Customer Reviews

The Ginger Man

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

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

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.

The Ginger Man is funny--in fact hilaious at times, it is well written, and it moves relatively quickly. Those are all excellent qualities that I love in a book, but sadly this story also just never really moves. The characters aren't particularly engaging, even Sebastian Dangerfield who is the focus of all the action in the story. He is certainly infuriating as a lazy, abusive, self centered, morally corrupt person, which is not a problem for me since some of the best chracters in fiction share these qualities, but I don't care about his flaws or the people who he manipulates and disregards throughout the book. The book is not particularly memorable and never made me stop and think or particularly care what it was saying, so as I see it the book fails in the end. Many critics and well respected authors love this book, who I assume appreciate its unique (for the 1950's at least) free-flowing style and graphic depictions of various types of debauchery, but as a casual reader it was no better than average.

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.

I do admit to being surprised by the rash behavior and lewd thoughts of the novel's main man, Sebastian Dangerfield. Unless beating women and neglecting responsibilities are acts you consider virtuous, of course you will be appalled by what he does and thinks, and maybe by what his friends do and think as well. If you are easily offended by crude language, insensitive drunks, and the satisfaction of carnal wants in written form, then save yourself some frustration. Don't read the book.

But I never felt Sebastian was lacking in morality. He is often clearly unable to act in a way that parallels his conscience. He treats his women poorly and violently, but he cares for them in his simplistic, misguided way, and they do come back to him in spite of his flaws. It is not expected that the world of fiction should reflect our idea of an ideal world. And Donleavy doesn't satisfy that popular desire.

Instead what he does is to explore a man who is unrestricted (to an extreme) by the mores of the status quo. He thrives on chaos and does not hesitate to create it (consciously or not). He cannot help but gratify his immediate and basest needs, and so is motivated by sex and drink, and obsessed with fantasies of wealth, all the while neglecting relationships and his law studies.

I found the book quite funny, but humor is relative and depends on the interpretation of meanings. Sebastian, like Melville's Bartleby, declines to accept what the world tries to make him do. He avoids restraints like bills and rent, work and raising children. But unlike Bartleby, he is full of life, violent and sexual, active and daring. Sebastian's flaws may be inexcusable, but Donleavy lets us step out of a world that would ordinarily be horrified by such people, and shows us the possibilities of pure, delicious disorder.

Wow, what a dichotomy! Part of me is repulsed by this amoral mass of human flesh called Sebastian Dangerfield. A womanizer, a drunk, a man one step ahead of the bill collectors, living with and off of the other characters that he draws into his life. On the other hand, I was drawn to him and his story. First, because the narrative style is engaging. A mix of descriptions, thoughts, bits of thoughts, parts of dreams blended in with the usual expectation of one character talking to another. I have not seen writing like this. However, how can I be interested in this human refuse called Sebastian Dangerfield? The answer, for me, is that he does things and gets away with things that I think deep down, if we are honest with ourselves, we wish we could get away with. For those that see no value to this story, I think it is necessary to separate the morals of the character from the interesting way that the author tells the story. In doing so, I think he brings us face-to-face with the notion that such evil lurks in all of us and that is what may be unacceptable for some. On another level, we are presented with a much more interesting life, albeit despicable, than maybe most of us lead and that too may be unacceptable for some. If you look at this book solely based on the lack of scruples of the main character, one could call this a disgusting book. However, put that story in a different narrative style than most of us expect and have a character that is more alive than most of us will ever be and you have a compelling novel.

Donleavy is indeed the most obvious progeny of the Great Joyce. The Ginger Man fits well alongside Kingsley Amis's hilarious "Lucky Jim" and other midcentury farces. Although Donleavy is a native New Yorker, his descriptions of and ear for Ireland are poetic and endearing, despite the scurillous nature of Sebastian (not Rodney) Dangerfield. To those reviewers who have to love and/or picture themselves as the protagonist of each book they read, I extend my pity for the self-deprivation they surroud themselves with, not allowing enjoyment of truly great writing for fear of having someone think they approve of drunken wife-beating rotters. The Ginger Man is a beatifully crafted work of social commentary, as well as being able to elicit belly laughs while being read on a city bus. Of course you're much more likely to sympathize with Sebastian's misanthropy if you are riding said bus with your tackle exposed.

Anybody who likes his protagonists to be paragons of virtue will be sorely disappointed with this book, because Sebastian Dangerfield is the most archetypal of antiheroes. He is so depraved, so immoral, so belligerent, and has so little regard his family, for humanity, and for himself, that this novel can only be understood within the realm of the comically absurd.

Dangerfield is an Irish American living in Dublin with his long-suffering wife and baby daughter, both of whom he physically assaults when he is irked. He is supposed to be studying law at Trinity College, but accomplishes very little of it what with all his drinking, loafing, extramarital affairs, and general womanizing. He hangs around with several loser friends, one of whom is another American transplant named O'Keefe who is so unlucky with women that he retreats to Paris to dabble in homosexuality and pederasty, and then returns to Ireland to try to lie his way into a job as a chef. Much of the narration is an erratic mix of sentence fragments and complete sentences that alternate freely between first and third person and present and past tense, echoing Dangerfield's cluttered, harried, and often drunken thoughts.

So why read a book about such a moron as Dangerfield? Because he has a unique perspective on his life and his surroundings, there is depth to his thoughts, there is spice in his speech; his commentary on Ireland, its people, and Irish-English antipathy ("Jesus was a mick and Judas was a lime") is interesting if not enlightening. What makes this novel succeed as an unlikely comic work is that Donleavy writes with an ironic levity that suggests Dangerfield is more to be pitied than censured, even during his cruelest moments. The world would be a kinder, gentler place without its Sebastian Dangerfields, but it would also be more boring. And somebody has to wear the kangaroo costume.