JP Donleavy is still watching his mighty oak grow
WHEN an unknown American student named Donleavy took time out from his Trinity College lectures in the 1950s to pen a debut novel, he had little idea just how much this literary flight of fancy would change his life.
The year was 1955, the book was The Ginger Man. In a 60-year journey where the exploits of its outrageous anti-hero Sebastian Dangerfield have prompted gasps of horror and ripples of hilarity in equal measure across the world, Donleavy’s masterpiece has gone on to modern classic status with 40 million sales in 20 languages.
Never out of print since its publication, The Ginger Man has remained one of Ireland’s top selling books as well as being included in the Modern Library’s best 100 English-language novels of the 20th century.
More importantly, it joined classics like Ulysses, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Tropic Of Cancer, and Lolita in having challenged the overly strict censorship laws of its time in the US and Europe to deliver contemporary authors a freedom of expression that is often overlooked.
“One is pleased that the book has remained popular for so long, and that it continues to be spoken about,” Donleavy told the Irish Examiner. “It is gratifying that the book is still read so widely after so many years.”
However, the literary birth of The Ginger Man was an occasion demanding more than one midwife. “It was enormously difficult to find a publisher — many were frightened to take it on due to its subject matter,” he said in a soft accent still carrying a hint of New York, despite his having lived in Ireland for the last 70 years.
HAND OF BEHAN
When I spoke to Donleavy in 2005, he revealed how it was his friendship with Brendan Behan that eventually led to the book finding someone who would take it on. “Brendan had read the original manuscript and took a keen interest in my getting it out there. After a great many publishers had rejected it, he suggested I send it to the Olympia Press in Paris.”
A publishing house noted for its connections to Beckett, Joyce and Henry Miller, Behan felt it might be a sympathetic institution for a script whose overt sexuality had raised conservative hackles everywhere else. Behan predicted that The Ginger Man was destined to “go around the world, and beat the bejaysus out of the Bible”.
Donleavy points out that the Behan connection went deeper than just literary comradeship, with the ‘Quare Fella’ contributing an integral role in the book’s creation.
“Brendan read the manuscript at various stages while I was writing it, and rather cheekily made a good number of editorial suggestions of his own on the margins. Infuriatingly, all of his suggestions made perfect sense, and I ended up using every one of them.”
For a book that would go on to become a studied academic text across the world, The Ginger Man had humble beginnings. “I agreed a deal with Olympia Press for the princely sum of £300, and I remember being paid in the basement of a shop in Soho — a rather inauspicious beginning,” he laughed.
“The publisher, Maurice Girondas, was, amongst his many guises, a purveyor of pornographic material - what would be called nowadays ‘soft porn’, I believe. When the book was eventually published, it came out as part of a pornographic series called The Traveller’s Companion. I remember well that the back jacket of The Ginger Man carried an advert for another salacious tome entitled White Thighs: The Sexual Life Of Robinson Crusoe. Naturally, I was outraged because I knew nobody would review it given its connotation to pornography.”
BUYING BACK THE BOOK
After an 18-year struggle to buy back the rights to The Ginger Man, Donleavy himself eventually bought the Olympia Press when poor trading forced Girondas to sell the business.
After a stint in the US Navy during World War Two, the young Donleavy arrived at Trinity College in 1949 with a G.I. Bill educational grant and a generous allowance for his parents.
Recalling the Dublin of the time as a city where barefoot street urchins begged pennies amidst a gray all-consuming poverty pervading the city, it was his identity as a monied Yank that inspired many of those halcyon episodes from whence the iconic Sebastian Dangerfield and the book’s other rich literary creations would eventually emerge.
“Dublin in those days was the kind of place where poor souls would walk many miles on a daily basis in the vain hope of receiving a bundle of sausages that someone might give them,” he recalled. “My life, on the other hand, was extraordinarily affluent because I had the G.I. Bill and an allowance.”
Within the high walls of Trinity, a world of gracious ease unfolded for the chosen few: “Some time ago I came across one of my old college bills detailing a cost of £18 for an entire quarter term. That included a full-time college servant, one big meal daily at the Commons, a bottle of milk every morning, and all one’s gas and electricity included in the price. It gives you some idea of the extraordinary world we lived in. The Dublin of those days never leaves my mind,” he added.
STILL FARMING
Despite his 89 years, Donleavy proclaims himself in robust good health and continues to operate the 200 acres of prime farmland and herd of 80 cattle surrounding his home, Levington Hall, on the outskirts of Mullingar. Built by Sir Richard Leving back in 1740, the atmosphere is one of antiquated ease combined with the unique spoor of it’s present owner.
On the walls are his own painted canvases — sausage dogs, men in big hats, reclining nudes, and a variety of local landscapes.
Visitors to Levington Hall over the years have included actor Johnny Depp, who has penned the foreword for the book’s new edition celebrating its 60th anniversary, and who remains interested in turning the classic tome into a film. “It is a subject that comes up regularly, with periodic bursts of enthusiasm from various film people,” Donleavy says. “Naturally, I support the idea, but have learned to take it as it comes.”
Donleavy still travels to Dublin regularly for strolls around Trinity and the streets of his youth. “Much has changed, of course, but happily, much remains the same,” he smiles. “I’ll generally know when someone who’s read The Ginger Man recognises me, they always break into a smile as they walk past.”
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