Reviewing the 100 Best Novels of the 20th
Century
by Annette Ferran
The Ginger Man
Number 99 on the Modern Library’s
list, The Ginger Man, is a very
interesting and somewhat problematic novel by the Irish-American writer, J.P.
Donleavy.
I count this novel, along with On the Road, as falling outside the norm
of novel writing established by the other novels on this list. It is a
startling piece of prose, the kind that demands a leap of readerly faith, both
because of the style of the narrative and because of the treatment of its
female characters. Read by a lover of literature, it is new and exciting in
style. Read by a woman, it is objectionable and hard to take. The problem comes
when the reader is both.
This is not the only novel on
the list in which the female characters get treated badly, but it is realistic
enough and unrepenting enough that from the vantage point of 2015, a reader
might find it frustrating to see the women put up with such treatment and not
walk out on their own and make their own lives. (Admittedly, Edna O’Brien’s Country Girls—a stupendous and groundbreaking
novel from the mid-1960s that did not make the list— raises the same feelings,
though with different effect.) What it comes down to is intention. The object
of the novel is not to make a story of the struggles between the sexes for
equal voice (as Country Girls does)
but to tell of the adventures of a roguish, charming, exasperating young man.
Sebastian Dangerfield is the
young man, a character, like his creator, with feet in both America and
Ireland. This peculiar inborn
duality of Irish-Americanism is one of the compelling features of this book.
Sebastian and his companion live simultaneously in two cultures that are historically
so closely connected as to create a unique culture. They are men of the
post-World War II era, affected by it but not owning up to the effect.
Sebastian is a ne’er-do-well of
the first order. He is a man with no civic responsibility. Everything he does
is for his own pleasure, although that pleasure is of a damaging and nihilistic
sort. The damage is overtly done to his wife and child,
less obviously to himself. He is a
charmer and an abject bastard, and he doesn’t care. Or does he? A telling line
in his voice comes in the last pages of the novel: “I think I am weary of my
terrifying heart.” It is that
uncommon glimpse of self-awareness that saves Sebastian from having the book
slammed shut on him by an unsympathetic reader.
This is a “picaresque” novel,
which is a term I myself, reader though I am, had not heard until well into
adulthood. It means a narrative in which the character moves through life from
one adventure to the next, and it is used effectively to paint a scene of a
time, as it allows the character to encounter a wide assortment of people and
places that are not necessarily logically connected (logical in the literary
sense, that is; life itself is rarely logical). It is a technique that releases
the narrative from the obligation of cause, effect, and resolution.
The novel relies heavily on
dialogue, and the dialogue is naturalistic and vernacular. Therein lies another compelling
feature. These voices are amusing and moving. We enter into their conversations
mid-stream, and they don’t let us go through their whole raucous life.
In the end, The Ginger Man is an enjoyable ride,
hitting all the emotions in the range from exuberance to melancholy. Maybe we can leave the solving of
social ills to other writers.
Annette Ferran
lives in Philadelphia where she works as an editor for a medical
publisher. She is also the
Associate Editor for 10,000 Tons of Black Ink, a Literary Writers Network publication. She has a degree of
dubious practical use, in German, and is a lifelong avid reader of fiction and
lover of lists. She has had a few short stories published, most recently in
RE:AL.
