# J. P. Donleavy

James Patrick Donleavy, popularly known as J. P. Donleavy, (23 April 1926 – 11 September 2017) was an American-Irish writer, novelist, and playwright. He achieved international acclaim with his 1955 picaresque novel The Ginger Man, which was initially banned for obscenity. Since its original publication in Paris, The Ginger Man has become an international bestseller, selling 50 million copies worldwide. The book has never been out of print, has been translated into over 30 languages, and is one of the best-selling books of all time. It was subsequently named by the Modern Library in 1998 as, "one of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century."
Donleavy is also the author of A Fairy Tale of New York, published in 1973, and The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, published in 1968. He received the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award, funded by Bord Gáis Energy, for his contributions to Irish literature in 2015.

## Early life

Donleavy was born in Brooklyn, to Irish immigrants Margaret and Patrick Donleavy, and grew up in the Bronx. His father was a firefighter, and his mother came from a wealthy background. He had a sister, Mary Rita, and a younger brother. He received his education at various schools in the United States, then served in the US Navy during World War II. After the war ended, he moved to Ireland. In 1946 he began studying bacteriology at Trinity College Dublin, but left in 1949 before taking a degree.

## Career

Donleavy's first published work was a short story entitled A Party on Saturday Afternoon, which appeared in the Dublin literary periodical Envoy in 1950. He gained critical acclaim with his first novel, The Ginger Man (1955), which is one of the Modern Library 100 best novels. The novel, of which Donleavy's friend and fellow writer Brendan Behan was the first person to read the completed manuscript, was banned in Ireland and the United States by reason of obscenity. The Ginger Man was known for its outspoken and comic lewdness. Lead character Sebastian Dangerfield was in part based on Trinity College companion Gainor Crist, an American Navy veteran also studying at Trinity College on the G.I. Bill, whom Donleavy once described in an interview as a "saint", though of a Rabelaisian kind.
Correctly or incorrectly, his initial works are sometimes grouped with the kitchen sink artists as well as the "Angry Young Men". Another novel, A Fairy Tale of New York, provided the title of the song "Fairytale of New York".
In March 2007, Donleavy was the castaway on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.
In 2015, Donleavy was the recipient of the Bob Hughes Lifetime Achievement Award at the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards.
In 2016, Trinity College Dublin awarded him with an honorary doctorate.

## Personal life

Donleavy declared himself to be an atheist at the age of 14. In 1946, he married Valerie Heron; the couple had two children: Philip (born 1951) and Karen (born 1955). They divorced in 1969 and he remarried in 1970 to Mary Wilson Price; that union ended in divorce in 1989. In 2011, it was reported that Donleavy had not fathered his two children with Price. A DNA test in the early 1990s had confirmed that Rebecca was the daughter of brewing scion Kieran Guinness, and Rory was the son of Kieran's older brother Finn, whom Price married after her divorce from Donleavy. "My interest is only to look after the welfare of the child," Donleavy told The Times, "and after a certain stage, you can't worry about their parentage".
He lived at Levington Park, a country house on 200 acres (0.81 km$^2$) directly on Lough Owel, near Mullingar, County Westmeath, from 1972. Throughout much of his life, he was known as Mike by close friends, though the origins of this nickname are unclear.
Donleavy died on 11 September 2017, aged 91.

## List of works

* The Ginger Man (novel) Olympia Press, Paris 1955
* What They Did in Dublin, with The Ginger Man (a play) MacGibbon & Kee, London 1961
* The Ginger Man (play) Random House, New York 1961
* Fairy Tales of New York (play), Penguin, UK 1961 Random House, New York 1961
* A Singular Man Atlantic-Little, Brown, Boston 1963
* Meet My Maker the Mad Molecule (stories/sketches) Atlantic-Little, Brown, Boston 1964
* A Singular Man (play) The Bodley Head, UK 1965
* The Saddest Summer of Samuel S (novella) Delacorte Press, New York 1966
* The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B (novel) Delacorte Press, New York 1968
* The Onion Eaters (novel) Delacorte Press, New York 1971
* The Plays of JP Donleavy Delacorte Press, New York 1972
* A Fairy Tale of New York (novel) Delacorte Press, New York 1973
* J.P. Donleavy: The Plays Penguin, UK 1974
* The Unexpurgated Code: A Complete Manual of Survival & Manners (non-fiction) Delacorte Press, New York 1975
* The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman. Atlantic Monthly Press. 1991. ISBN 978-0-87113-289-5. (novel) Franklin Library, Franklin Center, Pennsylvania 1977
* Schultz (novel) Delacorte Press, New York 1979
* Leila. Atlantic Monthly Press. 1994. ISBN 978-0-87113-288-8. (novel) Franklin Library, Franklin Center, Pennsylvania 1983
* De Alfonce Tennis... (novel) Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1984
* J. P. Donleavy's Ireland... (non-fiction) Viking, New York, 1986 (Michael Joseph, London 1986)
* Are You Listening Rabbi Löw (novel), Viking, London 1987
* A Singular Country (nonfiction) Ryan, Peterborough, UK 1989
* That Darcy, That Dancer, That Gentleman (novel) Viking, London 1990
* The History of the Ginger Man (nonfiction) Houghton Mifflin, New York, 1994|Viking, London 1994
* The Lady Who Liked Clean Rest Rooms. Macmillan. 1998. ISBN 978-0-312-18734-7. (novella) Thornwillow Press, US 1995
* An Author and His Image (collected short pieces – nonfiction) Viking, London 1997
* Wrong Information is Being Given Out at Princeton (novel) Thomas Dunn-St. Martins Press, New York (Viking, London) 1998
* A Letter Marked Personal (novel) The Lilliput Press, Arbour Hill, Dublin 2019