The History of the Ginger Man: An Autobiography

by J. P. Donleavy

  Following this further dispiriting event concerning The Ginger Man, I found myself walking one early afternoon with Donoghue. We had just progressed past the back morgue doors of the Massachusetts General Hospital, and were emerging from Blossom Street into the sunnier clime along the Charles River embankment. I voiced one’s gloom over the book and that I was now coming to the conclusion that the obstacles to its publication were insurmountable and that it would be a wise decision to not continue and finish it, but to throw in the towel. Donoghue, who was at the moment just passing a fire alarm box on the corner, stopped in his tracks and, his whole body slumping, he reached out and held on to the red fire stanchion. And I for a moment wondered if he were going to pull the lever for the fire brigade. But he was merely clinging for support to stop himself from falling to the ground as he gasped out his alarmed words.

  “You can’t do that. You can’t stop. You’ve got to go on.”

  It was an amazing moment. And that someone could feel so strongly about someone else’s work was a surprise, more so perhaps because of those so recently vociferous in wanting to reject it. Donoghue, however, was so crestfallen as we headed off to have a coffee in Charles Street that by the time we got there, and so as not to squelch the little that remained of cheerful optimism and to not depress the enjoyment of coffee and slice of blueberry pie for which he was paying, I reassured Donoghue that I would go on. But it was becoming increasingly difficult, with the suspicion intensifying that I was not to find a publisher in these United States. And with few small pleasures and less and less to look forward to, my confidence had already started to wane.

  Melvin and Deedi, previous occupiers of the apartment, suddenly descended to remove their two beds. And one was left to sleep on a mattress on the floor where bedbugs now invaded. These unpleasant creatures seemed to come in under the apartment’s permanently closed back door, which was just across a narrow hall from where lived my Jewish friend, who now passing as I sat on my stoop, tipped his homburg hat, bowed and called me Mr. Yid. Then on the advice of Donoghue’s close friends the Moynahans, one managed to get a cheap bed from the St. Vincent de Paul Society, which remains the only instance of the Catholic Church in any way contributing to the writing of The Ginger Man.

  Although much abated, there was still an occasional fight between the prostitute and her customers in the courtyard. But at least in the teeming ghetto of Boston’s West End, with its smelly garbage-strewn streets, there was less conformity than was required in the rest of this lemminglike nation. However, both Valerie and I were now feeling a serious and growing yearning to be back in Europe, and to be there on nearly any terms. But there was a smidgen of encouragement left. In response to mine, a pleasant letter from Wheelock came. Although I could not see how I could change the character of the work, I still held out vague hopes that this highly thought of editor of whom Crist had heard and Scribner’s might acquiesce to the difficulties first expressed concerning obscenity. In our meeting in New York, there had been mention of a thousand-dollar advance, which kept vague hope of survival in America alive. But that dream became more and more remote as I found as I wrote on that there was little or nothing in the work I could change. If anything I was becoming conscious that it was presenting even more of the problems Scribner’s did not want. Especially in the matter of frank depiction of events too delicious to part with. And which in turn seemed to give rise to more outrageous matters in the telling of the tale of Dangerfield. Thus digging a deeper and deeper hole out of which no expurgation could now retrieve me.

  As cheap as it was to live in the West End of Boston, our infinitesimal money, with no income, was running out. Such food items as a twenty-seven-ounce tall can of Friend pork and beans were luxuries beyond our purse, as were two for forty-nine cents. Or a ten-ounce can of Gorton’s ready-to-fry codfish cakes at twenty-one cents. Or Bang-O popcorn at sixteen cents or fancy solid white tuna at twenty-nine cents. One did, at thirty-five cents for a pound package, make a magnanimous exception to purchasing Ritz crackers, which, coated with peanut butter, was one of Crist’s favorite staples, and continued to buy half a pound of kidneys now reduced to fifteen cents. Valerie investigated working again as a speech therapist, but with the prevarication of the possibilities and referrals in distant different directions, that soon became an unenthusiastic route to pursue. Return to New York City was looming. And Gainor now in his communications constantly alerted one to the fact that these United States were not for us.

  “Mike, why is it impossible for me to be able to pursue my daily life without strife. God knows I’ve tried to abide by the rules, maybe not all, nor to the letter but at least made every effort to uphold chivalry in a land boasting of freedom. But more a freedom for fucking other people up. There seems to be no escape for yours truly. And I am sadly left, an unhappy dangling puppet of the fates. Pray God that someone soon pulls for me more sympathetic strings.”

  Having both been five or more years away, we did expect too much of America, and for it to resemble the ethic we had known growing up there, that hard work and fair play was rewarded if not necessarily accorded the poor. And leisure, privilege and money would, as one’s background ordained, be heaped upon those cultured and astute. Neither Gainor nor I really expected to confront a country ruled by corporate mores and riddled by fear and suspicion. But at least a few times it did achieve one’s best anticipations, often enjoyed for little or no money. Although ten cents was a large investment in carfare, I occasionally visited Cambridge, climbing up to the station near the county jail to take the train over Longfellow Bridge and across the Charles River Basin, where along its shore were held summer orchestral concerts and where oarsmen on the ripples of the water rowed and pretty sailboats wafted back and forth in the Boston breeze. Then one came to the strange abruptness of this underground last stop at academia and Harvard Square. Where up the steps and across the street was the Harvard Coop. Donoghue had already walked me along by the elegant houses of Brattle Street and brought me to sit in Widener Library to hear poetry and music. I even ventured with him to a pub hangout of Harvard students. Where Donoghue explained that one had to beware concerning intellectual discussions held in such leisure environs, as sometimes these could be interrupted by intruding Boston Irish vulgarists, who, overhearing such conversations, would interject uncongenial disagreement and then on the premise that might makes right would threaten a fist to break the Harvard student’s jaw.

  I did feel it was all the more reason why I should be attired as I still was, in my khaki shirt and chino trousers and looking like a ditch-digger. Albeit one sporting the overtones of a British accent. However, Donoghue finally seemed to stomach his embarrassment of my being so dressed, and I met some of his oldest friends, native Bostonians of very Irish backgrounds and Harvard folk who were possessed of sophisticated charm indeed. One being Dr. Edward O’Rourke, the then commissioner of health in Cambridge. O’Rourke, a medical doctor with an astonishing range of interests, was of a marvelous, understanding air, diplomatic, tolerant, chuckling and assenting to all free thought. He would snatch minutes during his busy lunch hour to rush Donoghue and I about while shooting a pleasantly cultural breeze with us. And generously, if only briefly, providing redeeming moments among the many accumulating depressing ones.

  Among other of Donoghue’s earliest childhood friends were Julian, and his wife, Lizzie, Moynahan. With Valerie and Philip, we visited them, in what seemed to us, from Boston’s West End, their commodious Cambridge apartment. Dining on delicious heaps of spaghetti, we downed nourishingly rich and highly intoxicating Chianti wine. Julian, having been at Harvard, and Lizzie at Radcliffe, this young couple both knew of the hard lot of the Irish and the privilege the best educated of this race could achieve. With their intellectual assurance and possessed of an astonishing handsomeness, they were natural patricians free of the mealymouthedness and suspicions rife across the continent. They were eagerly able to listen to my own iconoclastic talk. And were thinkers of the kin
d that both Crist and I had imagined would still be found in American life. One took some comfort from the fact that these of Donoghue’s friends now had read the manuscript of The Ginger Man. And were not dismayed.

  Funds had now just about run out, and our ghetto sojourn in Boston was to be short-lived. When we left for New York, Donoghue took over living at 51A Poplar Street. The weather cooling, we were back again in the old white house atop the hill at East 238th Street. It was decided that the way to get out of the United States had to be piecemeal. Valerie made plans to depart for Europe and the Isle of Man with Philip. I returned the 558-page manuscript of The Ginger Man to Scribner’s. I was now with minuscule money left, depending on handouts from my always dependable mother but beginning to see that in hanging on through a last-ditch stand and trying to see if I could find a publisher, one could bite the dust sooner than soon. But I would persist to wait till I could wait no longer. The attraction of the Isle of Man was that we felt we had there an ace in the hole. Old man Heron’s will had provided for money that had been left to Mrs. Heron in such a way that a modest sum could be paid out to the four children at her discretion. Before we left for America, Valerie’s mother had volunteered that the money so left would be at our disposal should we want or need to return to Europe.

  Upon the sad nineteenth day of November, Valerie departed for Prestwick Airport in Scotland and from there to the Isle of Man. I was alone in America. And with Valerie gone and as I awaited a reaction from Scribner’s, the days passing made one feel more and more barren and beaten. In the distant downstairs of the house and in the middle of the night, I could hear T.J. playing his “Knobbly Wood Concerto” on one of his three pianos and, as he sometimes astonishingly did, playing all three at once. Although not yet acute, the strain was beginning to tell and tensions were growing. For safety and solace, I now went to visit Woodlawn Cemetery. To muse among the tombstones under the huge trees along its winding lanes. I was frequently in touch with Gainor, who had most of my photographs I’d taken in Ireland and a carbon copy of the manuscript S.D., which he said he often dipped into to read. One so far spoke pleasantly to him on the phone, always making sure one stayed at least fifty miles away. As benign, reasonable and pleasant as he could be, one knew of the risks he ran in this violent city and felt him as an awful threat. But I could hear a plaintive note in his voice as he would so politely say, “Mike, I completely understand your not meeting me. But because I feel you would be most interested to see the airport in action, I urge you to take an afternoon to do so.”

  Gainor had removed to yet another address, Clyde Street in Forest Hills, which was near the area’s tennis stadium. Significantly, the street ran closely parallel to Dartmouth Street, after the name of the college in New Hampshire where Gainor had first attended university. I now agreed to go see him out at the airport at work. I took the Lexington Avenue train downtown, which was elevated half the way. And as it arrived underground, a benign-looking lady of early middle age got on at 125th Street and sat across from me. I was transfixed by her calm and contented countenance. And thought, my God, there at least goes one face that does not carry that cast of unhappiness writ deep and sour as it is on every other visage one sees. At her feet, there was a bag and an address airline tag on it, which, as she glanced away a moment, I could read. And it said British Overseas Airways, with the lady’s destination writ just beneath. Totnes, Devon, England. And I remembered Gainor’s words.

  “Have you looked at the faces.”

  And here I was on my way actually going to see him and surely risking life and limb. Queens Boulevard, on which we rode in the long black airport limousine, was like some great highway to an oblivion one felt awaited both Gainor and I in the United States. Passing cemeteries in which the white upturned teeth of the tombs seemed ready to devour us. Then rearing up at the side of the road, a massive palace erected by the Elks. And as one stared ahead down this boulevard, doom seemed part of the landscape. Recently one had walked through the New York streets and heard the booming blast and throb of an ocean liner’s whistle as it sounded its intention to back out into the Hudson River and sail for Europe. As the echo reverberated through the gray canyons of buildings, it clutched at one’s heart.

  Arriving at Idlewild, I finally found Gainor inundated by passengers. I approached an airport employee to convey the message to him that I had got there. And as he looked up and out over the milling crowd to acknowledge me, he smiled assent as he saw that I lurked, half-hidden behind a steel pillar. The airport had been for days jammed with swarming passengers and their hordes of friends seeing them off. I had already read a couple of strange accounts in the newspaper of those who, intending to fly to San Juan, Puerto Rico, had instead boarded flights which ended them up bitterly protesting in such places as Nome, Alaska, Hong Kong and Singapore. It was thought that with their speaking Spanish and their poor English, mistakes of destination were being made. Gainor, with a command of this language, seemed to be coping, as I, with hardly room to move from my redoubt behind the pillar, watched him at his station dealing with irate folk in the wrong line, overbooked seats, and excess baggage. Gainor, having previously over the telephone told me,

  “Mike, you have no idea how uncooperatively violent and exasperatingly unpleasant some of these people can be. The temptation to send some of them to Spitzbergen is immense.”

  If not involved with his own affairs, Gainor was possibly one of the most super efficient of people, his administrative capacity in dealing with another’s business, invariably swift, accurate and polite. But one immediately saw that some of these present passengers were of a totally dissimilar behavior. Impatient, pushing, noisy, demanding and screaming and all insisting on making complaint. Fights breaking out in the long lines. Gainor, trying to keep some semblance of order, remonstrated with a snarling man demanding to be first in the queue because his plane was about to leave. When Gainor said there was still adequate time, the man suddenly went berserk, drawing a flick knife, and rushed Gainor to stab him. The six-inch-long blade ending up embedded deep in the check-in desk. But Gainor seemed to keep his cool. In a lightning flash, he had your man grabbed by the wrists and immobilized. But not but a minute later and before the summoned airport police arrived, one saw this formerly bitterly vociferous and murderous complainant minus his weapon and smugly satisfied, rushing on his way to join his ready-to-leave flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico. And I should have known and guessed when reading the newspaper reports as to whom was behind this selected handful of misdirected passengers. For Gainor had just sent this impatient Spanish-speaking fucker off on a two-stop flight to Helsinki, Finland.

  However, throughout this astonishing melee and during the nearly two hours I stood at my station by the pillar, I noticed Gainor every twenty minutes or so would have a replacement and leave his post to disappear into the gents’ convenience a short distance away. It was now getting late afternoon and, having seen enough, one was weary of the sight and noise, not to mention the continued risk one ran to one’s life, and I decided to go home. Also needing to pee and now with the opportunity to alert Gainor to my leaving, I headed over to and entered the men’s latrine. The pissoir was at the end of a longish narrow hall. But among the few pissing passengers, no Gainor was to be seen either urinating, or, in surveying the cubicles, could any black-trousered and shoed feet like his be observed taking a crap. I now thought that in my having witnessed him so many times entering this place that I was now beginning to suffer self-deception and was seeing things. I had already been experiencing acute hypochondria to the extent of almost hoping I would break a leg for relief. But even so, I now examined every inch of the latrine. The small window apertures were barred and were far too high for a man to reach. Again, as discretion would permit, and short of kneeling to peer under the door of each of the cubicles, I did, where there were no feet showing, open wide each door to see if Gainor might be there behind and standing on the seat for the sake of privacy in case someone he’d recently soc
ked in the subway was looking for him. And still no Gainor.

  I took my pee. And now slightly dazed, with depression closing in and my desperation increasing to get the fuck as far away as possible from the roaring motorbirds and from these once mud flats upon which the airport had been built, I gave up. Plus I was in fear of arrest as a soliciting homosexualist already getting dirty looks as well as an occasional inviting one, and I now proceeded out the entrance hall. But just as I was about to push through to emerge into the airport melee again, I noticed a narrow-shaped door in the wall. Waiting till the hall emptied, I reached and turned the brass knob and pulled it open. There inside the small space and cramped between the brooms and mops, his two feet stuck in pails, and with hardly an inch in which to move a muscle, was the one and only Gainor Stephen Crist, his head tilted back under a wicker-basketed gallon bottle of Chianti and his lips locked around the open end. Now suddenly turning in alarm from under his bottle to look at me, the wine was meanwhile pouring out, splashing over his hair, face, jacket, shirt, trousers and shoes.