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October 02, 2020

JP Donleavy 1990 talks about Fairy Tale of New York, The Ginger Man, Richard Harris, Brendan Behan and the Dublin literary scene of the 50s

58 minutes

From Joe Jackson’s introduction to his 2017, RTE Radio 1 programme, The Joe Jackson Tapes Revisited: JP Donleavy, which, was “pulled” from broadcast by RTE and has never been heard until now. Copyright Joe Jackson.

‘If like me you came of age during the 1970s and dreamed of one day becoming a writer you must have read, loved, and being influenced by, at least one of JP Donleavy's books. Be it The Ginger Man, Fairy Tale of New York - yeah one of the inspirations behind Shane McGowan's song of the same name – or, The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B. But back in 1990, despite my delight in meeting one of my old literary heroes, and my fondness for many of his old books at a time when one of his more recent was JP Donleavy's Ireland, I did bring a more critical - deconstructionist, in fact - sensibility to bear on the man's work. Specifically, when it came to his representation of women, sexual politics, race, class, and more so what to me and two others seemed to be Donleavy's deification of the Anglo Irish ascendancy.’

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