"JP Donleavy: his life and times"

by Belinda McKeon

Born in Brooklyn in 1926 to Irish immigrant parents, Donleavy was educated in a New York Jesuit school and served in the US navy during the second World War.

In 1946, using the GI Bill, he moved to Dublin to study microbiology at Trinity College. During his first years in Dublin, Donleavy attempted to forge a career as a painter and gave three exhibitions of his own work. But he decided to turn to novel-writing after a London gallery owner told him an unknown could never be successful.

A central figure in the bohemian circles of postwar Dublin, he was well acquainted with writers including Brendan Behan and Anthony Cronin, as well as with Gainor Christ [sic] [Crist], another American studying at Trinity on the GI Bill, Christ became Donleavy's inspiration for the book that would become The Ginger Man, and for its protagonist Sebastian Dangerfield, a lying and philandering alcoholic who neglects his duties as a student and as a father to throw himself into a disastrous binge in 1950s Dublin. A raucous and daring portrait of what was then a strictly alternative Ireland, The Ginger Man took Donleavy several years to complete and met with rejection from several US publisher nervous of its sexual content.

The first person to read the manuscript was actually Behan, who broke into Donleavy's Wicklow cottage while he was away and left comments scribbled in the margins of the text. It was Behan, too, who encouraged Donleavy to send The Ginger Man to the Paris-based Olympia Press, which agreed to publish it. Unknown to Donleavy, however, by including Donleavy's "literary" work in a pornographic series which had attracted negative attention from the French authorities, the publisher hoped to avoid prosecution. As a consequence, even though it would mean a certain amount of expurgation of content, Donleavy arranged for a UK edition to be published in 1956. It met with critical acclaim and the immediate establishment of Donleavy's international reputation. The move led, however, to litigation from the French publisher. Clerical pressure, meanwhile, led to the withdrawal of a 1959 stage version of the novel. The unexpurgated edition was published in 1963, and the novel has never once been out of print.

Donleavy, who became an Irish citizen in 1967, has since written a total of 11 novels, most recently Wrong Information is Being Given Out at Princeton (1998), as well as a number of novellas, plays and non-fiction books. Donleavy now lives in Levington Park, a historic estate once owned by the actress Julie Andrews, near Mullingar, Co Westmeath.

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