J. P. Donleavy

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".

Donleavy lived in London in the 1950s and then Maughold, Isle of Man in the 1960s, where the two children were educated. From 1972, Donleavy lived at Levington Park, a country house on 200 acre directly on Lough Owel, near Mullingar, County Westmeath. 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

Novels

• The Ginger Man (Olympia, 1955)
• A Singular Man (Little, Brown, 1963)
• The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B (Delacorte, 1968)
• The Onion Eaters (Delacorte, 1971)
• A Fairy Tale of New York (Delacorte, 1973)
• The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman (Delacorte, 1977)
• Schultz (Delacorte, 1979)
• Leila: Further in the Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman (Delacorte, 1983)
• Are You Listening Rabbi Löw (Viking, 1987)
• That Darcy, That Dancer, That Gentleman (Penguin, 1990)
• Wrong Information is Being Given Out at Princeton (Little, Brown, 1998)
• A Letter Marked Personal (Lilliput, 2019)

Plays

• The Ginger Man (1959)
• Fairy Tales of New York (1960)
• A Singular Man (1964)
• The Saddest Summer of Samuel S (1972)
• The Plays of J. P. Donleavy (Delacorte, 1972)
• The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B (1981)

Short fiction

• Meet My Maker the Mad Molecule (Little, Brown, 1964)
• The Saddest Summer of Samuel S (Delacorte, 1966)
• The Lady Who Liked Clean Rest Rooms (Thornwillow, 1995)

Other books

• The Unexpurgated Code: A Complete Manual of Survival & Manners (Delacorte, 1975)
• De Alfonce Tennis: The Superlative Game of Eccentric Champions (Dutton, 1984)
• J. P. Donleavy's Ireland: In All Her Sins and Some of Her Graces (Viking, 1986)
• A Singular Country (Norton, 1989)
• The History of the Ginger Man (Viking, 1994)
• An Author and His Image: The Collected Short Pieces (Viking, 1997)

References

References

1. . (14 September 2017). ["JP Donleavy obituary: acclaimed author of 'a bawled-out comic song of sex'"](https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/jp-donleavy-obituary-acclaimed-author-of-a-bawled-out-comic-song-of-sex-1.3220783). *[[The Irish Times]]*.
2. (September 2017). "An Appraisal: A Toast for J. P. Donleavy". The New York Times.
3. (2015). "The Ginger Man: 60th Anniversary Limited Edition". The Lilliput Press.
4. McEntee, John. (4 August 2010). "A singular Life: J. P. Donleavy on his fascinating life since The Ginger Man". [[The Independent]].
5. (2015). "JP Donleavy's The Ginger Man at 60". The Irish Times.
6. (2011). "The Ginger Man: Analysis of Major Characters". EBSCO.
7. (1998). "100 Best Novels". Penguin Random House Publications.
8. (17 June 2021). "J.P. Donleavy: Irish-American, American in Ireland, or Irish?".
9. "Author of the Ginger Man JP Donleavy - an obituary".
10. . (14 September 2017). ["JP Donleavey, author of The Ginger Man, dies"](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-41265684). *BBC*.
11. Campbell, James. (14 September 2017). "JP Donleavy obituary". [[The Guardian]].
12. Gussow, Mel. (28 June 2000). "The Classic With a Pornographic Pedigree". The New York Times.
13. De Breffny, Brian. (1983). "Ireland: A Cultural Encyclopedia". Thames and Hudson.
14. Kurt Jacobsen, 'An Interview with J. P. Donleavy' ''Journal of Irish Literature'' January 1978
15. Campbell, James. (26 June 2004). "The spice of life". [[The Guardian]].
16. "Desert Island Discs: JP Donleavy".
17. . (25 November 2015). ["Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards 2015 winning authors revealed"](http://www.irishbookawards.irish/2015/11/25/bord-gais-energy-irish-book-awards-2015-winning-authors-revealed/).
18. "Registrar : Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin, Ireland".
19. (April 11, 1998). "Me and My God J. P. Donleavy Talks to Frances Welch". Opinions Electronic Telegraph.
20. (15 September 2017). "JP Donleavy, author whose debut novel The Ginger Man shocked society". The Independent.
21. (16 September 2017). "Maughold memories of JP Donleavy". Manx Radio.
22. (5 August 2010). "A singular man: J P Donleavy on his fascinating life since The Ginger".
23. Gates, Anita. (13 September 2017). "J.P. Donleavy, Acclaimed Author of 'The Ginger Man,' Dies at 91". [[The New York Times]].