Caution
It is awfully bad for the conscience to go out to get laid with another woman while wearing a shirt washed and ironed by one’s wife plus she may upon laundering this again, get suspicious.
Shabby People
These throw the smaller party frequently termed intime and they collect guests from a mixture of recent friends right up to the brand new. Informality is the key note. And your host often is without a tie. He may in fact even dare to wear a turtle neck garment. Upon entering such parties raise your eyebrows.
Shabby Shabby People
Always throw bigger parties than shabby people. Some scruffiness will be evident with louts and a gold digger or two freely kissing asses among the guests. Upon entering such parties repeatedly sniff your nostrils.
Shabby Shabby Shabby People
As you ascend by lift to their spacious apartments, someone recognizable from stage, screen or even radio will be waiting in the private vestibule to descend as the doors open. If they are known to you they will instantly make it a habit of calling you by the wrong christian name as well as leaving syllables out of your surname. Upon entering the shindig two large rooms will be in action crammed with more celebrities, some singing duets and two perfectly different bands will be playing. Less famous guests will feign serious conversation in corners where there is a prevalence of books and cultural artifacts. Upon entry smile and slowly shake your head up and down with a big yes if these are the people for you.
Upon Good Manners Honour and Duty Getting You Absolutely Nowhere
This is disheartening. But if anyway you can sit at your hearth with an evening cocktail and the light gently playing on your newspaper with the wife not bitching from the kitchen and your kids growing up to be like you, say to yourself, what the hell, I got some of the good things even though those rude pushy ruthless bastards have got the best. And maybe that’s the reason you’re still alive.
Ingredients for Survival
There are so damn many of these that you first want to make sure you have the money to afford them.
Epitaph
Tis as well
To be wise and know
That so goes other people’s lives
So goes your own
Alas
And ere long
About the Author
J. P. Donleavy was born in New York City in 1926 and educated there and at Trinity College, Dublin, His works include the novels The Ginger Man, A Singular Man, The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, The Onion Eaters and A Fairy Tale of New York; a book of short pieces, Meet My Maker the Mad Molecule; a novella, The Saddest Summer of Samuel S, and four plays The Ginger Man, Fairy Tales of New York, A Singular Man and The Saddest Summer of Samuel S.
Copyright
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher.
First published 2012 by
The Lilliput Press
62–63 Sitric Road,
Arbour Hill
Dublin 7, Ireland
www.lilliputpress.ie
Copyright © J.P. Donleavy, 2012
ISBN eBook 978 18 435 12776
A CIP record for this title is available from The British Library.
The Lilliput Press receives financial assistance from
An Chomhairle Ealaion / The Arts Council of Ireland
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