The Red-Haired Man by JP Donleavy

“The Ginger Man” by JP Donleavy is the July 2024 selection for the IrishCentral Book Club.

Each month we select a new Irish book or a great book by an Irish author for the IrishCentral Book Club and celebrate the Irish people’s amazing ability to tell a good story.

“The Ginger Man,” written by Irish-American author JP Donleavy around 1951, received early feedback from Donleavy’s buddy Brendan Behan, who told him, “This book of yours will go around the world and beat the Bible into the ground.”

After the book was rejected by numerous publishers who considered it obscene, Behan suggested Donleavy try Olympia Press in Paris. The novel was finally published in 1955, but it ended up with the pornography publisher, which infuriated Donleavy and led to a decades-long legal battle.

Despite this, and despite being banned in the United States until 1965 and in Ireland until 1968, The Ginger Man is now considered a classic, having been translated into more than two dozen languages ​​and sold over 50 million copies. In 1998, Modern Library named it one of the 100 best novels.

Synopsis of “The Ginger Man” by JP Donleavy

Set in Ireland shortly after World War II, “The Ginger Man” is an incredibly funny picaresque story about the misadventures of Sebastian Dangerfield, a young American ne’er-do-well studying at Trinity College in Dublin.

He barely has time for his studies as he avoids debt collectors, makes love to almost anything that wears a skirt, and tries to survive without having to descend into the bottomless abyss of steady work.

Dangerfield’s appetite for women, alcohol and general villainy is insatiable – and he satisfies it with endless charm.

An excerpt from “The Ginger Man” by JP Donleavy

Today, a rare spring sun. And horse-drawn carts clattering along the quays along Tara Street, and the barefoot, white-faced children screaming.

O’Keefe comes in and climbs onto a stool. He waves his backpack around on his back and looks at Sebastian Dangerfield.

“The tubs there are huge. My first bath in two months. I’m becoming more like the Irish every day. Like in the subway in the USA, you have to go through a turnstile.”

“Did you fly first or third class, Kenneth?”

“First of all, I worked my ass off washing my underwear, and nothing dries in those damn rooms at Trinity. I ended up putting my towel in the wash. Back at Harvard, I could hop into a tiled shower and slip into nice, clean underwear.”

“What would you like to drink, Kenneth?”

“Who pays?”

“I was just at my real estate agent’s with the electric fireplace.”

“Then buy me some cider. Does Marion know that you pawned the fire?”

“She’s gone. She took Felicity to visit her parents. In the Scottish moors. I think the Balscaddoon has depressed her. Scratching at the ceiling and moaning under the floor.”

“What’s it like out there? Do your eggs freeze?”

“Come over. Stay for the weekend. There’s not much food, but you can take what I have.”

“Which is nothing.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“I would. Things have gone to hell since I got here, and the guys at Trinity think I’ve got a lot of money. They think the GI Bill means I’m wasting dollars or dimes. Did you get your check?”

“I’ll check on Monday.”

“If mine doesn’t come, I’ll die. And you’re burdened with a wife and kid. Wow. But at least you can manage it. And I never managed it. Are there any loose women out there on Howth?”

“I’ll keep watch.”

“I have to go to my tutor and find out where my Greek lectures are. Nobody knows, everything is secret. There’s no more alcohol for me. I’ll come over at the weekend.”

“Kenneth, your first wife may be waiting for you.”

“Yes.”

Reviews of “The Ginger Man” by JP Donleavy

“Sebastian Dangerfield (is) one of the most outrageous villains in contemporary literature, a whoring, drinking young spendthrift.” – Time

“A wild and unpredictable outburst.” – Saturday Review

“A comedic masterpiece.” – The Nation

“Brilliant, lustful and incredibly funny.” – Dorothy Parker, Esquire

“The adventures of one incorrigible Sebastian Dangerfield. Unruly, headstrong and completely devious. This lyrical comic wonder was introduced to me by Hunter (S. Thompson). Every man should read this and spend at least one night in his life embodying this unabashed horror of an individual!” – Johnny Depp, “My Essentials” in Entertainment Weekly’s “Best of the Decade” issue (December 11, 2009)

“Evil and lyrical, a curse that sounds suspiciously like a prayer, this offbeat hybrid of Irish-American literature is still as sharp and dangerous as ever thirty years later. Sebastian Dangerfield, the lecherous, treacherous, thieving and thoroughly charming Ginger Man, seems both immortal and immoral.” – Jay McInerney

“A triumph of comic writing…no contemporary writer is better than Donleavy at his best.” – The New Yorker

“It is one of those books whose quality is clear from the very first line. On every page you can feel the immediacy that characterizes all good texts.” – VS Naipaul

About by JP Donleavy

JP Donleavy was born in New York City in 1926 to Irish parents (his mother was from Galway and his father was from Longford) and was educated there and at Trinity College, Dublin. He became an Irish citizen in 1967.

His books include The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman, A Fairy Tale of New York, Leila, and A Singular Man.

Donleavy died in Ireland in 2017 at the age of 91.

(*Summary, excerpt, reviews and biography by Grove Atlantic.)