I was looking for something amusing to read and started trolling through various “top ten” lists of funniest novels. Several such lists mention “The Ginger Man” by J.P. Donleavy as being an outstanding rib-tickler, so I bought it and read it.
I know tastes vary but I just don’t get it. A broke American in Ireland is nominally studying at Trinity College. He is an entitled asshole who wouldn’t work in iron lung, and is righteously indignant that his rich father and father in law don’t support him as he feels they should. He steals from and rips off everyone around him. He spends what little money he manages to scrounge on himself (mostly alcohol) to the detriment of his wife, (and baby) who he treats with utter contempt while acting as if her complaints are affrontingly unfounded. He is significantly violent to both his wife and mistress for having the temerity to point out what an absolute prick he is. And on it goes; this is only a summary of his sleazy, creepy, criminal, violent assholishness.
To be clear, it is not the case that the main protagonist’s misconduct is merely the background setting to a plot that is otherwise amusing. I am not refusing to laugh due to priggish concerns about blemishes on the main character’s conduct; his assholishness is the very subject matter of the book. It is front and centre. It is what the book is about.
I honestly did not find one single line of the book even vaguely amusing. As you have probably gathered, the only emotion I felt at all was discomfort at the main protagonist’s unconscionable conduct.
But given the book’s longstanding fame and popularity - and it’s apparently widespread regard as being outstandingly funny - there must be someone on the Dope who found it funny. I am genuinely curious. What amused you? Can you quote any parts or lines from the book that you found funny?
Usually, I can understand why someone else might find a particular movie or book funny, even where I don’t. But in this case, I just don’t get it.
Not exactly to your point but that brings back memories. I probably read it in the early 80s. I found it amusing because I was in the mood for it then, but now, probably not so much.
Come to think of it, I think I was trying to recapture the feeling of The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B. Pretty funny book about the escapades of a down-and-out toff - you know, with threadbare suits but still with that aristocratic attitude. That was JP Donleavy at his best.
I know they boil a sheep’s head somewhere in there.
Princhester, I had your very same reaction only more violently. I was in my teens, going through my father’s very large library of modern fiction. I was a pretty uncritical reader at the time, so my reaction was unusual.
I can understand this sort of book. But usually (a) the toff is in on the joke to at least some extent ie they recognise the irony in their own conduct; and (b) no one is ever badly hurt by the toff’s escapades (or at least the victim is unsympathetic).
I missed this thread the first time around. The Ginger Man belongs to that genre of books where a lot of the humor is in discomfort with the putative protagonist (weirdly like Seinfeld, now that I think about it, where characters are absurd to the point of caricature). I found it funny way back when, but on trying to reread realized how much I hated the character and dropped it.
I started this book a few times, and gave up by chapter three every time.
If you want a sardonic Brit humor novel about nasty people, get Kingsley Amis’s LUCKY JIM. I also started that one and gave up several times, but then I got to the fourth chapter, which is fuckin’ hilarious, and it stays that was to the end.
And Ulfreida is right about Flann O’Brien. AT SWIM TWO BIRDS kicks ass.
Agree on Lucky Jim, where the main character gets a lot of empathy. Also, I admit that when nobody’s looking at work, I will occasionally pull faces just like he did.
I haven’t read it since it was a current best seller, but as I recall, I was quite amused by it. I don’t know if I would be now – I tried to read Catch 22 a couple years ago, and didn’t think it was a bit funny,
