Why isn't JP Donleavy more popular?

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Recently reread The Ginger Man, which I'd loved in my teens/early 20s, expecting to hate it now. I didn't; just had different opinions about Dangerfield.

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)

bham, Monday, 26 April 2004 10:05 (twenty years ago) link

i really love the onion eaters. it's fabulousy (in every sense of the word) funny, beautifully structured and as tight as can be.

Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Monday, 26 April 2004 10:47 (twenty years ago) link

Ginger Man Movie...

The official Ginger Man site is now under construction. The Donleavy-Mitchell Organization, headed by (son) Philip Donleavy and Robert Mitchell is producing a film adaptation of the classic in close conjunction with author and screenwriter J.P. Donleavy. The official website will soon have more news regarding all things related to The Ginger Man, including the film project.


Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Monday, 26 April 2004 10:52 (twenty years ago) link

the webiste doesn't work yet, hence not posting it.

Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Monday, 26 April 2004 10:53 (twenty years ago) link

thirteen years pass...

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.

Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Thursday, 14 September 2017 16:06 (six years ago) link

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

passé aggresif (darraghmac), Thursday, 14 September 2017 16:31 (six years ago) link

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.

-_- (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 14 September 2017 16:48 (six years ago) link

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

passé aggresif (darraghmac), Thursday, 14 September 2017 16:51 (six years ago) link

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

Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Thursday, 14 September 2017 18:30 (six years ago) link

four months pass...

Jesus this is scorching stuff

The antidote to Casey, the gutter companion to Myles

remember the lmao (darraghmac), Saturday, 20 January 2018 00:03 (six years ago) link

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.

Fizzles, Saturday, 20 January 2018 13:25 (six years ago) link

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

remember the lmao (darraghmac), Saturday, 20 January 2018 13:35 (six years ago) link

yes, i remember that.

Fizzles, Saturday, 20 January 2018 13:39 (six years ago) link


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