"JP Donleavy: The Gingerly Man"
By Sherry Romeo

He's the Dear Abby of the social-climbing set, offering ribald advice on just about everything from "on visiting the massage parlour" to "upon committing perjury." His latest book, The Unexpurgated Code, explains JP Donleavy, "...is fictionalized etiquette on how to do what you feel like doing."

His advice on fame and celebrity: "As these come to you, let them go to your head." On placing the blame for venereal infection, he urges, "Do this as soon as you can and admit to nothing." Would he follow his own advice on wife-beating? ("It is chivalrous to use your least favoured arm, keeping you slaps firmly on the jaw.") JP Donleavy admits, "Actually, I don't often avail myself of my own advice because I tend to be extremely polite and shy."

The soft-spoken, British accented and very proper JP has been married for the past five years to his second wife, American Mary Wilson. "I'm pretty demanding," he says of himself as a husband but goes on: "I think she always feels I'm writing these god damned books which don't make any money.

"People say I'm uncommercial, but I wonder what in the hell this really means?" he explodes indignantly. Then adds quietly, "But I suppose it's true: my books are appalling."

While his books (The Ginger Man, A Singular Man, The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, The Onion Eaters, A Fairy Tale of New York), a collection of short stories and four plays are hardly the sort to rocket to the top of best-seller lists, they have the tenaciously stubborn habit of simply hanging around for years. His Ginger Man alone (which JP labels "a failed book") is perhaps his best known work and has accounted for sales over five million copies since first appeared in 1951 [sic - first publication was 1955] - and is still in print.

JP insists writing is very hard work. "Your pulse rate is running about 15 pulses higher than it ordinarily would," he explains, "and in the evening my ears begin to burn from the use of my brain. Sedentary work absolutely crucifies me: it's a terrible, terrible load. So when I finish my work for the day I go outside and run in the dark on my small football field just to use my body.

So what compels him to submit to this torture? Is he working on another book? "No, not at the moment. You play with the idea a long time before you sit down to work. There are ideas which begin to form themselves until, If you're desperate to make money, you sit down and do it." Back to the money again. How important a motive is it behind his writing? "Probably the major one," he concedes. "But there is some consolation to it," he adds, "as I stand in front of my mansion - all of which was paid for by my writings and nothing else!"

His 2000-year-old [sic; should be 200-year-old], 25-room Irish mansion is J.P.'s one pride and joy. "It's got 19 front windows and it's built around a courtyard. It's a very fabulous house," he enthuses, "because it has an indoor swimming pool and about nine bathrooms and it's really quite sensational looking."

That indoor pool is used by JP every day as part of his "daily ablutions" which prepare him for his writing. He also jogs at least a mile a day, does calisthenics and works very had at keeping his 50-year-old body in shape. His idea of relaxing when he's not working? "Oh, tearing out a fence post or building some walls."

A solitary man by preference, JP claims: "I can go for days, weeks at a stretch without ever leaving my place a'tall." A self-confessed party-hater ("It's a grave stain; I never go"), JP seldom ventures beyond the confines of his "farm." But recently, he visited the United States for the first time in two years, when Celebrity managed to catch up with him. He also admitted to a bizarre hobby in his spare time. "I'm a great lobby-sitter. I will frequently go and sit in lobbies and lurk in strange places, say the West Side of New York....You see all kinds of nuts." And with JP goes one of his ubiquitous little black books in which "I write all over and put all kinds of things in it." When it's all filled up, it goes to his secretary for transcribing, to be used as possible material for a future book.

Yet for all his genteel country squire manner, British accent, tweed wardrobe and ever-present walking stick and gloves ("I have sensitive hands and I do heavy work often"), JP hails from a quintessentially American birthplace - the Bronx. The son of an Irish immigrant, he grew up in Woodlawn, attended Fordham and Manhattan Preparatory schools and then attended Trinity College in Dublin. Why did he choose to return to Ireland to live after a brief settling in New York? "Survival mostly," he reflects. "I couldn't get published here; all of my work was rejected." Yet he points out, "It's ironic that a lot of my work is based right here in this country, in this city. I know more about New York than most New Yorkers do," but he had to go to Europe to live and paid what he calls, "a desperate price."

Does he worry that the violence in Ireland will spill over onto his tranquil farm? "Oh, well, what goes on in the entire area of Ireland wouldn't equal what goes on between 59th and 100th streets in New York in one night...but it is kind of tense," he admits.

JP, who loathes interviews but who concedes it's "a necessity," is also a reluctant celebrity, dodging interviews the way other New Yorkers dodge taxicabs. "I live an isolated life in the wilds of Ireland and people really have to travel to get to me...but it goes on with some frequency." Yet as a celebrity he says, "I fall into a strange category. With someone like myself, say, someone who has read The Ginger Man and seen a photograph, they never forget me. They identify with things in the book and remember the face. I know when someone recognizes me who has read The Ginger Man. My books are, for the most part amusing, and they always break into a smile or grin as they walk past me. But they are generally very shy people themselves." So if you're a JP fan, just smile and keep walking. He'll know what you mean.

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