The author who made his name writing the controversial “The Ginger Man” has died at the age of 91.
J.P. Donleavy wrote several other novels and had a small reputation as an artist. But it was 1955’s “The Ginger Man” which, like “The Catcher in the Rye” and “Lord of the Flies,” that went on to became a classic.
The book tells the story of the boozing and womanizing, Sebastian Dangerfield in his pursuit of the chaste Miss Lilly Frost in repressive post-World War Two Dublin.
The manuscript was rejected by 45 publishers, partly on account of its often baffling, ungrammatical narrative. It was eventually printed in Paris as part of the publishers “pornography” imprint.
Donleavy was born in 1926 in Brooklyn, New York. He died this week in Ireland at the age of 91.