The Onion Eaters

James Patrick (AKA, Mike) Donleavy was born in New York in 1926, both parents having immigrated from Ireland. After serving in the Navy in W.W.II, Donleavy travelled to Dublin to study at Trinity College. A central figure in Dublin's postwar creative Bohemia, Donleavy was first a painter and gave several local shows but was snubbed trying to gain entry into the London gallery scene, being told he would have to be famous in order to have his work shown. Donleavy vowed to get famous but decided to do so with typewriter and paper rather than brush and canvas. Donleavy's first novel, The Ginger Man, did indeed make him famous, but it took years to complete and years more to get published, many would-be publishers praising its artistic qualities but fearing legal and moral backlash for its (at the time) explicit sexual content. Donleavy finally found a willing publisher in Paris - Maurice Girodias, whose Olympia Press had published other extreme authors, such as Henry Miller and Samuel Beckett. Unknown to Donleavy at the time, Girodias also published a series of pornographic fiction called The Traveler's Companion Series. When the authorities began to crack down on Girodias, he decided to gain needed artistic merit for his racy and profitable sideline business by publishing The Ginger Man - already having gotten some favorable critical notice before publication - as part of The Traveler's Companion Series and not in the format of his other literary writers. To save his credibility as an author and save The Ginger Man from death by association with porn, Donleavy arranged for a UK edition to be published, even agreeing to expurgate the work (the one and only time any Donleavy work has been altered to avert censorship) in order to gain legitimacy. The years of legal battles with Girodias over rights to The Ginger Man that ensued are chronicled in Donleavy's autobiography The History of the Ginger Man. Donleavy is an accomplished playwright, several of his stories being adapted for the stage and being performed by major companies in the US and Europe. Today, Donleavy continues his prolific writing career and shows no signs of retiring. He still paints and has major shows from time to time. Now an Irish citizen, Donleavy lives in an historic mansion called Levington Park, in County Westmeath, near Mullingar.