“Schultz, for god’s sakes. Slow up. That’s what I find most unacceptable in you, your total impatience concerning the more solemn things in life.”
“Shit your Lordship, come on. I got to get to the oracle. For some spiritual communion. Before they close the place up.”
“My god Schultz, you do have a soul after all.”
“Of course I do. I’m not flint hearted all the time like you guys think.”
Schultz followed by his lagging Lordship, rushing further along the narrow twisted gravel paths. The shifting serene shadows of light. Amid the tumbling askew gravestones. Jesus where is everything I need to discover. Before the lady shuts the gate. Holy Methuselah, hear my prayer. Lengthen my life. Which way to go. To find the rabbi. I’ll study the Torah every night. I’ll give to charity. Jesus what am I saying. In a second it could be I’ll promise to observe Mitzvah of family purity and get circumcised. So many god damn stones. Right here. Like Uncle Werb told me. This is the famous rabbi. Write your trouble or request on a piece of paper. Like I could be that geriatric Al here asking, as he does women, Madam I possess three things in this world. An ugly body, a beautiful mind and loads of money. And you can’t have the one you want of these without having the others as well. That is your problem, madam. But because you’re gorgeous I hope you can solve it soon. And they do, they tiptoe into your bedroom while you’re sleeping, and they take the money out of your pocket. Louella ratted on me. My wife kicked me in the balls. Roxana and Greta fell in love. Agnes went on the porno stage. Lady Lullabyebaby, in the sweetest way she could ever say goodbye, told me I had the kiss of death. Binky says masturbation is the supreme form of sexual pleasure. He’s right. Life at best is just a Jewish joke. Jesus I’d need a filing cabinet to contain the questions to be pushed into the hole. For this old pops metaphysician in there to read. Lying in death wide awake. Cooking up solutions under the slab in your ancient rabbi mind. Your spirit I beg. I’m going to be the father of twins. But please don’t tell me I’m guilty of fancy fucking. And don’t tell me to go screw myself now. You lie there knowing so much. With a reservoir of wisdom. In which the big questions in people’s lives get answered. If you can’t tell me why I went into showbizz instead of diamonds and lingerie. Then tell me what holds up the world. An elephant. What holds up the elephant. A turtle. What holds up the turtle. An elephant. Hey holy shit, what holds up the last elephant. My boy, my child, listen just a second I’ll tell you. It is another turtle. So don’t ask more silly questions. It is elephants and turtles. All the way down. But if you can balance on top. You can not only scratch your fanny but touch the moon. But don’t count on anything.
You bet
Your sweet
Rabbi ass
I won’t
Books by J. P. Donleavy
Novels
THE GINGER MAN
A SINGULAR MAN
THE SADDEST SUMMER OF SAMUEL S
THE BEASTLY BEATITUDES OF BALTHAZAR B
THE ONION EATERS
A FAIRY TALE OF NEW YORK
THE DESTINIES OF DARCY DANCER, GENTLEMAN
SCHULTZ
Plays
THE GINGER MAN
FAIRY TALES OF NEW YORK
A SINGULAR MAN
THE SADDEST SUMMER OF SAMUEL S
THE BEASTLY BEATITUDES OF BALTHAZAR B
Stories
MEET MY MAKER THE MAD MOLECULE
General
THE UNEXPURGATED CODE
A Complete Manual of Survival & Manners
Copyright
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher.
First published 1981 by
Dell Publishing Co. Inc
This digital edition published 2013 by
The Lilliput Press
Copyright © J.P. Donleavy
ISBN print edition 0–440–18102–X
ISBN eBook 978 1 84351 581 4
The Lilliput Press receives financial assistance from An Chomhairle Ealaion / The Arts Council of Ireland
THE SADDEST SUMMER
OF SAMUEL S
J. P. Donleavy
“In this short novel J. P. Donleavy writes of the tiny battle waged for survival of the spirit in bedrooms and hearts the world over. Samuel S, hero of lonely principles, holds out in his bereft lighthouse in Vienna. Abigail, an American college girl on the prowl in Europe, drawn by the beacon of this strange outpost, seeks in her own emancipation the seduction of Samuel S, the last of the world’s solemn failures. Samuel S is the liveliest of loonies.”
TIME
“A haunting story, touchingly and outrageously told.”
BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE
In hardcover: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence $5.95
MEET MY MAKER
THE MAD MOLECULE
J. P. Donleavy
“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 to bring blood red into the grey of fate. These stories and sketches move between Europe and America, New York and Dublin and London. America is always the spoiled Paradise, the land of curdled milk and maggoty honey. The place that used to get you in the end, but that now does it in the beginning.”
NEWSWEEK
“… no contemporary writer is better than J. P. Donleavy at his best.”
THE NEW YORKER
In hardcover: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence $6.95
In paperback: Both editions available as one volume—
A Laurel Book $2.50
Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
A FAIRY TALE OF NEW YORK
J. P. Donleavy
“A FAIRY TALE OF NEW YORK is provisioned with the malign Niebelungen of our urban land: power jobbers, sexual self-destructs, Kamikaze eccentrics. It’s about social impotence and despair … Donleavy’s thunderous superb humor has the efficacy of grace. It heals and conquers and ratifies. J. P. Donleavy is a writer of explosive, winning imagination.”
THE NEW YORK TIMES
“The author of THE GINGER MAN has the kind of imagination that can make almost any aspect of life a fairy tale. Taking on New York, he’s come upon fertile ground.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Donleavy’s best book to date and ample evidence of his staying power.”
BOOK WORLD
“A noble book. J. P. Donleavy is among the very fine writers of his generation.”
CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
“Donleavy is funny, poetic and sad. A FAIRY TALE OF NEW YORK is his mordant valentine to Manhattan, a tragicomic jamboree.”
SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER & CHRONICLE
“Donleavy is one of the leading comic writers of our day.”
BOSTON GLOBE
“Skillfully seasoned, a willful nihilism studded with princely compensations: the honeysuckle bloom of love, the carnal whiff of sex, prancing imaginary sheikdoms, the shuffling joy of combat. It is all good Donleavy.”
LIBRARY JOURNAL
In hardcover: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence $7.95
In paperback: A Laurel Book $2.25
Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
THE GINGER MAN
J. P. Donleavy
THE COMPLETE AND UNEXPURGATED EDITION
“In the person of THE GINGER MAN, Sebastian Dangerfield, Donleavy created one of the most outrageous scoundrels in contemporary fiction, a whoring, boozing young wastrel who sponges off his friends and beats his wife and girl friends. Donleavy then turns the moral universe on its head by making the reader love Dangerfield for his killer instinct, flamboyant charm, wit, flashing generosity—and above all for his wild, fierce, two-handed grab for every precious second of life.”
—TIME
“No one who encounters him will forget Sebastian Dangerfield.”
—NEW YORK HERALD TRIBU
NE
“THE GINGER MAN is a picaresque novel to stop them all. Lusty, violent, wildly funny, it is a rigadoon of rascality, a bawled-out comic song of sex.”
—Dorothy Parker, in ESQUIRE
“The whole novel is a wild and unpredictable outburst.”
—SATURDAY REVIEW
First published in Paris in 1955. An expurgated edition appeared in England in 1956 and in the United States in 1958. The complete and unexpurgated edition was brought out in England in 1963 and in the United States by Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence in 1965.
In hardcover: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence $7.95
In paperback: A Delta Book $4.95
A Dell/Laurel Edition $2.50
Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
THE DESTINIES OF
DARCY DANCER
J. P. Donleavy
“Mr. Donleavy writes in a breathless, impetuous style that almost makes scenes leap off the page. The result is an irresistible novel that lets us enjoy all the privileges and bawdiness of Ireland’s horsy set.”
—THE NEW YORKER
“… a wry, poetic tale … (Donleavy) revels in language, bending words and meanings to his will.”
—THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE
“Donleavy captures the ethos of Ireland and the Irish with the lyric skill for which he’s noted.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“… an Irish Tom Jones … ironic tone … rich pithy characters … Doneleavy proves that old formulas still have the power to please.”
—BOOKLIST
“… Donleavy’s best book since his classic first novel, The Ginger Man.”
—NEWSDAY
In hardcover: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence $9.95
In paperback: A Delta Book $4.95
A Dell Book $2.50
Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
THE UNEXPURGATED CODE:
A COMPLETE MANUAL OF SURVIVAL & MANNERS
J. P. Donleavy
“Best work of nonfiction by a novelist and the funniest book of the year.”
—THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
“… a sort of Emily Post for social climbers, reprobates, necrophiliacs and other species of flotsam … pretty much the perfect text on brazen trespass, its dynamics of envy, its psychic consequences, its feisty contradictions.”
—John Leonard, THE NEW YORK TIMES
“Insight and wisdom glow from every piece of Donleavy’s advice. The author is a man who has come to grips with a lot in his lifetime, and he has kindly offered his experience to lighten the load of his fellow man.”
—BALTIMORE NEWS AMERICAN
“This book is splendid, bawdy nonsense wrapped about hard cores of truth. It is an indispensable, albeit implausible, directory for confronting the barbaric rigors of civilized life.”
—PROVIDENCE JOURNAL
“… incomparably valuable … If ever a book deserved a craven popular following, it is The UNEXPURGATED CODE.”
—BOSTON GLOBE
In hardcover: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence $10.00
In paperback: A Delta Book $3.95
A Dell Book $2.50
Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
J. P. Donleavy, Schultz
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