But if anything, payment was at least some proof of impending publication. And before I left the alley, I was tempted to step into the Blue Posts, located on the corner where the alley entered into Wardour Street, and have a glass of ale. And do as I so often did, listen to the voices around me of the inmate regulars having their usual and losing their anonymity in this great vast city of London. Where now so many years and miles away from County Wicklow, where I first sat down to write this novel for which after nearly five years, my first pay was bulging in my pocket. And a work about which I was recalling Behan’s words which he had said as we walked in a soft misty rain on the muddy drive at Kilcoole past where I sat to first write the manuscript, now sent off to Paris.
“Mike, I’ll make a prediction. This book of yours is going to go around the world and beat the bejesus out of the Bible.”
And now following what was to be my strangest ever literary transaction, I duly wrote back to Girodias.
May 11th 1955
Dear Mr. Girodias,
Just a note to add to my hurried one yesterday.
As you mentioned in one of your letters that payment here would involve some difficulties and since I had no idea I was dealing with a friend of yours nor that this arrangement was anything more than temporary and perhaps quickly made, I naturally was apprehensive when I was unable to get in touch directly with Mr. Cliff. However, I now understand the position and it is satisfactory as far as I am concerned. I do hope I haven’t caused any difficulty between you.
I note there are two names, “Collection Merlin” as well as “Olympia Press.” Could you let me know to which I refer for mentions and reviews? A note appeared in an Irish newspaper last week and I wondered how or if you want me to make reference to your firm.
Yours sincerely,
J. P. Donleavy
If Girodias in Paris had any understanding of what initial fate he was planning for The Ginger Man’s first publication, my mention of “Collection Merlin” in my letter should have made him nervous indeed. However, it was more probable that he had already begun to regard me as he would any of his so-called dirty book writers, who were happy enough to be so for the money and who found it a ready means of survival in Paris. And it may have been indicative that just over a month would elapse before I would hear any more from Girodias. But too I was for the first time sensing caution in respect of the Olympia Press in my use of the word “if” in my asking concerning making any reference to Girodias’s firm. But now June had come. And it would prove to be the month in which The Ginger Man was printed. However, no copy of the volume was in evidence.
July 12th 1955
Dear Mr. Girodias,
I’ve heard no news concerning book and am anxious to know if you’ve had some delay with printing.
I’d be very grateful if you could let me know if book is out or when it’s likely to be available and also if you’d let me know where you might send copies for review.
Enclosed a sketch which appeared in the Manchester Guardian last week.
Yours sincerely,
J. P. Donleavy
The sketch in the Guardian I’d referred to was “The Mad Molecule.’’ And as little known as one’s name as an author or anything else was, it would, of all my sketches in the Manchester Guardian, be one of the best remembered by readers. For shortly after its publication and upon meeting and being introduced for the first time to Lindsay Anderson, the stage director, and later to become a distinguished film director, he had said to me upon our shaking hands,
“You wrote ‘The Mad Molecule.’”
Such encouragement was always needed and considerably appreciated. But now July 15 of this fatal year of 1955 had dawned. The postman banged on the front door of 40A Broughton Road. And I descended the stairs to be handed a parcel from Paris. Standing there in the hall, I opened it immediately. The wrapper removed, I found two copies of The Ginger Man. The volume, in its green format, had its cover decorated by a thin white border inside a black border which enclosed the title and, in small black letters above it, the author’s name. Listed below the title was the number 7 and below it the legend “The Traveller’s Companion Series.” Inside on the copyright page appeared “Printed in France, all rights reserved by the Olympia Press, Paris, France.” Then there was the title page and again further mentioning the legend “The Traveller’s Companion Series” published by the Olympia Press, 8 rue de Nesle, Paris, 6e. I turned over the page, and opposite the first page of text appeared
FOR CATALOGUES
OF BOOKS PUBLISHED
IN THE TRAVELLER’S
COMPANION SERIES
APPLY TO:
THE OLYMPIA PRESS,
8 RUE DE NESLE, PARIS, 6E
FRANCE
I read the first lines of the book. They were mine, as I had written them. Then flicking quickly through the 353 pages, I came to the last page of text in the volume, which was followed by another page giving the list of the Traveller’s Companion Series.
Catastrophe already acknowledged, as I had begun to climb back up the narrow stairs, I stopped midway and my right fist descended with all my might upon the cover of the top book I held in my left hand. And within this cramped, dim lit hallway down this grim and grimy street in Fulham, my solemn declaration was made aloud. I would, if it were the last thing I ever did, redeem and avenge this work that I’d put my very life into writing. And that no matter how long it took and no matter what I had to do,
I would do
While I lived
With the life
I had left
37
AH, BUT WAIT. One had to remind oneself not to jump immediately like a scalded cat to recrimination or to wreak instant vengeance and reprisal. For I had a good example to follow. My mother throughout her very long life always kept a poem within sight of her very bright blue eyes. And it seems now no question but that judging by her own reaction to disasters, she followed such precepts as were penned by this anonymous author. And I hope hereby not to infringe anybody’s copyright in reproducing such wise words.
Never cherish the worries
That meet you each day, For the better you treat them
The longer they stay.
Just put them aside
With a smile or a song
And something much better
Will hurry along.
This now famed list of works, whose authors were pseudonymous and whose existence adorned the last page of the first edition of THE GINGER MAN, and such becoming the basis for my swearing revenge on Maurice Girodias and the Olympia Press. Although the use of the words “special volume,” according to Girodias, was meant to set it apart from the other titles, it could also be interpreted to mean in such context that THE GINGER MAN was a particularly raunchy variety of dirty book.
Well, let me tell you, there was not one trace of an iota of a smile or a song or even the spending of the briefest fraction of a second waiting for something much better to come along as I hurried in one awful quick step right out my front door and up Bryan’s Alley and over to my local library just across Wandsworth Bridge Road, and under that friendly roof went to delve into the nearest thing I could get to being a law book. And from which one could try to piece together words and phrases that might say anything about redressing disaster and aggrievement in the sphere of the subject of contract and copyright. Nor could there be any doubt whatever, that if this man Girodias,
whoever he was, if he was, had he been within an immediate physical distance to be reached, he would have been smashed by me into a bloody pulp.
My most major concern was that the book, in its pornographic and pseudonymous series, could never be taken seriously for what it was and could never be reviewed by any reputable periodical. And with the exception of Paul Allen being able to write something mildly commendable in a journal he worked for, called Courier, the book was trapped and frozen, if not forgotten, in its tracks. Everything I was or hoped to be as an author simply no longer e
xisted. I noted the use of the words “special volume” appended after The Ginger Man’s back page listing, which I could consider meaning in the context of the books it was published with, only that this particularly pseudonymous book was especially pornographic. Even number 10 on the list, Frank Harris, author of My Life and Loves, was a pseudonym for Alexander Trocchi, a genuine writer but also one of Girodias’s most reliable and trusted pornographers. And thus it was, on what was to be the first of many dismal disaster days, I sat down this midsummer to write to what was to become nearly a lifelong bane in Paris.
July 15th 1955
Dear Mr. Girodias,
I have received two copies of book.
I had no idea you intended to include mine in your Traveller’s Companion Series and under no circumstances will I approve of this book being sent to England with it included among list at back or this list being advertised with my work. You may sell more copies of book this way. However, in publishing my book you were publishing a book of genuine literary merit and it seems a pity to waste this merit by including it with books obviously written with ulterior motives.
I would like to point out that it cost me £2000 to write this book, keeping myself and family while doing it. The £250 that I’ve been paid as an advance means nothing in payment for my work or for the heart and soul I’ve put into it. I want this book removed immediately in subsequent printings from your Traveller’s Companion Series.
I also note you are charging Frs 1500 per copy. In your letter of January 7th 1955 you state that the retail selling price will be about 750 francs. You are charging twice this price. This is a breach of our agreement. It was on this basis that I accepted your offer of £250 for a first printing of 5000 copies and agreed to an equal division of monies secured of rights and as an act of good will, American rights also, which may prove to be valuable ones and which rights are normally reserved by an author. I’m afraid that this matter will get somewhat involved unless I get some straightforward explanations. Obviously you underestimate the literary worth of my work. This I don’t mind since the book will ultimately speak for itself. But I have no intention of letting my work be exploited in this way and will take every step necessary to prevent it.
Yours sincerely,
J. P. Donleavy
From my letter, it seems I knew more than I revealed in my first letters of negotiation with Girodias and certainly knew that what he had obviously, deliberately done would not forever ostracize The Ginger Man away from the attentions of the kindred to whom this work was directed, and upon whom I would always depend as an author.
THE OLYMPIA PRESS
July 21st 1955
Dear Mr. Donleavy,
I suppose that you are a rather difficult person, with a tendency to ignore other people’s problems, and to indulge in bouts of violent self-pity. As, however, you do not seem to be a bad character, I will refrain from launching into a tedious and ridiculous argument with you, and will not answer the first two paragraphs of your letter dated July 15th.
Regarding the third paragraph, which raises the question of money and therefore deserves attention, my position is the following: your book proved much longer than I expected; I had asked you to cut out about ⅓ of the original typescript, and my first idea was that the cuts were not as important as I had expected. This made it necessary for me to raise the selling price. It has never been my intention to deprive you of your rights, and I am ready to pay a supplementary £150 when this first edition is exhausted. I hope this will seem satisfactory and that you will understand that, if I had “underestimated the literary worth of your book,” I would not have published it (which, incidentally, I have done against the advice of my readers).
Yours sincerely,
M. Girodias
If it ever would be hard to fathom the motives of one’s now unquestionable adversary, in Girodias’s masterly reply there was little doubt that he had parried my objections by merely ignoring them. Nor is there much doubt that in his eyes I was a victim and that as a victim I was intended to remain, at least for the considerable time being. But the one word he uttered which was in lieu of any explanation for what he’d done in publishing The Ginger Man as pornography was, if any word was, a woeful mistake, and was not to be forgotten by me. And that word was “self-pity.” I would, over the years to come, often be reminded of it as it more aptly applied to Girodias as our fortunes became reversed.
Without being able to afford a lawyer or legal advice, I had to totally rely on my wits, as in the matters of law, equity or copyright or contract, my knowledge was amateurish indeed. It would seem that the matter of mistake had interjected itself, for what proof could there be that what had happened and the risk that it would, could not have been clearly forseen by me. A view given me immediately upon my seeking advice from the Society of Authors, to which society it did not take me long to let my membership lapse. In any event, I had now to try best as I could to pick up the pieces. With no prospects now of making my name or a title of a book known, there was little hope of earning more as a writer in order that I might remain as one, my priority above all priorities. For this work once predicted by Behan that it would go round the world like the Bible, it had now gone only in a package from Paris to London and maybe under the counter of a few dirty bookshops in Soho, whose proprietors would immediately stop selling it when their customers stopped buying it as a very poor imitation of pornography indeed.
What I had now if I had anything was five thousand or however many copies were actually printed of The Ginger Man. And as I read through the now published book, there were a few major blunders and distantly misplaced paragraphs and an odd misprint here and there, but the work with these exceptions had meticulously followed the manuscript. And I still retained the draft and working pages plus a carbon copy of the original and unrevised manuscript. In any event, from my point of view of Girodias’s commercial stupidity, as well as his clear ignorance as to The Ginger Man’s literary worth and future, I knew not to trust the contents of Girodias’s letter of July 21 and replied mildly enough. But hidden beneath my words was a deathly ruthless intention. I knew I had to get the book published in England free of the Olympia Press’s imprimatur of pornography as soon as possible and to redress my first publishing disaster.
July 28th 1955
Dear Mr. Girodias,
I am difficult, but I think you will find that it is not a matter of self-pity so much as that I am proud of my work and want to see the best done by it. I am pleased when someone likes and recognizes my work for being what it is, but I have no illusions about art world and have far more respect for opinions passed in wool trade. But as a writer, I do know my business as I’m sure you know yours as a publisher, especially so since you obviously make money. But I was considering in my objection to your list the fact that it can deprive book of reviews here which book would have received and can also prejudice any case brought against book under Obscene Publications Act, which I would fight. However, what’s happened has happened and nothing can now be done about it, but you may as well know that I feel my objections are sound. I realize work in running a firm can be complicated and heavy, but if some explanation were given me beforehand concerning your intentions with book, you would get my complete cooperation even if this were a matter of silence.
As regards your adjustment in price; £150 paid when this printing is exhausted is reasonable as far as I am concerned.
I’ve received four copies of book but would be grateful for two more to have some for loaning for possible reviews.
Yours sincerely,
J. P. Donleavy
Removing the offending pages advertising the Traveller’s Companion Series from the volume, The Ginger Man was again sent to an odd English publishing house. And was even seen by such as the poet Cecil Day Lewis, an editor at Chatto and Windus. One knew of this gentleman, for his wife, Jill Balcon, who was possessed of one of the world’s most beautiful speaking voices, had been an acquaintance of Valerie?
??s and we had occasionally met to all walk together around the round pond in Kensington Gardens, little Philip kicking a football and the Day Lewises’ young offspring, later to become Daniel Day Lewis, the actor, pushed in his pram. But Chatto and Windus returned the work without comment and indeed Day Lewis later seemed at once evasive upon seeing me walking down St. Martin’s Lane. However, Paul Allen, editing the magazine Courier, had literary friends whom he’d already told about the book, and the words of my July 15 letter to Girodias, “the book will ultimately speak for itself,” were in fact already beginning to happen. Allen recalling that he was standing in a group of people at the York Minster Pub when someone suddenly exhibited for the company to see a copy of The Ginger Man in its green format of the Traveller’s Companion Series. Allen adding that at the sight of this work and mention of my name, an Irish poet from Dublin who was present, shrunk back out of sight. The power of The Ginger Man was working against its first ever known begrudger.
But much more positive matters were also surfacing. Paul Allen also had an uncle who ran a rather debutante type of drinking and dining club called the Renaissance in the very socially acceptable area of South Kensington. Where in an attractive upstairs, tall-ceilinged room, the uncle had a bar, dining booths and a dance floor. Allen had on a few occasions invited me and a few of his other friends here. And one evening such was the case as a few of us sat in one of the booths and I was introduced to a shyly attractive young lady and her gentleman companion. Both of these pleasantly sympathetic people were like Allen, considerably knowledgeable about the literary world. Derek Stanford, a poet, had read The Ginger Man and said he knew of an English publisher who might be interested in an English edition. The quietly studious lady concurred with Stanford on this idea and seemed unusually erudite for this debutante hangout. When I opinioned that I thought the work might be attacked, she confidently predicted The Ginger Man would be well received. Her acumen in the matter to be explained only many years later when her name turned out to be Muriel Spark.