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Review �� The Ginger Man �� 28 May 2013

“When you get back Kenneth, I’ll walk naked wearing a green bowler to greet you at the boat. With a donkey cart flying green streamers and green shamrocks imported from Czechoslovakia and a band of girl pipers blowing like mad. Did you know that they imported the English sparrow into America to eat horseshit off the streets?��

Who else, but an Irish writer, and a zany one at that, could possibly have written that?

It’s interesting to know, however, that when “The Ginger Man�� was published in Paris in 1955, it was simultaneously banned in Ireland. It was considered obscene at the time and it typically took the all-embracing French to appreciate it for its sensual and literary worth.

Yes, I did find it slightly risqué when I first read it but then that was twenty or so years ago and so returning to “The Ginger Man�� after this gap, has been a shock, to put it mildly, to my system. I recall that previously I sailed through it, appreciating it for the Irish dry sense of humor, the nonchalant air of the poverty-stricken protagonist, Sebastian Dangerfield, and the atmosphere of Dublin in the late forties. I was so impressed by it in fact that I immediately purchased another five of his books:

“The Onion Eaters��
“A Singular Man��
“Meet My Maker the Mad Molecule��
“The Saddest Summer of Samuel S��
“The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B��

They were all pretty comical and wacky, especially “The Onion Eaters�� but basically the best one was “The Ginger Man��. Why is it, I ask myself, that so many authors write a magnificent first novel and then the following ones never seem to live up to the initial expectations?

But now, reading this book, I’m viewing it completely differently; if anything it’s more the style as opposed to the plot which really cannot be called too exciting and which regrettably doesn’t enthrall me to turn the page, and read and read, without putting it down until the end. It has a writing style, however, that is quite unique, and I would imagine very difficult to do, that of swinging from the first to the third person and back via the main character, Sebastian Dangerfield. That is either very clever or extremely foolish but it suits the style of this book.

An example is:

“O’Keefe sauntered sadly off and disappeared down this gray dark street called Seville Place. Dangerfield walked back across Butt Bridge, a finely divided rain falling. My body has blue joints. Ireland is heaven bound with this low weather...And clusters of men hunched in black overcoats sucking cigarettes, spitting and mean. With tongues of shoes hanging out like dogs�� hungry mouths. I’d give anything for a drink now.��

Who but J. P. Donleavy could have started his book with the first three mini paragraphs:

“Today a rare sun of spring. And horse carts clanging to the quays down Tara Street and the shoeless white faced kids screaming.
O’Keefe comes in and climbs up on a stool. Wags his knapsack around on his back and looks at Sebastian Dangerfield.
Those tubs are huge over there. First bath for two months (note from me: let me stay a mile from him �� I imagine that he would be “well cooked��). I’m getting more like the Irish every day. Like going on the subway in the States, you go through a turnstile.��

Strange turns of phrase run throughout the book but what a helter-skelter of a ride has this turned out to be. One moment I think that Sebastian is a ghastly fellow. He appears to be such an unsavory, unclean, unreliable, Irish-American, who really doesn’t seem to know which country he belongs to �� Ireland or America; who is constantly on the lookout for sexual pursuits and imbibing copious amounts of alcohol. Worst of all, he’s a liar to all intents and purposes. Then a few paragraphs or chapters later on, he becomes funny, gentle, endearing, picaresque, full of the blarney and a pleasure to read. There’s a certain mockery about him too and yet also a poignant side.

I feel for his long suffering wife Marian, who tries so hard to make a go of this marriage but our dear Sebastian had no idea how to behave with her and even fantasizes and thinks of another woman, Ginny Cupper, when he’s making love to her. Ah yes, she “took me in her car out to the spread field of Indiana��.

I actually think I would have tossed him out with a flea in his ear!

To help their financial problems, Miss Lilly Frost comes to live with them. Marion finally, however, gives up on her husband’s feckless behavior and takes the child Felicity back to Scotland. Does Dangerfield appear to miss her? Not really, just the convenience of having her around, like a well-heeled shoe.

His attitude towards money counts for naught. What decent man who has been left money by his wife to pay the bills, would spend it and in addition hock their fire.

His well-spoken American friend, Kenneth O’Keefe, with delusions of grandeur, also deserves a boot up the backside. Such a clever, amusing, unclean, complex individual and also thoroughly unlikeable but then he also turns up trumps in that he’s so amusing from time to time. What a contradictory book this is turning out to be. He constantly admonishes Sebastian about his bad drinking habits:

“This, Dangerfield, is your blood for which your family will starve and which will finally send you all to the poor house. Should have played it cozy and married strictly for cash. Come in drunk, have a quick one and whoops, another mouth to feed…��

Other girls/women such as Chris, Mary and Miss Frost all love him to death, feed him, not only by giving him their food or money but also physically. He’s a taker and the remarkable thing is that he gets away with it; his stealth in his creepy, sly way of getting into Miss Frost’s bed and the guilt after the event. Her wish to confess to the priest because this sexual act was a mortal sin.

And yet the hypocrisy:

“Lilly, why did you want me to do it this way?��
“O Mr Dangerfield, it’s so much less of a sin.��
“And fun too.��

Still Sebastian always manages to extricate himself from his involved, convoluted relationships with women and yet he goes off to London with Mary and ��.well that’s for you to find out.

And finally, on being viewed by other people:

“On O’Keefe’s head a brown dirty tweed cap. Women in this lounge looking at the two of them with their legs stretched all over the place. And they were cocking their white ears to hear that bearded man go on about such fantastic things with that awful accent of his and who is that man with his haughty ways and county voice, flicking his fingers exquisitely and rolling back his head to belch laughter. So sure of themselves.��

In conclusion, am I pleased that I reread this book? Well, yes and no. There’s a strange kind of brilliance to it that I didn’t feel the first time around but the criticism I do have, of myself anyway, is my ambivalent feeling here. This was definitely the best of all his books but nevertheless I think my reading style is now going in a different direction. I’m more into a good plot, sensitivity in the writing style, one that flows but with a touch of exotic spices and flavors thrown in, combined with musical elements that enthrall me; a book to entice and whet the appetite; to try and venture out and experience all; laughs and thrills too I guess. But the most important aspect is that of unexpected anticipation�� That says it all. Whatever one says about this book, it certainly remains in the mind and I’m intrigued to know for how long.