J.P. Donleavy died Monday, September 11, 2017 in Mullingar, Ireland at age 91. He is mourned by family, son Philip and daughter Karen, and by friends and fans world wide. It's with a heavy heart I write this eulogy; Mr. Donleavy (Mike to his friends) was a big part of my life. I began the JPDC in 1998 and have searched the web high and low to find everything I could on all aspects of JPD's works and life style. I have a lot to update now to conform to JPD's passing.
For obituaries in the
press, I've provided PDFs of the various articles that I've found. I'm using
PDFs as there's no way in telling how long the papers will keep the articles
on their sites.Some of these PDFs aren't much more than the headlines since
some papers use "paywalls" to cut off the article, requiring subscribing
to the paper in order to read the entire piece. The majority of papers don't
use a paywall and they cover well what the forced-subscription papers withhold.
I'm not going to capsulize JPD's life and creative career since indepth information
already exists on the site.
J.P. Donleavy Bio
Pieces within the Compendium by Donleavy Archivist Bill Dunn
Chronology:
The Donleavy Years (a comprehensive
biography)
Adventures In Making The
Ginger Man
Portrait of the Writer as an
Artist
His Sporting Life: The Athlete J.P. Donleavy
The Agrarian Reforms of Organic Farmer J.P.
Donleavy
J.P. Donleavy Quotes On Writing
"The
purpose of writing is to make your mother and father drop dead
with shame."
"When I'm dead, I hope it may be said: his sins were scarlet, but his books were read."
"I remember one letter from a girl in a midwestern town who read one of my books and thought she had discovered it- that no one had ever read it or knew about it. Then one day in her local library she found cards for one or two of my other books. They were full of names- the books were borrowed all the time. She resented this a bit and then walked around the town looking in everybody's face and wondering if they were the ones who were reading my books. That is someone I write for."
J.P. Donleavy Obituaries In the Media
L.A.
Times / Washington
Post / New York Times
- New
York Times 2nd article
Boston Herald / BBC
News / RTÉ
ie / Irish
Times - Irish
Times 2nd article - Irish
Times 3rd article IrishTimes
article by Bill Dunn / The
Gazette (Denver) / The Times
/ WPXI News
San Francisco Gate / The
Chicago Tribune / Buzz ie
/ The Guardian /
AJC /
The Telegraph
Independent ie - Independent
ie 2 / Irish Central
/ Irish News / USNews
/ The Charlotte
Observer / Journal
IE Newsday
/ Newsmax / Standard-Examiner
/ Westmeath
Examiner / Austin360
/ Star-Herald
thestraightstimes
/ The Herald
/ Press
Herald (Portland) / The
Houston Chronicle /
Miami Herald
The Sacramento Bee
/ San Diego Union Tribune
/ The Star World
News / Irish America
/ The
Irish Post Broadsheet
ie. / Extra ie. / Trinity
College, Dublin News & Events / Independent
ie. Opinion
Midlands 103 / UNZ Review
Excerpt:
"Sixty-seven years after Donleavy left TCD without a degree, Trinity
College overlooked his incomplete academic record and focused instead on his
many accomplishments since then, awarding him at age 90 a Doctorate
of Letters (Litt.D.) at the commencement June 24, 2016. Donleavy was one of
six receiving honorary degrees that day..."
Full
story by Bill Dunn
The collection contains the correspondence between JPD and Gainor Steven Crist and JPD and Arthur Kenneth Donoghue. Crist and Donoghue, friends from Trinity days, were the inspirations for Sebastian Dangerfield and Kenneth O'Keefe respectively, the principal characters in The Ginger Man. Popping up in their letters are comments on and news of Brendan Behan, Maurice Girodias, Susan Hampshire, Richard Harris, Patrick Kavanagh, Desmond MacNamara, John Ryan, Susannah York and many more. The volume will be richly illustrated with period photographs and facsimiles of some of the letters. The letters have been selected by the book's editor, the top J.P. Donleavy authority, close friend and archivist, Bill Dunn, from over 600 in the J.P. Donleavy archive The book will be published by The Lilliput Press, Ireland's leading independent publishing house.
The books have a forward
by actor Johnny Depp, an introduction by novelist Sean O' Reilly, an illustrated
essay on the "The Publishing Odyssey of The Ginger Man"
by bibliographer and archivist Bill Dunn and an afterward titled "Meeting
Donleavy: A Picnic in Westmeath" by the late film producer Bob Mitchell.
The books also include an exchange of letters between J.P. Donleavy and Arland
Ussher, a selection of archival photographs of Dublin
and Trinity College in the early 1950s and photos of pages from the original
Ginger Man manuscript.
The Lilliput Press hosted a Ginger Man 60th anniversary book launch at the Pavilion Bar, Trinity College, Dublin on July 17th, 2015. For photos and details by JP Donleavy's archivist, Bill Dunn, and event eyewitness go to The Ginger Man book launch page.
