The critics" choice

JP Donleavy has been living in Mullingar for over 50 years but as an intensely private person most people in town are aware only of his status as a renowned author and know little of the man himself.Despite writing many works of fiction and non fiction since, JP Donleavy"s name will be forever linked with the Ginger Man...Which he wrote aged just 29 and which continues to catch the interest of readers from all over the world.The novel which charts the exploits of the anti-hero Sebastian Dangerfield continues to appear in the crtics" choice list of the best 100 novels of all time. The rumour that Johnny Depp is to take the lead role in a film version is true and still on the cards.'Everyone seems to know who Johnny is,' laughed JP. 'I really had no idea how famous he was and ran into him quite by accident. I was sitting in my room at the New York Athletic Club and he came in and sat beside me. I had the manuscript for Dog on the 17th Floor beside me and he asked me what it was all about.'I motioned to the open window and gestured about jumping out and he laughed and took an interest in the story. That"s how I began to know him and as it turns out we had similar chidlhoods. His childhood was countrified as was mine.'JP"s experience of America as a child was not the typical hard life that the son of most Irish emigrants would have experienced. His father had left the seminary at Maynooth after three years but took with him a much coveted education including a flair for Latin translation.'When he arrived he took civil service exams and came fifth out of the thousands who had entered for them. I remember being told that as a child and thinking that he must have been fairly clever.'My mother didn"t have the typical Irish emigrant experience either. She was taken in by a very wealthy family in New York and travelled to America in first class carriages.'We lived in Woodlawn in the Bronx and I was surrounded by green fields and streams. It was really very idyllic. My childhood was more like Middle America rather than the smart New York set.'JP"s talent for writing showed at an early age but despite his academic ability he was expelled from the exclusive Fordham Prep school.'I was expelled from everything really,' he laughed, 'I didn"t do anything really bad but I was regarded as a bad influence on the student body.'I remember at the time a student priest said to the headmaster: "You are expelling a boy for which this school might have ever been known". I think that he had already noticed my writing.'A quiet spell after JP was honourably discharged from the US Navy led him to think about going to college and he asked his mother if there were any good schools in Ireland.'She told me about Trinity College and I had already heard about Dublin from some people at the New York Athletic Club. I had heard that there were pubs with snugs where you could close over doors and sit inside with your friends and I liked the idea of that.'So, I wrote off to Trinity and they told me to come over as soon as I wanted and that was that.'JP"s attachment to his American identity led him to a fist fight and afterwards a close friendship with Brendan Behan who called him a 'narrow back', an insult to wealthy second generation immigrants.'We all drank in Davy Byrne"s, which was sort of an artsy pub in the 1940s and Behan addressed me as "a narrow back", which meant that I had made money off the "broad backs", as the first generation immigrants had been called.'Because I had been in the navy and so on I took this as an insult and called Behan out for a fight. He didn"t know of course that I had trained as a boxer at the New York Athletic Club. Anyway we were standing there in a lane outside Davy Byrne"s when I said to him: "Do you know that not one single person has put down their drink to come and watch us fight" and he laughed and that was the start of a great friendship.'Behan was a very sad character and he drank very, very heavily. I can remember that he was so drunk one night that I put him in the car, drove home and went on to bed forgetting that he was there. In the morning I went outside in a panic to see if he was alright and there he was, still drunk and trying to feed grass to a bull.'Dublin was very exciting then and the set that we were in seemed apart from Ireland which was very conservative at the time. But I also remember walking the streets and being appalled by the poverty I saw. I would see huge houses with no doors and the shadow of rats darting in and out.'JP"s secluded life at Levington is a far cry from his student days when he cut a dash across Dublin but the world still manages to find him, and his website records thousands of hits everyday.Writing and of course painting is now something that is done 'here and there, when it comes' and JP"s days are mostly spent managing his affairs and answering phone calls and emails.'I don"t mix much with the literary crowd, which is very insular anyway,' he said. 'Of course the books are still popular and make me famous in a way. People tend to get one book and then another and so on.'I would like to see a film version of the Ginger Man, of course Sebastian Dangerfield was first played by Richard Harris on stage and there have been lots of amateur versions as well.'I think that Johnny would do a brilliant job.'