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 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
/ RUSSIAN
OBIT
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
Fom The
Lilliput Press, Ireland's leading independent publishing house,
comes The
Ginger Man Letters.The book is a collection
of 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. Two-hundred, twenty 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 launch for The
Ginger Man Letters was held on Tuesday 11 September 2018
at Hodges Figgis, Dublin Ireland's oldest bookstore. The featured speaker
at the launch was Dr. Sandra Collins, director of the National Library of
Ireland. Also speaking were Lilliput publisher Antony Farrell, who welcomed
everyone and delivered opening remarks, and editor Dunn who explained the
backsotry of the book - how he came to edit the letters. (See
Dunn's Irish Times article for more on the book.)
Complementing the letters is an afterword by Gainor Crist’s daughter,
Mariana, who recalls her father in loving detail.
Popping up in the 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 is richly illustrated with
period photographs and facsimiles of some of the letters.The
Ginger Man Letters
is available from The
Lilliput Press and fine book sellers.
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.
