I had not then nor have I done since ever taken up a position of hindrance to another’s work. But by God, I was soon finding out what sly experts they were who did, and who are to be found lurking in abundance among the literary fraternity and against whom one had to hone one’s resolve. However, back in those early days, Ryan, as the entire finance of the magazine, persisted, and so for my first time in print, “A Party on Saturday Afternoon” was duly published in Envoy, volume 2, number 1, April 1950. But in the battle to stop it, the powers behind the scenes made sure my little story did not get even a first page all to itself, and it started midpage, at the end of another’s work. But at least and at last, the words were out and printed there between the covers of this Dublin literary magazine for all those interested to read. However, I was about to embark upon a mountainous sea of nothing but obstruction, deception and betrayal and a protracted battle fighting for, not only my literary life, but my very life. And during the coming years that old refrain of my naval days would often come wafting back to mind and is now worthy again to repeat with an added stanza.
When you find a friend
Who is good and true
Fuck him
Before he fucks you
And even if he isn’t a friend
Good and true
Don’t worry
He will still try
To fuck you
35
IN THE MONTH OF AUGUST 1954, I started to write the novel A Fairy Tale of New York. A month later I wrote to the Olympia Press, Paris, as follows:
40A Broughton Road,
Fulham, London, SW6,
Sept. 7th 1954
Dear Sir,
I have a manuscript of a novel in English called Sebastian Dangerfield of approximately 125,000 words. While in America I submitted it to Charles Scribner’s Sons in New York City. Although impressed by it they felt they could not publish it because of obscenity. The obscenity is very much a part of this novel and its removal would detract from it. Extracts of it have, however, been published in Manchester Guardian.
I would be very pleased if you could give me any information as regards your position in considering manuscripts, such as mine in English, for publication in English in France.
Yours sincerely,
J. P. Donleavy
Mail of the time must have been gossamer swift, for back came, on this gray notepaper I was to get to know better than well, an immediate reply.
THE OLYMPIA PRESS
8 rue de Nesle, Paris 6,
September 8th 1954
Dear Sir,
We thank you for your letter of the 7th September.
We should be glad to consider your manuscript for publication. Will you please take good care to send it registered.
Yours sincerely,
Maurice Girodias
I had these days been taking my son, Philip, daily on a Number 28 bus to Holland Park to play there. Meeting a young French au pair girl, whose charge had become a friend of Philip’s, and having carried the letter with me, I showed it to her. The first thing she did was to run her thumbnail across the black imprint of the name Olympia Press and say with satisfaction that the lettering was engraved and that at least it indicated something of consequence in the matter of substantiality. But there was, she said, also to be regarded a slight flippancy in monsieur’s signature. Further correspondence ensued.
40A Broughton Road,
Fulham, London, SW6,
October 18th 1954
Dear Sir,
I sent you a MS called Sebastian Dangerfield insured, September 11th.
It seems there is some difficulty checking on it from this end and I’m a little anxious to know if you received it safely.
I would be very pleased if you could let me know.
Yours sincerely,
J. P. Donleavy
8 rue de Nesle, Paris 6,
October 30th 1954
Dear Sir,
We have finally received your MS which has been detained some time by the French Customs who wanted to ascertain whether it had a negotiable value or not. This, of course, explains the delay.
We will write to you within two weeks in order to let you know what is our readers’ report on the book.
Yours sincerely,
M. Girodias
With relief at the safe arrival of the manuscript, there was now the added bonus of this reply letter sounding like a publishing house. Although the words “our readers’ report” did rather remind of these lurking opportunists lying in wait in such capacity, who would, if left unnoticed, dare to suppress and drive away the original. Which had already seemed to be the case with all the British publishers the work had been submitted to. But I had been further breaking out of the confines of my obscurity with my third piece, “Fraternal Fraud,” accepted and soon to be published in the Manchester Guardian. A young editor on this famed paper, John Rosselli, who told me later upon meeting him that he knew exactly how I wanted my words to read and wrote “follow copy” in the margin of each of my pieces wherever he thought any printer’s doubt might creep in to make a well-meant corrective change.
Instead of two weeks, there was now a gap of November and nearly all of December, and following Christmas, and rabbit for dinner on the thirty-first, I wrote to the Olympia Press requesting a decision. The significance of rabbit for dinner was survival. However, there were two people invited to celebrate this with us, one Valentine Coughlin, who masqueraded as Percy Clocklan in The Ginger Man, and the other Eddie Connell, who, after his stint with the IRA, was now, of all things, a lamplighter along the private roadway of Kensington Palace Gardens and the vicinity of the palace itself. Coughlin arrived on time, and, as we waited further for Connell, he asked if I’d told Connell what we were having for Christmas dinner and I said yes I had, I had warned him just as I had warned them both.
“Ah, well sit down then now and eat the dinner. There’s no point in wasting time waiting for him another second, for hearing of rabbit he won’t be here, he’d be elsewhere thinking he’d do better with an invitation to turkey. Sure how would the insensitive likes of him know a rabbit is a true gourmet’s delight.”
THE OLYMPIA PRESS
December 30th 1954
Dear Mr. Donleavy,
First of all, I must apologize for the delay in replying to your last letter; your book, considered from a publisher’s point of view, raises a number of problems and we did not want to give you a full report on it without first comparing the opinions of several readers.
Let me say at once that all its readers have been able to find very striking qualities in your novel; but it has also been their feeling that it would not be to do you or Sebastian Dangerfield justice were the novel to be brought out in its present form. Apart from the manuscript’s need of a considerable amount of editing (spelling, syntactical ambiguities, missing words) which could conceivably be done by ourselves, there are two more major problems. Firstly: the opening part seems to drag, to be hesitant, to be ineffective: it needs sharpening, it needs to be made more incisive. Secondly: elsewhere, indeed, almost everywhere, there is a need for condensation.
The reader does not become engaged in the book, nor feel its impact, until he reaches page 100 or thereabouts. It is hard to explain just why, especially hard when one rereads this opening hundred pages after having gone through the entire book, for then the vagueness disappears, and what seemed inaccessible at first reading is vivid upon second. Nevertheless, several readers have, independently, reached the same conclusion: action, they feel, should appear almost at once, the main characters should be distinguished more decisively …
We would suggest shortening these opening 100 pages; but almost all the book calls for the same revision. Above all in the long soliloquies, the interior monologues, proportion and control seem sometimes to falter, with the result that what would often benefit from terseness, prolongs into vagary and repetition. Were it reduced in length by one fifth, or one quarter, or even one third,
the book would gain thereby. It is not a question of deleting episodes, but of weeding out what blurs them, of sharpening and lightening. This is the difficult job, this is the author’s, and it is very possible you do not share our views. But we do feel that the matter deserves your thought.
The problem of the title is relatively minor. However, the deliberate modesty of simply Sebastian Dangerfield is a little stark and, in a sense, rather than giving the book a name, suggests that it lacks one.
I will be awaiting your response to these various points before I take a final decision regarding your book whose clear virtues have prompted us to mention faults—only because we would like to see them, if faults they are, eliminated. I earnestly hope that we will come to an agreement as to these matters of form.
Our custom is to pay a round sum for each printing of the books we publish, and we will make a definite offer as soon as your answer to this letter is received.
Can you at the same time let us know what extracts from the book have been printed by the Manchester Guardian? Can you provide any acknowledgments or reviews which we might use as publicity? We are keeping your MS with us until we hear from you.
Yours sincerely,
M. Girodias
P.S. Just before closing this letter I receive yours of December 31st. I will do as you wish regarding the MS, but I will not send it back before I hear from you.
M.G.
Although I was unaware of what Girodias was ultimately planning, I knew that the nature both in style and language of The Ginger Man was unlikely to have come across this publisher’s bows before. It seemed, despite his fluency, as if a certain naive dichotomy existed with Mr. Girodias, especially as in rereading the manuscript he was finding it vivid and the vagueness disappearing. However, having gone through the book, I myself was aware of inconsistencies and misspellings. I also got the feeling that he simply wanted a shorter book However, my first more serious uncertainty came concerning his letter’s mention of page 100. For when referring to this part of the manuscript, there appeared at this point the first considerable account of a sexual nature. In considering the remaining matters raised in the letter, which, although sounding well-meaning, I thought erroneous and they were not suggestions I could follow. No such criticisms had been raised by Gainor Crist, Brendan Behan, John Hall Wheelock, A. K. Donoghue nor Julian Moynahan. The last to become a distinguished critic and novelist. However, above all other things, I had to take seriously the fact that here at long last was at least a publisher undeterred by obscenity, indeed making no mention of it at all, who seemed willing to publish. And one week later, I put my fingers to my typing keys and I accordingly replied. Following my precept that thou shalt not bluff in love, negotiation or litigation. But attempt to be diplomatic and polite to all.
January 6th 1955
Dear Mr. Girodias,
Thank you for your letter of December 30th, I am pleased you are interested in my MS.
I have read your letter carefully and note the points you make. As I’m sure you will understand, the amount of work to be undertaken to revise the MS as you suggest is considerable and would mean, for me, laying aside for some time, work I am now doing. I therefore feel that under the circumstances any decision I would make in the matter of revision would largely depend on your offer.
Could you let me know the size of a printing and the approximate price you charge for a book? If you have a catalogue you could send me I’d be very pleased to see it.
One extract I have switched to a revision which is not yet with copy you have. The other appears on page 244 and starts with ‘I got off at the back gate out of the green upholstered tram and there was the university through my apprehensive eyes. …’ and ends ‘but I was smiling so pleasantly so willing to please.’ These appear by way of sketches on the review page of Manchester Guardian and are not reviewed that I know of. … However, I have received a request from University of Dublin’s graduate magazine for permission to reprint the extract which appears in your copy. It is an annual which is sent free to graduates. Other work of mine has also appeared in Punch.
I do hope you see my position regarding Sebastian Dangerfield and I would be very happy to discuss the points you suggest when I hear from you.
Yours sincerely,
J. P. Donleavy
P.S. I tried to get copies containing extracts from Guardian office here in London but they appeared May and June last year and this office only keeps back copies for 3 months. However, I got a more recent copy which has some of my work and I am sending it to you under separate cover.
Our letters now, if their dates were to be believed, were swift in passing back and forth. My own post office being located in a shop just around the corner within a couple of minutes’ walk up the shortcut narrow confines of Bryan’s Alley. Selling greeting cards, stationery, chocolate and even toys, it was the sort of shop you might expect to find in a rural English village. Behind her counter, rapidly dispensing service, was an always smiling, rosy-cheeked, raven-haired lady of ample proportions, who sold stamps, weighed parcels and administered pensions to retired folk. Also assisting the swiftness of communications were two deliveries by the postman every weekday. The letters to be seen from the top of the stairs, dropping through the letterbox and falling to a mat on the floor. And the trepidation and dread was to increase over the years as one would descend these wooden steps to discover what new threatening words were to be found within the envelopes lying there. But for the time being I was still pleased enough to get correspondence and the financial representations now proffered by Maurice Girodias.
THE OLYMPIA PRESS
January 7th 1955
Dear Mr. Donleavy,
Thank you for your letter of January 6th.
In reply to your questions concerning our terms, our customary practice is to offer a standard sum of 200,000 francs (paid half upon delivery of the final MS, half upon date of publication) for the first printing of roughly 5000 copies, and an additional 300,000 francs for each subsequent printing.
The retail selling price will be about 750 francs. In the case of your book, our idea would be to print over and above the regular paperbound edition, another 500 probably clothbound copies for the British and American markets. It is of course more than likely that Sebastian Dan gerfield would be banned in both the U.K. and U.S. While the publicity created by banning often favours sales, banning does also often involve risks for the author as well as the publisher, and we would only proceed with our proposed 500-copy American and English edition if it were to receive your approval. Upon these 500 special copies we would pay a royalty of 10% of the retail price on all copies actually sold.
That in general is the offer we should like to make you as soon as we receive your agreement regarding the revision of the MS.
Your MS is being returned to you by registered post.
Yours sincerely,
M. Girodias
The businesslike look and sound of the Olympia Press letters were welcome enough, but as I was more familiar with a percentage royalty on each book sold I was not entirely happy about Girodias’s standard and customary practice of payment of sums for each printing. But after nearly five years following beginning to write The Ginger Man, my concern for the actual publication of the work was now considerable. Especially as Valerie was expecting another child in three months. I could not avoid the slight tendency to letting myself assume the notion that publishers would, since their livelihood depended upon it, automatically look after and protect an author’s interests. And although I was wary, there seemed to be an element of this in Monsieur Girodias’s letters and of his giving warning of the risks involved in the novel being banned. I had also been brought up by parents who, in their astonishingly un-Irish way, exampled and taught to their children scrupulous honesty and a policy of fairness with others. And alas something which one perhaps overly expected to be reciprocated. However, because of this, one held an equally strong principle of revenging a wrong. But being
cheated on a large or serious scale, or coming across someone daring to do this, was the least of one’s expectations. And now in my most reasonable, businesslike manner I could muster, I replied.
January 11th 1955
Dear Mr. Girodias,
Thank you for your letter of January 7th and your list enclosed.
In view of your offer, which I don’t consider unreasonable within its terms, I would prefer, in the case of Sebastian Dangerfield, to deal on a royalty basis with one initial advance, half on delivery of MS and half on publication. The following arrangement is something I would be prepared to accept as it stands. For the publication rights of Sebastian Dangerfield in English in France, 150,000 francs as an advance on 10% royalty of the retail price on first 5000 copies, 12½% on next 5000 copies and 15% on copies sold over 10,000.
I would agree to undertake a revision which would reduce Sebastian Dangerfield by at least one fifth condensing, sharpening and cutting where necessary. It is conceivable that I could introduce action earlier in the book, but this is something, as I’m sure you will understand, I can’t promise for such a promise might easily have the opposite effect and restrain me in dealing with this part. As you say, the problem of a title is relatively minor. However, Sebastian Dangerfield, although stark and perhaps modest, does offer scope in its use on a cover and in advertising, being eminently suitable as two very large letters on the cover, and as Sebastian Dangerfield is an inductive book this would seem appropriate. But this, of course, is something that can be worked out.