Customer Reviews

Wrong Information is Being Given Out at Princeton: The Chronicle of One of the Strangest Stories Ever to Be Rumoured about Around New York

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If you enjoy Donleavy, you should give this novel a try; it's marvelously well-written. If you like his prose style you might conclude, as I do, that he's writing better than ever. The prose is, at times, simultaneously fractured and yet perfectly constructed. A paradox, I know, but that's what Donleavy can pull off at his best. The reviews of the novel will likely (and reasonably enough) focus upon its ribald scenes, characteristic outbursts of blarney, etc., etc...Donleavy has certainly not lost the flair for the comic and absurd scene. Beyond that, however, is an emotional punch that really hangs with you after finishing the book. The scene from with the title is taken is, for instance, quite brief and very powerful.

Steve Vivian

Of all the novels I've read for pleasure or for review purposes during the past decade, none entertained and moved me as much as this splendid novel. At the age of 72, J.P. Donleavy hasn't lost a bit of his ability to pluck a fine elegiac melody on your heartstrings, nor has he lost his lively way with words, that "signature" of sentence fragments that make better English than any other writer's of our time. And here he returns to his home town, New York City, to depict it as no other writer ever has.

What amazes me is that hordes of "readers" are falling all over themselves to buy Tom Wolfe's latest, and so few people are jumping at the chance to savor a truly great novel like this one. There's no justice in the book-buying world.

J.P. Donleavy's narrative voice is unique. Setting him apart from all other writers. With a lyrical pointillism that is fragmented. Painting pictures of incredible poetic beauty. Sad and tender. And then, again, hilarious. Evoking all of one's senses. This tale is very New York. Where Donleavy was born. Before moving to Ireland, TCD and the Irish countryside. His subject, this time, is a starving composer living among wealthy friends and in-laws. Tormented by every woman he meets. Unable to understand just one of them. Even briefly. Bewildered by popular American culture. Which rains fortunes on untalented artists. Hiding the gifted in total obscurity. And starving them into anonymity. They await redemption. And recognition of their artistic merit. As the astonishing talents of Donleavy go unrecognized by the literary mainstream. Read Donleavy -- one of the most gifted and worthy and unheralded writers of our day.

This rollicking novel will invite readers who've spent decades living responsibly to critique their lives and wonder if they've taken the wrong path and should've allowed their hormones full reign instead, as the hero does. An idealist of the purest form, he remains mired in poverty and remains baffled that the people around him treat him to limitless bonanzas. Emerging from the navy after WWII, he finds himself lavishly entertained in New York's finest restaurants, zipping around in the world's most expensive sports cars and amorously pursured by the ravishing, sophisticated, elegant, Manhattan hostess (named "Dru") who also just happens to be "the wealthiest woman in America". Dru summarizes his advantage over many rivals when she observes in a well-bred, trembling voice, ("Oh, my! You really are, aren't you, EXCEEDINGLY well endowed!") There is no doubt that he is. His wife has a fantasy that he's drowned and she is shown his cadaver on a mortuary slab. As the sheet is slowly pulled up from his feet, she only needs to view the lower half of his body. "Never mind pulling it up any more; that's him." People lavish things on him, while not alleviating his poverty, because they see things in him they want to exploit. The tensions that result between his idealisms and the satisfactions pressed upon him by other people's money and Dru's lusts, provide the comic richness of the book. (The contrasts between Dru's refined vocabulary ["oh, how utterly droll!"] and her kinky, macabre sexual needs shows the formula at full strength.) Under all the comic intensity, he slowly realizes the gap between hedonism and merit, and he purifies himself. But he purifies himself not of what he's done, but from what he's observed and because of what's been done to him. So by novel's end, straight-laced readers can comfort themselves he's finally arrived where they've always been! Whether they salivate over his detours or not recalls the dilemma of St. Augustine in his memoirs, "Lord, make me chaste, but not too soon." The dominant theme of the novel, however, is comedy, not sex, and as comedy it is robustly and hedonistically triumphant. This is the robust product of an astute and moral writer.