J. P. Donleavy, I Write About People I Like

J. P. Donleavy, I Write About People I Like

A portrait of pre-eminent author, J. P. Donleavy, Irish-American novelist and playright, author of the best-selling cult novel The Ginger Man, one of the Modern Library 100 best novels, banned in Ireland, France and Australia. It was not banned in America. However, U.S. publishers then were censoring themselves and rejecting books or trimming them of problematic material to avoid the risk of over-zealous prosecutors in different districts had brought charges against publishers. Filmed at his estate Levington Park where he used to live as a semi-reclusive gentleman farmer, the author explains how he came to own The Olympia Press, the publisher of Nabokov’s Lolita, following years of court procedures to save his first novel from publication in a pornographic collection. Arguably the funniest living American novelist, he comments on the important characters in his work and reads notes from the original manuscript of The Unexpurgated Code: A Complete Manual of Survival & Manners.