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.

?J.P. Donleavy at his wildest, wackiest, sexiest best!OCO ? Chicago Sun Times Schultz ? Sigmund Franz ?IsadorableOCO Schultz ? descended from a long line of Prague Rabbis, born in the New England boondocks, fleeing an obscure furture in ladiesOCO lingerie and determined to make it as a knock-their-socks-off theatrical impresario in LondonOCOs 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 ?angelsOCO ? 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! ?No contemporary writer is better than J.P. Donleavy at his bestOCO ? The New Yorker "

Not since The Gingerman has J.P. Donleavy succeeded in both delighting and irking his readers as he has with The Lady Who Like Clean Restrooms. This stylish novella tells the tale of Jocelyn Guenevere Marchantiere Jones, whose Scarsdale life comes to an abrupt end when her husband goes in search of a bit of "fresh flesh." Soon she is fending for herself in New York City, where finding a clean restroom will prove to be the least of her concerns.

Alfonso Stephen O'Kelly'O 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.

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..."Zany...comic...brilliant" -- The New York Times "Extremely funny yet bittersweet... handled with such grace that even its outright sex is captivating" -- Chicago American. "Donleavy's best work since The Ginger Man" -- The National Observer. "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 out-post, 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

The New York Times Book Review called The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, J. P. Donleavy's hilarious, bittersweet tale of a lost young man's existential odyssey, "a triumphant piece of writing, achieved with that total authority, total mastery which shows that a fine writer is fully extended...." In the years before and after World War II, Balthazar B is the world's last shy, elegant young man. Born to riches in Paris and raised by his governess, Balthazar is shipped off to a British boarding school, where he meets the noble but naughty Beefy. The duo matriculate to Trinity College, Dublin, where Balthazar reads zoology and Beefy prepares for holy orders, all the while sharing amorous adventures high and low, until their university careers come to an abrupt and decidedly unholy end. Written with trademark bravado and a healthy dose of sincerity, The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B is vintage Donleavy.

First published in Paris in 1955 and originally banned in America, J. P. Donleavy's first novel is now recognized the world over as a masterpiece and a modern classic of the highest order. Set in Ireland just after World War II, The Ginger Man is J. P. Donleavy's wildly funny, picaresque classic novel of the misadventures of Sebastian Dangerfield, a young American ne'er-do-well studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Dangerfield's appetite for women, liquor, and general roguishness is insatiable--and he satisfies it with endless charm.

With the world a harsh and cruel place and an enemy out to get you if he can, courtesy will not make you rich overnight but by degrees it makes others feel good and this in turn will make you feel even etter ... With more and more folk from the wrong side of the tracks, it is important to make more room at the bottom. 'The Unexpurgated Code' takes plain folk through the useful rules of social climbing.

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 author's 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 Claridge's, 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 heart's 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 Donleavy's. 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 liltingly moving piece of writing from a wonderfully fruity romancerOCO - Financial Times 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 ThereOCOs foolOCOs gold at the end of every Irish rainbow, and tarnished silver linings in every cloud, so thereOCOs 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. "

What will happen to George Smith? Mysteriously rich and desperately lonely, George appears to be under attack from all quarters: his former wife and four horrible children are suing to get his money; his dipsomaniacal housekeeper is trying to arouse his carnal interest; his secretary, the beautiful, blond Miss Thomson, will barely give him the time of day. Making matters even worse are the threatening letters: Dear Sir: Only for the moment are we saying nothing. Yours, etc., Present Associates. Despite such precautions as a two-inch-thick surgical steel door and a bullet-proof limousine, Smith remains worried. So he undertakes to build a giant mausoleum, complete with plumbing, in which to live. Hunter S. Thompson called reading this book “like sitting down to an evening of good whisky and mad laughter in a rare conversation somewhere on the edge of reality.”

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 husband's 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 hooker's fists, Cornelius Christian, heroic anti-hero, sings of life's goodness in the wake of disaster.

A new and original work from "one of the most accomplished and original writers of our time," Joseph Heller. A Singular Country is J.P. Donleavy's idiosyncratic and personal view of Ireland told in the vernacular of the Irishman, which he has nearly, but not quite, become. "A country where the dead are forever living and which is at once magical, illogical, mysterious and infuriating -- a land that is mostly, and perhaps always will remain, a condition of the mind in which dreams can be your only trusted reality." 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 Ireland's 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. Complemented by the black and white photography of Patrick Prendergast.

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 ... The Onion Eaters is amongst Donleavy's best work.

This is the dramatic story of J. P. Donleavy's personal struggle to create and publish a book that became a twentieth-century masterpiece: The Ginger Man . It is literally history combined with Donleavy's autobiography -- from his childhood in the Bronx, education at Catholic schools, service in the U.S. Navy, and travels, to his current life as proprietor of a landed estate in the midlands of Ireland. Trinity College in Dublin after World War II was a mecca for adventurous Americans who used the G.I. Bill as a passport to higher education, . Among them were able-bodied seamen, second class J.P. 'Mike' Donleavy, fighter pilot George Roy Hill (now a celebrated Hollywood actor), and a naval yeoman Gainor Stephen Crist, a Midwestern rara avis and model for the Ginger Man. Student life included degrees in debauchery; drunken brawls in Dublin pubs; comic capers with the playwright Brendan Behan; eccentric Anglo-Irish aristocrats; living on miraculous credit and in constant debt with plenty of time for the seduction of nice Catholic girls. Donleavy, impecunious and newly married, began to write The Ginger Man in a primitive isolated cottage at Kilcoole. He completed the book over a period of four years on two continents. The Ginger Man was rejected by nearly thirty-five American and British publishers. The book was finally published in Paris in 1955 by Maurice Girondias of the Olympia Press as a work of pornography. Twenty-five years of biter litigation between Donleavy and Girodias followed, with Donleavy emerging triumphant as sole owner of Olympia and its copyrights, including that of The Ginger Man.