J.P. Donleavy

Lírica y obscena, conmovedora y tremendamente divertida, El hombre de mazapán es una obra escrita con el virtuosismo de un Joyce, la potencia de Henry Miller y el desenfado de un Rabelais y forma parte de las lista de "Las mejores 100 novelas del siglo XX" elaborada por la Modern Library. En el personaje de Sebastian, alias Hombre de mazapan, Donleavy ha sabido crear un tipo inolvidable. Irresponsable, sucio, seductor, embaucador y pobre de solemnidad, este americano-irlandes extraviado en la vieja patria que se tambalea desde el pub a la casa de empeños, murmurando porposiciones libidinosas al oido de toda muchacha que se le pone a tiro, esta empeñado en la busqueda de la libertad, la riqueza y la fama que siente que le pertenecen. Y, aunque se burla del mundo y de si mismo, es tan fragil como esos bizcochos con digura humana que se deshacen entre los dedos. La fama de esta novela es tal que ha dado nombre a alguos de los pubs mas famosos del mundo.

Alfonso Stephen OKelly known as Stephen, son of rumoured former bootleggers, ex-naval gunner, unemployed compuser, student of dairy cattle in Wisconsin and of music in Italy, has little to recommend him as a marriage prospect but his tender heart, his chivalry, and his comprehensive knowledge of the great city of New York. So when the exquisitely pneumatic and extraordinarily wealthy Sylvia Triumphington, adored adoptive heiress to the Triumphington family forture, sets her sights on him, Stephen is caught quite off guard Wrong Information is Being Given out at Princeton is an excellent work, proving Donleavy is still the master of blending pathos and humour.

Where Darcy departing Dublin descends on his darkly decrepit desmesne, skint as a boiled bone. There to ponder his leaking, bat-ridden birthright, devilishly diverted by sexy Miss von B and readily rolled up by Ronald Rashers. And sees Leila. Lovely, lissome Leila who tells him no. A definite negative. So Darcy is back to Dublin and the noisome stews to dream of the one bright star in his eternal darkness As theres fools gold at the end of every Irish rainbow, and tarnished silver linings in every cloud, so theres a shimmer on the far horizon for this particular broth of a boy. His future is disastrous, his present indecent, his past divine. He is Darcy Dancer, youthful squire of Andromeda Park, the great gray stone mansion inhabited by Crooks, the cross eyed butler, and the sexy, aristocratic Miss Von B. This sequel to The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman finds our hero falling in with decidedly low company like the dissolute Dublin poet, Foxy Slattery, and Ronald Rashers, who absconds with the family silver before falling head over heels in love with the lissome Leila.

Semi-orphaned, semi-legitimate heir to crumbling Andromeda Park in the lush beauty of the Irish country-side, Darcy Dancer is raised by aging servants, tutored in basic skills by lovelorn Mr. Arlan, in hell-raising by incorrigible Foxy Slattery, and in love by his astutely aristocratic housekeeper, Miss von B. He grows up a complete gentleman only to be rudely cast out of his ancestral home, forced to seek his fortune among berserk fox hunters, destitute noblemen, lusty bohemian ladies, and shameless gamblers- to discover that his destiny, like his birth, rides on the 100-to-1 shot, and the sheer luck of a fast horse galloping against all odds to roistering victory! His future is disastrous, his present indecent, his past divine. He is Darcy Dancer.

A Fairy Tale of New York is a funny, lusty, and sad novel of comic genius. Returning from study abroad, Cornelius Christian enters customs with his luggage and his dead wife. His first encounter in New York is with a funeral director, with whom he reluctantly takes employment to pay for the burial expenses. In the course of his duties he meets the beautiful Fanny Sourpuss over her millionaire husbands dead body. However, his over-enthusiastic handling of his first corpse lands him in court. Cornelius Christian wanders through the great sad cathedral that is New York, examining the human condition in all its comic pathos and lonely absurdity. Whether lingering in the Automat drinking from half empty coffee cups and stealing baked beans from the plates of customers who go looking for ketchup, or finding love on a street corner only to end up fighting his way out of a hookers fists, Cornelius Christian, heroic anti-hero, sings of lifes goodness in the wake of disaster.

A Singular Country is J.P. Donleavys idiosyncratic and personal view of Ireland told in the vernacular of the Irishman, which he has nearly, but not quite, become. The New York City-born author assumed the right to speak of his adopted country from his own struggles and early turmoils within its shores and from his "descent on both parental sides from ancient bog-trotters traceable as far back into the centuries as anyone can record or remember". J.P. Donleavy brings to vivid life the range of Irelands people, from the small farmer to the landed aristocrat, from the Anglo-Irish in their crumbling mansions to the "gombeen-men erecting their emporiums of vulgarity". Priests, politicians, saints, scholars none escape his pointed pen. Modern Ireland is unveiled with a mixture of genius and hilarity that only Donleavy can muster. Complimented by the black and white photography of Patrick Prendergast.

Jocelyn Guenevere Marchantiere Jones, sometime resident of Scarsdale, educated at Bryn Mawr, has been brought up always to behave like a lady. But what with chiselling divorce lawyers, fraudulent financial advisors and importunate and oversezed suitors, the patience of even the most impeccable lady might wear thin. Which is why Joy ends up with a pair of matching Purdey shotguns across her knees and a .38 Smith & Wesson under her pillow, waiting for the next lying bastard to cross her threshold. Trigger-happy she may be, and no longer quite welcome in polite society, but Joy Jones, one of J.P. Donleavys most inspired comic creations, will always follow her South Carolina grannys advice on the matter of clean rest rooms, a preference which has some rather surprising consequences.

It is literally history combined with Donleavys autobiography – from his childhood in the Bronx, education at Catholic schools, service in the U.S. Navy, and travels, to his current life as proprieto

J. P. Donleavy has been writing now for forty-five years and, as he admits, an answer to the question why is difficult to dig out of a long past. Yet over these pages he authors query is largely answered for him: he has written so much for so long because he writes so very well. From the banks of the Seine to the streets of the Bronx, from the stables of the Dublin Horse Show to cocktails at Claridges, we are transported by these collected short pieces into the singular and spirited world of J. P. Donleavy. Bringing an uncommonly objective yet affectionate eye to his writings on his own birthplace, America, balancing unabashed adoration with good-humoured bewilderment in his depiction of his hearts home, Ireland, the author presents us with a fresh, engaging vista that could only be his own. Whether reviewing a book on sexual exercises for women or paying homage to Yeats, the impress is unmistakably Donleavys. The initial publication of these pieces in various newspapers and journals around the world gave the author particular pleasure because he knew that he would reach people who were not normally book readers. However, he admits that the fate of most periodicals and newspapers is to be used to wrap fish, keep vagrants warm and help light fires. Books, on the other hand, preserve their pages better between covers, and with their publication here he hopes that these pieces separately written over these many years can now keep each other company. An Author and His Image offers a comprehensive overview of one of the most original and incisive voices of the last half-century.

A Letter Marked Personal is J.P. Donleavys last novel, completed in 2007. Set in New York, it relates the interior monologue of forty-nine-year-old Nathan Langriesh Johnson, the founder of a successful lingerie company. Nathan began his career as a door-to-door lingerie salesman, his wares consisting of imitations of European designs. Now a confirmed social climber, Nathan distracts himself with remembered or imagined comments by his wife, Iowa the model, Reginald the accountant and Hal the realtor, and reminisces about the struggle before his business took off. A letter marked personal arrives at Nathans high-rise Manhattan apartment, and is opened by the wife: his life unravels. This portrait of a flawed sycophant is full of Donleavys wit and insight. Tracing a journey from Nathans aspirational greed to his realization of the pointlessness of his vanity, this is a poignant story of a man at the end of his days, reflecting upon the futility of human wishes.

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 jitterbuggings of an exasperated soul, with barracuda bites of lacerating humour he brings blood-red into the gray of fate.

Balthazar B is the worlds last shy, elegant young man. Born to riches and a blonde mothers breast in Paris, raised in lonely splendour, a soul bemused with the worlds haphazard frailties, he hopes to find each new day just as he left it yesterday. Balthazar Bs life spreads from Paris across the Channel to prep school in England. There he is befriended by the worlds most beatific sinner, the noble little Beefy, kindly to small dogs and old ladies, fearless to masters and bullies. And in holidays spent in Paris, Balthazar B falls upon love and sorrow with his beautiful governess, Miss Hortense. He soon loses her to live out lonely London years, waking finally in the green sunshine of Ireland and Trinity College. Here, reunited with Beefy, he is swept away to the high and low life of Dublin. From the black-eyes little Breda, met in Irishtown, to the arms of the dark, strange and beautiful Miss Fitzdare. Until, caught between college authorities and a landladys dentures, their university careers come an inglorious end. They return to the seasons of London, there to take their tricky steps into marriage, Beefy in search of riches, Balthazar in search of love. This touching story, as sad as it is hilarious, in Dublin in its heyday and London in its prime, between a Paris of all its pleasures.

Schultz Sigmund Franz "Isadorable" Schultz descended from a long line of Prague Rabbis, born in the New England boondocks, fleeing an obscure furture in ladies lingerie and determined to make it as a knock-their-socks-off theatrical impresario in Londons West End. Long before the official premiere, he will host a slew of opening nights featuring the likes of Agnes, Greta and Lady Lulu ladies all too eager to impress their talents on Schultz and his aristocratic English "angels" and find himself veering wildly from misfortune to disaster in his exuberant pursuit of erotic adventure, fabulous box-office riches and do you believe it? true love!

On a cold day Clayton Claw Cleaver Clementine sets off westwards to take up residence in the vast haunted edifice of Charnel Castle. Clementine, a polite unkown unsung product of the new world and recently recovered by a miraculous cure from a long decline, alights at an empty crossroads. Standing lonely on its windswept hillside the great turrets and battlements rear in the sky

A wily American driving his psychiatrist crazy in Vienna. Prey of a wealthy countess who wants him comfortable and secure and her very own. Master of his domain his sealed, darkened, disheveled apartment on a dank Vienna sidestreet. Abigail was not the girl for Sam. She was a brash, sexy American coed with only men on her mind. And se had Sam very much on her mind at the moment