99: The Ginger Man--JP Donleavy

Year of Publication: 1954
Author’s Nationality: U.S.
General Themes: Debauchery, Dishonesty, Alcoholism, Lust, Identity
Is The Protagonist a Self-Destructive Young Man? Yes
Style: “Withnail & I,” as conceived by Flann O’Brien
Short Form Synopsis: Sebastian Dangerfield, an adulterous, drunken, lying, cheating wastrel, is a young American living with his English wife in Dublin, where he is purportedly studying law at Trinity College. Most of his time, however, is spent drinking, pontificating, screwing the local girls and avoiding his numerous creditors.

Let’s be clear, here. Sebastian Davenport, protagonist of J.P Donleavy’s The Ginger Man is not a good friend, a good husband, a good father, a good tenant, a good borrower, a good son, a good American or a good houseguest. He’s not much of a student and probably not nearly as good in bed as he is at getting girls in bed. You don’t want him as a boyfriend or a neighbor or a friend. A compulsive liar, an insatiable drunk, an unapologetic womanizer, an adulterous lout, a spendthrift, a pompous ass, an pompous ass, a terrible snob, Davenport is the kind of guy that would seduce your sister, bleed your bank account dry, insult your mother, kick your dog and piss all over your rug before you had time to revoke his invitation. And once you did, you’d probably miss hanging out with him, because seriously? Who gets away with that kind of shit?

Sebastian Davenport would probably tell you the correct answer to that answer is Sebastian Davenport. His author, however, seems to indicate that the answer is “no one.” Donleavy isn’t a moralist and “The Ginger Man” isn’t exactly a cautionary tale. Nor is it, pure picaresque. Davenport is not fully farce, and despite his enormous appetites, I wouldn’t exactly call him Falstaffian. For all its humor and prodigal excess, The Ginger Man contains a seed of melancholy that sets in peripherally even in the most absurd scenes. Part of this may derive from the mind of the man himself. Through the public Davenport is smug, reckless and opportunistic, his interior monologues show a man out of control, skirting the narrow margin between libertinism and desperation. Part of this comes from the scenery. Dublin in 1948 wasn’t yet thirty years out from England’s shadow. Much of the country was impoverished, a backwater on the margins of a Europe racked by war. In the opening chapters of “The Ginger Man,” Davenport and his long-suffering English wife reside in a cottage clinging tenuously to the edge of a cliff, eroding more and more every day, as little pieces of their domestic life literally crumble into the sea below. Donleavy’s Ireland is cold, rainy and poor. It’s the end of the line. If you can’t make it there, you’re probably not going to make it at all.

Donleavy further complicates matters with his narrative point-of-view. Reasonably straightforward dialogues delivered in third person often digress into elaborate stream of consciousness. This is an odd, if telling authorial choice to make. The “I” of the story (Davenport) is also the Davenport (he) of the story. It’s as if he recognizes the is turning into caricature and the only way to separate that out from the man he is is to conceive of himself in the third person. In order to continue living his life at the expense (both financial and otherwise) of all around him, Davenport must continue to play a part. This part naturally changes depending on whom he’s trying to con and what precisely he’s trying to get out of them. To Kenneth O’Keefe, his fellow American lout with literary pretensions, Davenport acts the fraternal mentor. To his wife, he acts the beleaguered, overworked husband who will one day come into a fortune. To his mistresses, he acts as sexual liberator and savior, promising to lead them out of their dull lives in Ireland, if they’ll only lend him a few bucks and take him to bed (not necessarily in that order) first. To himself, however, Davenport is a muddle of desires best left unspoken and anxieties. To wit:

And tomorrow Marion comes back. And the two of us sit here wagging our America legs. Marion, stay away a little longer, please. Don’t want the pincers on me just yet. Greasy dishes and baby’s dirty bottom. I just want to watch them sailing. We need a nurse for baby to wheel her around some public park where I can’t hear the squeals. Or maybe the two of you will get killed in a train wreck and your father will foot the bill for the burial. Well-bred people never fight over the price of death. And it’s not cheap these days. Just look a bit glassy eyed for a month and take off for Paris. Some nice quite hotel in Rue de Seine and float fresh fruit on a basin of cool water. Your long winter body lying naked on the slate and what would I be thinking if I touched your dead breast. Must get a half crown out of O’Keefe before he goes (21).

These forays into Davenport’s mind provide readers with the closest thing to truth within the book. Davenport knows he’s a bastard and vacillates between entitlement and fear of found out. His remorse is not so much at what he does to others but where he has gotten himself.

This last bit becomes more of an issue as the novel progresses and Davenport’s already tenuous purchase starts to give way beneath him. He wife leaves him; his clothes literally fall apart on his body (leading to a graphic and unintentional exposure on the train home). Kenneth debarks for France (where he tries very hard to become a homosexual). Davenport proposes various cons to the women in his life—offering massive rewards (usually a new life in England or America) in exchange for cash up front. In what small way Davenport is able to justify this as all, he does so hope of vaguely promised wealth from his American family (a hope dashed about three quarters of the way through the novel).

Throughout most (if not all of the novel), Davenport steadfastly insists that he is better than and more superior to those around him. He derides the Irish for their filth and depravity, the hypocrisy of their faith and their unsophisticated desires. This transparent self-delusion provides fodder for great comedy as well as what may be a not-so-subtle commentary on Post-War American swagger. The U.S. had crowned itself defender of freedom, saviors of the world, and found itself in possession of great wealth and influence while the majority of its first-world brethren were still rebuilding a fragile framework of national identity from beneath the rubble. In this sense, Sebastian Davenport and The Ginger Man belong to the same peculiar generation as the damaged Bohemians of Styron’s Set This House On Fire. Young Americans abroad, fearful of rejoining the status quo back home, yet kept afloat by the tenuous illusion that they are impervious to the sort of failure that surrounds them.

By choosing Ireland, one of the lone neutral nations in the European landscape, Donleavy can play comedian without being explicitly (or even implicitly) political, but sixty years out from the time-frame of this book, it’s hard not to read between the lines. Harder still, when you finish the novel on the day the U.S. inaugurates a president many of us hope will help us to revise America’s international reputation as a nation of ugly, entitled bullies. Sebastian Davenport may be a lying, cheating lout, but at least he can be charming. And I think it’ safe to say, we stopped being charming a long time ago.