Author of ‘ Ginger Man’ able to buy publisher
LONDON — J. P. Donleavy, the incorrigible Irish- American author and playwright whose ribald debut novel “The Ginger Man” met scorn, censorship and eventually celebration as a groundbreaking classic, has died at age 91.
Mr. Donleavy, a native New Yorker who lived his final years on an estate west of Dublin, died Monday in Ireland.
The author of more than a dozen books, he sometimes was compared to James Joyce as a prose stylist but also was admired for his sense of humor. “The Ginger Man,” first published in 1955, sold more than 45 million copies and placed No. 99 on a Modern Library list of the greatest English language fiction of the 20th century.
Several publishers rejected the book before it was acquired by the Paris- based Olympia Press, which specialized in explicit and avant garde materials. “The Ginger Man” sold sowell that it enabled Mr. Donleavy to buy Olympia after he and the publisher spent years suing each other over rights to the book.
“The Ginger Man” is also among the most prominent novels never to have been made into a feature film, although those trying included Robert Redford, Mike Nichols and Johnny Depp.
The son of Irish immigrants, James Patrick Donleavy was born in New York City, wrote poetry as a child and had some early success as a painter before turning to fiction in his early 20s. As he explained to The Paris Review, he thought the novel was his quickest path to fame and set out to write a book that would “shake the world.”