discerning film director someday soon. I ask what kind of impression Kenneth Tynan made upon him.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was dapper, very charming and had a wonderful air about him. Everything had to be beautiful and marvellous in his environment. He could get very nervous, I recall, and was a great smoker. And very worried about life because he thought that things would go wrong for him. A great number of people would congregate around him constantly. He was very gracious in terms of putting opportunities in a lot of people’s way. In fact, he was instrumental in getting me out of that house in Fulham where I was living. You see, I was given quite generous payments by Ealing Films [for The Rich Goat<\/em> screenplay]. This was a tremendously welcome situation because I had a couple of children by then, so one had to be a bit more cautious about the financial future. So, because of Kenneth Tynan’s commission, I had the chance to find better accommodation. Tynan was a central energy focus for a lot of people in the arts, and he would sweep us all along with him.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Your life and work has always been populated with beneficent male companions like Kenneth O’Keefe (who resembles Donleavy’s Trinity pal, Arthur Kenneth O’Donoghue) in The Ginger Man<\/em>; Vine, the solicitous undertaker, in A Fairy Tale of New York<\/em>; or Beefy from The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B.<\/em> Where, for instance, did the beguiling character of Balthazar’s pal, Beefy, spring from? “He was a combination of people. Mostly, it was someone from Trinity that I knew well called Jean Marc Heidsieck (of the Heidsieck champagne clan). When I was painting there, he used to ask if I minded if he came over to my rooms there, and all he would like to do was sit with me while I painted. He said: \u2018I won’t speak or interfere: I shall just sit.’ And, indeed, he used to do just that. It was quite fascinating. He was always invited everywhere in Dublin because of his family connections in France.”<\/p>\n Was this friend the person you saw from a cab one day in Knightsbridge whom you were unable to hail due to your being stuck in traffic? A friend you had not seen since your Trinity days? “Yes, that was him. It was wonderful for me to have someone like him at Trinity with whom I had something in common, so we could talk and explore ideas together. He would invite me to big champagne sales parties because of his family connections. They threw big parties in Paris and I would always be invited on these occasions. Three days at the Ritz – all expenses paid. I remember he came here to Levington Park once. So, yes, when I spotted this wonderful, vivid character in Knightsbridge, I suddenly had the idea for The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B.<\/em> I put down the first words of that book very shortly after that.”<\/p>\n Talk of Paris leads naturally to J.P. Donleavy’s titanic legal tussle with the Paris-based Olympia Press<\/strong> director, Maurice Girodias<\/a>, who agreed to publish Donleavy’s much-rejected (forty-something times, if we’re counting) manuscript of The Ginger Man<\/em> in 1955. Initially, the novel was christened, Sebastian Dangerfield<\/em>, but Donleavy lit upon The Ginger Man<\/em> title when Girodias expressed the desire for something sparkier.<\/p>\n Sadly, Girodias failed to inform Donleavy that his mighty novel would be published under Olympia’s lubricious imprint, the Traveller’s Companion Series<\/strong> (Olympia’s main roster included writers such as Henry Miller<\/strong> and Samuel Beckett). Donleavy’s relief at finding a publisher who was undaunted by The Ginger Man<\/em>‘s risqu \u00e9 elements, soon flipped to fury upon realizing what had been done to his work. He then entered into a Wagnerian legal wrangle with Girodias that reached a crescendo when Olympia Press was put up for auction and a livid Girodias was outbid by Donleavy’s then-wife, Mary, and former secretary, Phyliss McArdle. The scene, which is winningly described in The History of the Ginger Man<\/em>, resembles a screenplay for an edition of Rumpole of the Bailey<\/em> penned by Flann O’Brien: it is both legalistic and lysergically funny. Girodias subsequently described Donleavy as a \u2018legal wizard.’<\/p>\n “I would go over to Paris to see my lawyers and I had a secretary at the time who would travel with me. I remember her sitting on the side of an armchair at one of my lawyer’s places in the 16th district. There are about sixteen people there, and my secretary says: \u2018Mr Donleavy, I don’t know if I should mention this. But I have just been thinking: All of the people that you can see in this room right now- well, you employ every one of them.’<\/p>\n “So, among all these lawyers in Paris, there was a titanic battle between two companies going on: the one called The Little Someone Corporation (which was Donleavy\u2018s) and another called the Olympia Press. They were clashing head on in this high court battle in Paris. Next thing I know, I receive a letter from my lawyer which read: \u2018Mr Donleavy, we know you are busy, but we thought we should acquaint you with the following facts as soon as possible. There is a situation where The Little Someone Corporation is suing the Olympia Press, and we want to take this opportunity to point out to you that it so happens that you are the owner of both of these companies.’ “\u2026And they are suing the hell out of each other”, splutters a delighted Donleavy. “And neither side will give an inch!”<\/p>\n Would this be where the paranoiac, legalistic feel to your second novel, A Singular Man<\/em> derives? All those obliquely officious letters your protagonist receives from an unknown party. “Yes indeed, it does come directly out of all that because my life was nothing but litigation. Literally. By now, The Ginger Man<\/em> had become a sought after text, in terms of people wishing to secure rights on it. So my nerves had to re-adjust quite substantially after I was told I was, effectively, suing myself!” It seems typical of Donleavy’s pragmatic personality that he should plough such bizarre life events into his drolly minatory second novel.<\/p>\n Shifting on to more immediate matters, I ask Donleavy about his manuscripts and letters (which include letters from Robert Redford – \u201cDear Mike, Am I famous enough yet?” – and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis) and the difficulties associated with collating and storing them. \u201cThey are all in the other side of the house in my study: there\u2018s a mass of things. I know this American chap, Bill Dunn, who has become a friend, and he has done a lot of work as an archivist to put things in order. It’s wonderful because he loves the books. In fact, we shall be having him over to visit soon. But sometimes I go into that room and I put my hand up to my head in despair. Let me just show you\u2026”<\/p>\n Donleavy and myself walking through Levington Park’s spacious, picture-strewn corridor, eventually taking a right into his airily bohemian study. The room is decorated with a bust of J.P. Donleavy; and a portrait of the same subject gazes quizzically from the opposite side of the room. The wall behind the desk supports a full bookcase, on which I notice multiple copies of The Unexpurgated Code<\/em>. The desk plays host to a copy of Kenneth Tynan’s peerless collection of essays, The Sound of Two Hands Clapping<\/em>, and a photograph of a lambent Susannah York starring in the 1964 stage production of A Singular Man<\/em> with Ronald Fraser. There are various framed play bills of Donleavy’s theatrical adaptions on the wall facing the desk.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the room is dominated by the original manuscripts of the author’s novels, which are piled neatly on the floor like a Rachel Whiteread<\/strong> structure. It feels strange to stand alongside the hardcopy versions of this superb writer’s imaginative excursions. It is also sobering to think that this work will be read long after its temporary repository has fallen back into the Irish landscape. Donleavy stands among his lifetime’s work grinning sheepishly at the way it has colonised his study. He resembles a compulsive hoarder of newspapers guiltily revealing his collection. Next I am shown the aforementioned \u2018Rattigan stage set’ living room. With its vintage leather sofa and chairs, it would be a perfect setting for a rather genteel drama. At the same time, the room is redolent of conviviality, and seems to reverb with the echoes of past soirees. Its focal point is an edibly attractive fossilised Kilkenny marble fireplace. The pale abstract pattern on a dark background looks like a design dreamt up by a master chocolatier. Or a work by the Kilkenny-based sculptor, Alan Counihan. It often captivates guests, and it will be remarked upon hundreds of years from today. There is also an imposing bust of James Joyce – complete with real glasses – surveying the room’s expanse from a grand piano. His x-ray gaze works as a powerful memento mori, and I wonder how many visitors are reminded of Joyce’s ante-room-to-oblivion story, ‘The Dead’, as they sip their chosen tipples.<\/p>\n J.P. Donleavy’s characters are no more insulated against the paralysing snow that Joyce portrays in this tale than anyone else. They merely run around seeking freedom, fellowship and fun before they are snowed-in up to their necks. It is not for nothing that Donleavy has described The Ginger Man<\/em> as a book calculated to make people jump up from their death beds. The author offers bonhomie amid the entropy. And while we laugh at Sebastian Dangerfield\u2018s dipsomania and erotic opportunism, the fleeting warmth provided by characters such as Miss Frost – his longed for lodger – offer him a brief respite from numbing social convention. The same may be said for Donleavy’s readers.<\/p>\n God’s mercy Indeed.<\/p>\n ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER<\/strong> \u00e3\u20ac\u20ac<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What fiction constitutes, in a way, is a form of journalism. I have always thought that journalists often underestimate the literary potential of the situations they experience in their working lives; that they think there’s something more important they could be doing, or that real life is taking place elsewhere. But they are actually processing fascinating raw material. Just as authors do, they actually use words as effectively as possible to communicate their thoughts to the public. No matter how elegantly an author sculpts his subject matter, he is nothing more than a high-flying journalist. One that is probably wasting more paper than most people in order to express themselves!<\/p>\n David Gavan<\/strong> interviews J.P. Donleavy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":44278,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112004,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44267\/revisions\/112004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"jpdonleavy2\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/jpdonleavy2.jpg\" "\\"jpdonleavy2\\"")
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\nOn the wild
\nGinger Man.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n![\"davidgavan\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/davidgavan-225x300.jpg\" "\\"davidgavan\\"")
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\nDavid Gavan<\/strong> was educated in London and currently lives in Co Meath, Ireland. He has written for the South London Press<\/em>, the Hampstead and Highgate Express<\/em>, the Belfast Telegraph<\/em>, the Irish Examiner<\/em>, Time Out<\/em>, Record Collector<\/em>, AU<\/a><\/em> magazine and The Quietus<\/a><\/em>. His 2010 interview with David Mitchell for 3:AM<\/em> can be read here<\/a>.<\/p>\n