A great big stream of consciousness slice of life book about the boozing, lazy, nasty, cruel, selfish Sebastian Dangerfield, and American in Dublin who is supposed to be studying law at Trinity but instead drinks all day, chases women and exchanges abuse with his wife. All the negative reviews here center of Sebastian's moral character. To be sure, Sebastian is an unpleasant character, but that doesn't bother me. I was simply bored by the events of the novel. I didn't find it, as all the blurbs promised, an exuberant, witty, wildly comic escapade. Donleavy's writing style is good and his langauge is rich (and the book contains amazingly graphic sex scenes for its time), but I wasn't interested in what was happening to this drunken fellow. And, as with another Irish book with a scoundrel hero, Joyce Cary's The Horse's Mouth, the same nothings seemed to happen again and again: Sebastain avoids creditors. Sebastian beds women. Sebastian gets drunk and waxes outrageous and lyrical. Okay, but must there be so much of it?

Anybody who likes his protagonists to be paragons of virtue will be sorely disappointed with this book, because Sebastian Dangerfield is the most archetypal of antiheroes. He is so depraved, so immoral, so belligerent, and has so little regard his family, for humanity, and for himself, that this novel can only be understood within the realm of the comically absurd.

Dangerfield is an Irish American living in Dublin with his long-suffering wife and baby daughter, both of whom he physically assaults when he is irked. He is supposed to be studying law at Trinity College, but accomplishes very little of it what with all his drinking, loafing, extramarital affairs, and general womanizing. He hangs around with several loser friends, one of whom is another American transplant named O'Keefe who is so unlucky with women that he retreats to Paris to dabble in homosexuality and pederasty, and then returns to Ireland to try to lie his way into a job as a chef. Much of the narration is an erratic mix of sentence fragments and complete sentences that alternate freely between first and third person and present and past tense, echoing Dangerfield's cluttered, harried, and often drunken thoughts.

So why read a book about such a moron as Dangerfield? Because he has a unique perspective on his life and his surroundings, there is depth to his thoughts, there is spice in his speech; his commentary on Ireland, its people, and Irish-English antipathy ("Jesus was a mick and Judas was a lime") is interesting if not enlightening. What makes this novel succeed as an unlikely comic work is that Donleavy writes with an ironic levity that suggests Dangerfield is more to be pitied than censured, even during his cruelest moments. The world would be a kinder, gentler place without its Sebastian Dangerfields, but it would also be more boring. And somebody has to wear the kangaroo costume.

The Gingerman may be the funniest book I've ever read - it sits next to Catch 22 in the matter of eliciting belly laughs - and gets funnier and funnier upon each read through. It's almost like a 300 page comedy routine. Hours of chucks.

Dangerfield himself cannot be dismissed as a mere repropate - He has some fine redeeming qualities - although he is far from perfect - as all of us are. But lines like "Jesus was Mick and Judas was a Limey" which he yells at a crowded New Years Eve Party in London clearly show his sense of honor - always defending the underdog Irish - although he himself often acts on a sense of English superiority. Clearly, a flawed man --- with a sense of what is right --- but unable to always act on it. The great human paradox.

I suggest we all hoist a Guiness in rememberence of Sebastian Dangerfield - who like the rest of us lives a life of turmoil - but unlike many of us - manages to carry it off with a bit of diginity -- which sometimes - especially on the British Isles - is all you can cling to for respectability.