The Onion Eaters (31 page)

J. P. Donleavy was born in New York City in 1926 and educated there and at Trinity College, Dublin. In addition to
The Onion Eaters
his works include
The Ginger Man, A Singular Man, The Saddest Summer of Samuel S
and
The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B
(1968); a book of short pieces,
Meet My Maker The Mad Molecule
and four plays,
The Ginger Man, Fairy Tales of New York, A Singular Man
and
The Saddest Summer of Samuel S.
All these have been published in Penguins as has
A Fairy Tale of New York.
His latest books are
The Unexpurgated Code
(1975) and
The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman
(1978).

Presented at the Fortune Theatre, London, in 1959. Presented at The Orpheum Theatre, New York, in 1963.

Presented at the Pembroke Theatre, Croydon, England, in December 1960 and then transferred to the Comedy Theatre, London, in January 1961. Winner of the
Evening
Standard
‘Most Promising Playwright of the Year’ Award in 1960.

Presented at the Cambridge Arts Theatre, Cambridge, England, in October 1964 and at the Comedy Theatre, London, later that month.

and

‘In the person of
The
Ginger
Man,
Sebastian Dangerfield, Donleavy created one of the most outrageous scoundrels in contemporary fiction, a whoring, boozing young wastrel who sponges off his friends and beats his wife and girl friends. Donleavy then turns the moral universe on its head by making the reader love Dangerfield for his killer instinct, flamboyant charm, wit, flashing generosity – and above all for his wild, fierce, two-handed grab for every precious second of life’ –
Time
Magazine

‘No one who encounters him will forget Sebastian Dangerfield’–
New
York
Herald
Tribune

His future is disastrous, his present indecent, his past divine. He is Darcy Dancer, scion of the gentry, youthful squire of Andromeda Park and rider of horses and housekeepers to hounds and to bed. His adventures as a vagabond across country and in bohemian Dublin in search of the lost glories to which he was born are ferociously comic, and hilariously sad.

And what else did you expect from the great Donleavy? This is one of his finest novels, brim-full of zest and life.

Balthazar B is the world’s last shy elegant young man. Born to riches in Paris and raised in lonely splendour, his life spreads to prep school in England. There he is befriended by the world’s most beatific sinner, the noble little Beefy. And in holidays spent in Paris Balthazar B falls upon love and sorrow with his beautiful governess Miss Hortense, to lose her and live out lonely London years, waking finally to the green sunshine of Ireland and Trinity College. Here, reunited with Beefy, he is swept away to the high and low life of Dublin until their university careers are brought to an inglorious end. They return to London, there to take their tricky steps into marriage, Beefy in search of riches, Balthazar in search of love.

‘Donleavy at his best, eloquent, roguish and at last at one with his world and the terrible sadness it contains’ –
Newsweek

‘It can’t be, you’re not, are you?’

‘Not what.’

‘Samuel S.’

‘You don’t know me.’

‘You are. Gee, I mean I’ve never seen a picture of you, but somehow I wouldn’t miss you anywhere. You know a friend of my uncle who’s a professor at NYU, he knows you. He said you were one of the points of interest in Europe.’

‘Despair is the word.’

‘Gee it’s true, that’s just, ha ha like what he said you might say … by the way, I’m Abigail.’

‘In this book of short pieces Donleavy has given us the lyric poems to go with his epics. They are almost all elegies – sad songs of decayed hope, bitter little jitter-buggings of an exasperated soul, with barracuda bites of lacerating humour to bring blood-red into the grey of fate. These stories and sketches move between Europe and America, New York and Dublin and London. America is always the spoiled Paradise, the land of curdled milk and maggoty honey. The place that used to get you in the end but that now does it in the beginning’ –
Newsweek

‘The stories are swift, imaginative, beautiful, and funny, and no contemporary writer is better than J. P. Donleavy at his best’ – the
New
Yorker

His giant mausoleum abuilding, George Smith, the mysterious man of money, lives in a world rampant with mischief, of chiselers and cheats. Having side-stepped slowly away down the little alleys of success he tiptoes through a luxurious, lonely life between a dictatorial Negress housekeeper and two secretaries, one of whom, Sally Tomson, the gay wild and willing beauty, he falls in love with.

‘George Smith is such a man as Manhattan’s subway millions have dreamed of being’ –
Time
Magazine

‘A masterpiece of writing about love’ –
National
Observer

‘… an utterly irresistible broth of a book’ –
Daily
Telegraph
 

‘Fantastically inventive … madly funny. He is an original and almost irresistible writer’ –
Sunday
Times

‘Cornelius Christian is J. P. Donleavy’s new hero, person, protagonist, figure-head, creature. He struts and weaves and shrugs and punches his way through the pages of
A
Fairy
Tale
of
New
York.
I think he is Mr Donleavy’s best piece of man-making since Sebastian Dangerfield in the good old ginger days. The book is fast, funny and addictive’ – Robert Nye in the
Guardian

‘Irony, farce, satire, and lyric’ –
Spectator

A
Complete
Manual
of
Survival
and
Manners

No stone is left unturned in this ruthless guide to social etiquette, no left turn unstoned: even the most shameful and embarrassing occasions can be used to your advantage. With this book in your hand, Duchesses cease to appal, long-and well-lost friends to mystify: at a word, with Donleavy’s help, you can smash a rival’s social pretensions and vindicate your own with ease. Whether you’re puzzled by the meaning of life or merely lacking the basic human decencies, rest assured that you can reach the top, Socially Registered or not. For Donleavy shows you how!