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Born in New York City of Irish parents, James Patrick Donleavy served
in the US Navy during World War II. He came to Dublin after the
war on the GI Bill of Rights programme and studied macrobiology
at Trinity College. Among his many friends were writers Patrick
Kavanagh and Brendan Behan and painter Ralph Cusack. Attracting
controversy as a painter he exhibited in the Stephen's Green Gallery
in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Jack Yeats commented favourably
on his work, especially on his oil painting technique. It was as
a writer that he was to find international fame and his first novel,
The Ginger Man (1955) was hailed as a comic masterpiece. Among his
other works are A Singular Man (1963), The Beastly Beatitudes of
Balthazar B (1968), The Onion Eaters (1971), Leila (1983), Are You
Listening, Rabbi Low? (1987) and That Darcy, That Dancer, That Gentleman
(1990). He became an Irish citizen in 1967 and lives in Mullingar,
Co. Westmeath where he writes, paints and farms. While writing became
his career his painting took a back seat but he has returned to
it many times over the past fifty years, often providing illustrations
for his books or for articles written in magazines such as The New
Yorker. He exhibited at the Tom Caldwell Gallery in the 1980s and
had a joint exhibition in 1990 in London with his daughter, Karen,
a talented painter and highly successful ceramicist and potter now
living in the USA. |