JP Donleavy’s final novel A Letter Marked Personal to launch this week

Two years after JP Donleavy’s death, a new novel by the author of The Ginger Man – ‘A Letter Marked Personal’ – is to be released this week.

Published by The Lilliput Press, ‘A Letter Marked Personal’ will be launched on Thursday by JP’s editor and archivist Bill Dunn, accompanied by the author’s son, Philip Donleavy, and publisher Anthony Farrell at Books Upstairs on 17 D’Olier Street, Dublin (6pm).

Mr Dunn, editor of the The Ginger Man Letters, says the book is “a classic Donleavy”.

“It has his unique style and syntax. It’s evident in the stream of consciousness rifts, his shifting voice and tense, and there are a lot of unexpected turns to in the story,” Bill, a lifelong friend of Donleavy’s told the Westmeath Examiner by phone from New Jersey.

Reflective

JP started writing the novel at his home in Levington Park outside Mullingar in 1999 when he was 73. And that is where ‘A Letter Marked Personal’ differs from the rest of his work, in that it is more reflective and serious than anything gone before.

“JP was always writing, he was very prolific, but here he is looking back and assessing,” said Bill.

JP ‘Mike’ Donleavy (1926–2017) wrote more than 20 books, including The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B (1968), A Fairy Tale of New York (1973) and Schultz (1979), along with several works of non-fiction.

His most famous work, ‘The Ginger Man’ (1955) has never been out of print in English and has been translated into two dozen languages, including Mandarin. It has sold more than 45 million copies.

‘A Letter Marked Personal’ is based on a story told to JP by a close friend. It follows the life of ‘Nathan Johnson’, who is 48 and restless, and who began his career as a door-to-door lingerie salesman. He reached the top of the rag trade and owned a penthouse overlooking Manhattan.

Looking back on his early struggles, the protagonist indulges in fantasies of life as a country squire on Blueberry Hill – the Westchester estate he buys his wife Muriel as a birthday present. He meets a model from Iowa, different from the rest, and is captivated. When, out of the blue, a letter marked ‘personal’ arrives, his wife opens it and life unravels.

“JP’s fiction writing started with The Ginger Man and his fiction is reflective of the things he’s experienced and observed in life. The Ginger Man reflects the bohemian Dublin he experienced as a student at Trinity College. His characters are largely composed of people he’s known, and the person he knows the best – himself.”

Friendship

Bill started out as a fan of Donleavy, reading his work when he was in his teens, and by his 20s he had started collecting anything he could get his hands on – stage plays, letters, first editions.

“I amassed a serious collection of JP Donleavy and always imagined I’d get to meet him one day. I was a newspaper reporter at the time, I was working in Washington DC on USA Today when I saw he was on a book tour of the States.”

Bill lined up a 90-minute interview with JP but ended up spending the entire day with the author.

“He was impressed with how I well I knew his work. As six o’clock came, it was time to say goodbye and JP said I must come and visit him in Ireland.” And that is how the friendship started. A few years later, when Bill was in Dublin to run the marathon, he visited Grainger’s on Talbot Street for a pint of the black stuff.

“I went there because it was mentioned in The Ginger Man, not by name but by description. I rang up JP and invited him to join me, but he insisted I get a train to Mullingar, and that was the first of many visits over the years.”

Bill began archiving JP’s work – manuscripts, personal letters, law files, the ephemera of his theatrical productions.

Highly anticipated

“We became good friends. In my work on the archive I had the opportunity to read ‘A Letter Marked Personal’. It is a very worthy addition to the Donleavy cannon.

“Donleavy made very good copy for reporters who would regularly ring him for a comment, and inevitably ask him what he was working on – and he would always say, as a sort of a throwaway remark, ‘‘A Letter Marked Personal’’.

“This led to demand building for the novel. JP started it in 1999 and by 2005 it was basically finished, needing only a final close edit and polish, which he intended to give it but never did. He put it aside for another project and never came back to it.

“Now, 20 years later, and there are Donleavy fans all across the world very eager for this new title.”

Actor Johnny Depp is among those fans and has stated his admiration for Donleavy’s latest work: “On his final bow, ‘A Letter Marked Personal’ sees JP Donleavy at his finest. Ever a master of his craft, we are honoured to once again enjoy and savour his savage, jocular prose and divine insights into the most absurd thing of all – the human condition.”

• Launch of JP Donleavy’s ‘A Letter Marked Personal’ at Books Upstairs, 17 D’Olier Street, Dublin 2, on Thursday, October 17, from 6.30pm.