JPD: It dawns on me that TGM is pirated in Russia and probably many translations may exist and circulate, the curious thing...the only formalized thing is that some years ago one of my books called The Unexpurgated Code...that's the only thing of mine that the Russians have published and they published it in the Moscow Literary Gazette. It's a kind of a curious thing about behavior somehow that struck their interest. There's the case of this book and a lady who took the book on some sort of aircraft...was reading it and fell into the aisle of the aircraft laughing out of control and the people on the aircraft knew that she was making a connecting flight to another flight and so when she was making the connection and came to make the flight, they took the book away from her and wouldn't let her board.

JDR: Did they want it for themselves?

JPD: No, they thought she was a danger to other passengers she was laughing so much and so uncontrollable. So it's my only book that's still rather banned. In fact it's locked up in all Britain...you can't get it in a British library...it's prescribed and under lock and key.

JDR: What did it feel like to have your books banned?

JPD: Well it's not too much of a problem now...and helps authors because their books generally get better known but it was quite a serious thing in those days with TGM because there was a point where I could have been prosecuted...and the book was sort of prosecuted in a couple of places in early days.

JDR: Many of our readers are women and some of them had problems with Dangerfield's neglect of his daughter and the way he treated the women in general in his life. He always stayed true to himself, but not was not always true to everyone else.

JPD: I've always thought of it in terms of the fact that he's referred to as this sort of maverick husband and so on and reading between the lines that sometimes in the behavior in marriages in so on and so forth you find that these things in outbursts and so on...I suppose it's very graphic in Dangerfield's case but it could be a sort of normal sort of marriage kind of problem that crops up from time to time...and see, the gentleman that he's based on Mr. Stephen Gainor Crist...he always absolutely a gentleman in every way ...never struck a woman and never misbehaved basically he was someone also that when a lady entered a room would always jump to his feet and even click his heels in the southern manner and so on and so it was always difficult to say, "Well this awful person you wrote about but to point out that this awful person wasn't quite so awful."

JDR:What did you hope that your readers would take from this story?

JPD: That's interesting...I don't know that as a writer you think in those terms you think...sometimes you write and you find yourself almost wondering how it will turn out.

JDR: So does that mean that as a writer, you sometimes let the characters take you where you are going?

JPD: I'm wondering as to how premeditated writers allow themselves to get...in that way that there is a point where they really don't sometimes know..I don't think every writer sort of almost admits that at some stage his books can take on their own kind of life it selves and simply lead away into directions that they're not kind of prepared for.

JDR: Has that happened to you...that a story took you somewhere you didn't know you were going?

JPD: Maybe that is the case yes...I mean I'm writing a thing now which is sort of highly complicated but set in New York city and so on...I find you know... I'm surprised that the work will take itself off on various tangents that I hadn't firstly anticipated.

JDR: So it develops a life of it's own?

JPD: I don't know whether you...happen to know the book The Lady Who Liked Clean Restrooms? It's the only book I've ever written which has one particular distinction about it...no one to date (he chuckles) has ever, ever said a bad word about it or criticized it or received at bad review...or a critical review. It's the only thing I've ever written which has totally...I remember when it did get reviewed in America it received rave reviews coast to coast...every single periodical...and the New York Times sometimes used to wait to sort of trounce anything...I think I had a lot of enemies sort of hidden on the New York Times without knowing it and I waited til the end I said it was the most extraordinary...I had this book that's about these very attractive and they used the term rave reviews and I said this is the ideal time for the Irish, for rather the New York Times to finally...absolutely crucify this work and suddenly there on the fax machine came this review with an accompanying letter isn't this fantastic? Read this! So I...got never...a discouraging word

JDR: How long ago did you write The Lady Who Liked Clean Rest Rooms?

JPD: Well it's a fairly recent one along with another book called Wrong Information Is Being Given Out at Princeton...it's another book that's rarely got a discouraging word

JDR: We talked about other books of his and he added...

JPD: The Lady Who Liked Clean Rest Rooms isn't too long you see...it's purely about a woman from start to finish and it's...it's quite...I was surprised that it was received in the way it was.

JDR:I asked if he like the character.

JPD: Oh well yes, it was someone that I sort of knew with stories that had happened to the person...it was just an incident. And then the three books that I'm writing now about NYC, I've written two of them already.

JDR: I commented that he was certainly a busy gentleman and thanked him for taking the time to visit with me.

JPD: Well it's a nice contrast to have because life where I live here is so isolated that sometimes of you don't make a point to getting out..if you don't get outside the gates for a couple of weeks you don't see another human being.

JDR: You grew up not far from Woodlawn Cemetery and you have had a cemetery and remains of a mausoleum on land that you own. I've read that you paint cemeteries and include them in your books...death is a focal point for you in many books. What is there about them that engages you?

JPD: Yes I have a few paintings of cemeteries and indeed most gallery owners don't want to hang them for good reason I suppose. I did have a couple once turn up asking could they buy one because they couldn't ever find one. And they did buy one but they had to come here to get it. One of my gallery owners wouldn't want people to have any pictures like that.

JDR: And you included a mausoleum in The Singular Man, is that correct?

JPD: Yes indeed that's one of the big things about the book, I remember that's the thing that..you've heard of Mr Redford? Robert Redford...and at one stage Sam Speigel was thinking of making a picture of it and many years..well Sam's dead now he died a few years back and at some place where Redford, whom I know a little bit over the period of years...after Speigel died I wrote him a note and said to him "How would you like to give 'A Singular Man' a try again and his letter back was fascinating because "I'm getting to close now to having to build my own mausoleum"...and the reality of playing a role had got too close.

JDR: Since we are talking about death...death is a reoccurring theme through some of your books.

JPD: Yes indeed because the only job I ever had in my life was to...on a summer vacation from school was to go and work in the cemetery cutting grass so that must have been a big influence and I lived...where I grew up in a community called Woodlawn there's a cemetery, Woodlawn Cemetery and it's one of the world's famous cemeteries because it's so beautiful...rather like a great park and it'd full of mausoleums and so on. And so this must have had a long kind of influence, and I house I owned previously to the one I'm in, that had a cemetery, an ancient cemetery on the land and indeed today some lady friend was bringing it up that she wants to be buried in this cemetery and I'm actually putting a cemetery into this place I live at. (he chuckles).

JDR:You might as well LOL.

JPD: It's not cheap to buy a plot now...I have the land here...thought maybe I'll put together a small cemetery.

JDR: May we talk about the TGM being made into a film with Johnny Depp, who could introduce Sebastian to a whole new audience of people? How does it feel to have a character, who's been a part of your life for fifty years now become hugely popular character on film?

JPD: Well I guess it's come up..you know a few actors have played the role...Richard Harris played the role of TGM and one or two other people Nicol Williamson, some people know of his name...he's a brilliant actor and played this role tremendously well, a very eccentric gentleman...and it was always a worrying thing because some other people I saw attempt the role just simply couldn't play it...where as the one thing one seems to find with Mr. Depp that he's a great perfectionist and anything I've seen of his being quite unbelievable and so I'm fascinated by the fact that he would tackle this. It's very hard for an actor to know just how they...I always worry about the fact that authors, you know, kind of don't know what to say and in fact, the fact that they can deal with an actor to whom they don't have to say anything is tremendous because you know that he's going to think this out and play it and so it's a big lucky break as it were, because in some ways one always was worried about you know, who might tackle this.

JDR: Sebastian Dangerfield will find new life today and a new audience after fifty years, what's it like to have your work as an author continue to find new audience?

JPD: Yes, and indeed I've been a playwright and you know my plays would turn up in various places and be performed and I guess this would be the first film, actual film...a full length feature film to come out of one of my pieces of work. One of the problems has always been the fact that controlling my work and owning the rights and so on I've always been in a position to say "no" to something. So in the Hollywood tradition usually most authors find their work is taken over and a lot of them regret that happening. In effect where I've come across it, the author who is in the process of selling a film right is always advised to stick with his property and even must insist upon writing the screenplay himself and where this has happened the films have always to turned out to be fantastically good and so here is a case where it's almost ideal where you have this player whose one of the most brilliant actors of all time probably and it's just a lucky break for me and if things go wrong as things can...well then that's that, but on the other hand you are in sort of a position to have confidence in what you are doing. The lucky thing with someone like Mr. Depp is the fact that his power that he has just as a player allows you to actually go and make the picture as say the way that the director wants to make it and Mr. Depp wants to play it. They've got this freedom, that's the thing because of his box office power.

JDR: Isn't it wonderful that it will stay true to your work?

JPD: Yes that is the biggest and best characteristic you can come up with, because you just know that these people who are making the thing, the actors and players are the people I've always had great faith in actors and people and in fact always am there to listen to anything they want to say and have always admired the way they can take words where they can turn something into a living thing.

JDR: I comment that it's magical, the way two people, the actor and the writer, come together to make a character come to life on stage or screen...

JPD: Yes, and a actor does that and it's tremendous how the time they spend and devote...it makes you realize that this is one of the great art forms, being an actor.

JDR: When I was reading the last chapter of TGM it brought back memories to me of a children's story that my Mom used to read to me and that was The Gingerbread Man...and the last bit of the story goes, "Run run as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread man" and it seemed to me that that was what Sebastian had done...run! Run from one situation into another. Was that something that you alluded to or was it just a coincidence?

JPD: No curiously enough somewhere the very words that you've just recited... somewhere and it would have been some strange little strange kind of over tone and I'm sure that must has crossed my mind because when I named the book TGM we were looking for a title ...it was originally called just "SD" ...the initials and the publisher, which was Maurice Girodias of the Olympia Press wanted another title because he really wanted to go out and sell it as a pornographic book or any title that could be more of less cover that kind of quality that he thought his readers or his buyers required. And so I just simply suggested the title be The Ginger Man.

JDR: In TGM, other than death, sex is a really strong theme...Sebastian gets plenty and poor O'Keefe can't get any at all from anyone. Surface was prudish yet underneath...

JPD: I'm dealing with my archive at the moment so someone has actually gone through manuscripts and things and we have his letters and it's based on a actual character...his letters actually were laid out sort of showing this archival matter along with the fact of people know what The Ginger Man is all about. And there are these letters actually practically laying our Kenneth O'Keefe's life...from the actual man himself...so it was very kind of, I suppose factually reported..his life. He didn't marry, is retired and still lives in Ireland.

JDR: I read that in the writing of the script for TGM that you are including Brendan Behan.

JPD: Yes, this is quite true because he's not...he...just makes an appearance in the book in the catacombs as Barney Berry, and when Shane McGowan got interested in this role in part, I realized that one had to actually write! So TGM will be one of the few films where a character is expanded upon in the film, where he doesn't exist in the book. If Shane McGowan is anything like you know he can play a brilliant Brendan Behan, so we are looking forward to seeing..they are pals together I think - Mr. McGowan and Mr. Depp.

One of my books which isn't a novel, it's called The History of the Ginger Man, in it there's a great deal about Brendan Behan, some of his conversation and behavior and everything else. So I have a book already that can be used as some base for him drawing his character. Things he would say and how he behaved so he was quite a character.

JDR: Sebastian and the guys were all running amuck in the city, in the catacombs...that was run by a gay man and we wondered what the view towards gay people was at the time?

JPD: In Ireland, curiously, a very repressed country, so repressed that if you were gay in Ireland in those days it just simply didn't matter. It was quite the opposite thing...you know they were just strange people and were accepted as just strange (different) Curiously Ireland as permissive in the sense that gay people became quite a society in Dublin, because a lot of...um..during the war Ireland was the only place left in Europe which had food after the war (no rationing) so people could come to it (Ireland) and enjoy life. Dublin actually became a sort of homosexual meeting ground. People would come from long distances and visit in Dublin...it had two or three pubs which were gay pubs and things. (Because there was no rationing after the war) Dublin had everything then.

JDR: In TGM you sent O'Keefe off to Paris and that city was also a part of The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B. Was Paris "the" place to be then - just like it was in the 1920s?

JPD: Yes a lot of people gravitated to Paris after the war and it had the sort of quality about it.

JDR: Did you and your friends go there?

JPD: Yes I would go there and spend time in Paris and one or two friends at Trinity, in fact the model for Balthazar is in fact a Frenchman as is described of course and he was a friend of mine at Trinity and I knew him very well, in fact I had to go, I was invited to Paris to attend this enormous dinner of 400 - 500 people and I was up on the stage and my friend was...on stage to introduce me and he said that, "I just want you to know that Mr. Donleavy is an author who has written a book called The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B and I'd like everyone here to understand that my Nanny never did all those things to me that he said that she did." And there was a scene which you couldn't believe would ever happen that a character in a book...(and the inspiration ) was up on stage coming out with this surprising remark. I nearly fell through the floor.

We soon after concluded our discussion with promises to be kept and with his best wishes to us and his thanks for our interest in his book.

I visited with Mr. Donleavy for close to two hours and the time sped past with much laughter, many stories and a shared love of the written word and respect for a man named Mr. Johnny Depp.

I am profoundly grateful to Mr. Donleavy and his business partner for his constant support and encouragement in making this Q&A become a conversational dream come true.

I hope we will be blessed with more from Mr. Donleavy as time goes by.

- Karen Purvis

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