The Ginger Man: The Complete and Unexpurgated Edition

I read this book in awe, my jaw hitting the floor with each beautiful sentence that went by. Donleavy was a master wordsmith, who created an amazing character in Sebastian Dangerfied. He's pathetic, he's horrible, he's a waste of space, and yet Donleavy somehow makes him kind of likable, and finds the beauty in this very human story.

JPD launched a storied literary career with a masterpiece in The Ginger Man. Sebastian, which means "venerable," is a man perpetually on the brink of utter madness brought largely upon himself. He is a Trinity College Dublin man whose condition is given to "staving off starvation" and whose only option when things always get worse is to "cheer-up or die." When you consider that JPD was first a painter, it's understandable that his writing style is pointillistic. The syntax like Dangerfield is non-traditional presented like life itself in fragments of which to make sense. His little lines of stacked type at the end of each chapter are works of art in themselves: "All the way/From the land/Of Kerry/Is a man/From the dead/Gone merry./ This man/Stood in the street/ And stamped his feet/ And no one heard him." Here the work winds from prose to poetry to create an endearing human quality and even tenderness that enables us to forgive the ginger man for his outrageousness. What would he and his poor as Pozzo crones do with a lot of money? Drink at every pub from College Green to Kerry over the course of a year and then "I'll arrive on Dingle Peninsula walk out on the end of Slea Head, beat, wet and penniless. I'll sit there and weep into the sea." Very Dylan Thomas. A touch Kafkaesque. Joycean. JPD's Ginger Man is worthy of a higher position on Random House's "Best Novels of the 20th Century." His body of work, including "Darcy Dancer," "Balthazar B," "The Singluar Man," "The Onion Eaters," "Wrong Info at Princeton" and "Samuel S." is astonishing in its lyric virtuosity, power and originality. When will the mavens of Hollywood treat us to tales by JPD that shimmer and dance upon the silverscreen? And when will the good people in Stockholm see the light on JPD's vast, rich, enduring, literary legacy?

Donleavy breaks every rule of writing and comes up with masterpieces; been doing it for fifty years. In the "Ginger Man," one of his best, he dissects the mind and spirit of a rogue, dragging the reader in and out of Irish saloons, through troubled affairs,into hot water and nasty entanglements, and, despite the decadence of Dangerfield, you enjoy the scamp's company. It's the best trip you'll ever take to Ireland.

CAUTION: This book is not for everyone (ie--if you expect your reading to provide a strong moral and ethical paradigm, might as well skip this book). If, however, you can enjoy a book about a boozing expatriot in Ireland who disregards all responsibilities (including his family) and owes money to everyone he has come into contact with, then read on. This is not to say that Donleavy necessarily endorses a life of drinking and whoring, he is merely writing about it (more drinking than whoring). Fans of literature, this book cannot be ignored. Donleavy breaks every rule in the book with his poetic sensibilites. He writes with a flourish and a sense of imagery that is both uncommon and incredible. I cannot say that I have much regard for the modern library or their lists, but I can see why they included this book in their "Top 100 Books of the 20th Century in the English Language." This is a book I will not easily forget.

Quite simply, one of the five funniest books of all time, I rate this alongside Confederacy of Dunces, Catch-22, Bombardiers, and Vonnegut's best work. It tells the story of an usually drunken American, Sebastian Dangerfield, studying at Trinity College, Dublin, and his trials and tribulations of him, his wife and friends, colleagues, and fellow drinkers. Written in 1965 and hailed as "A triumph of comic writing..." by The New Yorker it is crying-out-loud funny. The scene where Sebastian tries to buy condoms in 1960s Ireland is alone worth the price of the book. Friends raved about this for years, and I'm still kicking myself for waiting this long to read it. The best story I've ever seen about contemporary man trying to find pleasure in life without working in any sense of the word. I am more apt to give comedies a one, but this is definitely a ten