Why isn't JP Donleavy more popular?

However, every second-hand book shop I go into has numerous Donleavy titles, so I assume that he was very popular at one time.

My guess is that he is seen as too politically incorrect in these enlightened times and this has frightened people off, also a lot of his work explores similar themes and I wonder if critics find him predictable.

I would also recommend The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, A Singular Man and The Destinies of Darcy Dancer Gentleman.

I haven't read anything he has written since Leila in the early 80s, so I'd be interested to hear if his later books are as good as the earlier ones.

Also if anyone has a spare copy of the third Darcy Dancer book I've been trying to track that down for about a year now.

Has it ever been filmed? There are shades of it in Withnail & I, I'd say & Mike Leigh's Naked (in the way that SD behaves so reprehensively, but is still bewilderingly attractive to the female characters)

he is dead. rip.

gotta say i find the irish literary world fawning over him a bit rich - like when i read prominent feminist literary critics delighting in the time they met the author of one of the most juvenile and misogynist classic novels i've ever encountered, it seems a bit like the legend weighing too heavily.

Well idk what it says, except about the individuals in q really

scottish literature has the same "problem" with alasdair gray. he's the most feted living scottish writer (maybe in competition with jim kelman) and is pro-independence and left-wing. this means he is somehow completely beloved by all and sundry intellectuals, including some prominent feminists, despite the fact that his personal behaviour around women is at times a little bit odd, shall we say, and his writing contains a lot of infantile misogyny, with his autobiographical masterwork containing a scene where the character based on him strangles a young woman because she has rejected his romantic and sexual attentions.

Transgression as a deeply entrenched element of the artist and etc and etc

it's more a case of when and for whom the transgression is allowed.

Jesus this is scorching stuff

The antidote to Casey, the gutter companion to Myles

read the ginger man several times as a teenager (iirc as well as being scorching there was an element of sex education in it for me), haven't gone back to it since. feels like it might be worth a re-read.

It's grim but. He's an appalling prick.

yes, i remember that.