"Bardic Style Matters"

By Glen O'Brien

My good friend Max Blagg, an important poet and co-editor with yours truly of the extraordinary literary journal Bald Ego, recently spent the weekend here at my Connecticut retreat. When he departed I found that he had left behind several of the books he'd picked up on one of our literary shopping expeditions—a practice that almost always bears fruit in the Berkshire Mountains and surrounding areas. There was that slim hardcover volume by a poet whose name escapes me who was hailed on the dust jacket as the best thing since Auden. From a scan of the pages I determined that not only was this fellow no Auden, he was no Blagg. I was more interested in J.P. Donleavy's The Unexpurgated Code: A Complete Manual of Survival and Manners.

J.P. Donleavy is, of course, a distinguished Irish writer who was born in New York and reverse emigrated. I actually met him many years ago—if I'm not mistaken we had lunch at a restaurant owned by Patrick O'Neal called The Ginger Man which was, of course, named after J.P.'s most famous book. It was certainly one of my favorite novels as a young man, because of its delightful style and its main character who was a sort of poetical con man seducer. I was most impressed by Donleavy. He was handsome, charming, had married a beautiful woman of significant wealth, had become a country squire, and was also, I believe, the owner by marriage of the notorious Olympia Press. For our younger readers, the Olympia Press was a publisher of pornography, sometimes by such extraordinary practioners as Guillaume Apollinaire, as well as titles by Nabokov (Lolita), Burroughs (Naked Lunch), Réage (The Story of O), Beckett, and, of course, Donleavy (The Ginger Man).

Donleavy has written 26 books, by my count. None of them as famous as The Ginger Man, but all enjoyable. Now, many years later, laying on the sofa trying to do as little as possible, I am impressed by J.P. all over again. This advice/philosophy book is about as good as it gets—at times approaching Voltaire and Flaubert in its maxims. As a professional in the advice field, I am memorizing bits of the master charmer's The Unexpurgated Code before returning it to Blaggy. It is making me think that the Style Guy should depart from matters of sock colors and trouser length more often. Here are a couple of good lines:

Upon Introduction

"Gee, I just can't recall your name."

Take this as a warning of inescapable grief ahead. Therefore, should you be unable to recall a person's moniker, blurt out:

"I can't get over how good you look."

Name-Dropping

This is essential to do in order to let others know whom they might get to know if they get to know you. In order to warm up, bring out the minor names first, slowly increasing their importance till your adversary quakes with the sound of the majors…

The Telephone

This is an instrument a lot of folk use to pretend to be important. So never, by lifting the receiver up too fast, show the bastards you are sitting beside the goddamn phone waiting for it to ring. If the call is obscene, listen carefully, as some of these people exhibit really impressive imagination with their dirty suggestions. In making a call don't say who you are until people get curious, thereby providing a little passing entertainment in this soulless method of communication. Always talk on your phone as if it were being bugged and try once in a while to be amusing. This is always appreciated by those who have to spend long hours eavesdropping, tapping all the boring things you have to say.

Upon Encountering Happiness

Be wary at such times since most of life's blows fall then.

Upon Having Your Picture Taken with Famous People

Get close and throw your arm around your victim's shoulder and smile. Do this at the very last second before they have a chance to jump away from you.

Blowing upon Soup

Always do this if it is too hot.

To purchase books by J.P. Donleavy, go to the Buyers' Guide.