`Nathan Langriesh Johnson is the name. The United States my nation, From Maine to Florida. From New York to California. I am its loyal citizen. And before I am homeless out on the street, I am, without slipping and breaking my neck, going to wash my face in semi-cold water.' Nathan Johnson, forty-eight and restless, began his career as a door-to-door lingerie salesman, reaching the top of the rag trade with a penthouse overlooking Manhattan. A `confirmed social climber' in 1990s New York City, he looks back on his early struggles, indulging fantasies of life as a country squire on Blueberry Hill - the Westchester estate he buys his wife Muriel as a birthday present. He meets a model from Iowa, different from the rest, and is captivated. When, out of the blue, a letter marked `personal' arrives, his wife opens it and life unravels. A Letter Marked Personal is J.P.Donleavy's final novel, completed in 2007. His portrait of a flawed Anglophile delineates the American Dream, from aspirational greed to the vanity of human wishes. This poignant story of Nathan's rise and demise speaks for the everyman - an apt farewell from one of literature's true originals.
J.P. `Mike' Donleavy (1926-2017) wrote more than twenty books after The Ginger Man, including The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B (1968), Meet My Maker the Mad Molecule (1964), A Fairy Tale of New York (1973), The Onion Eaters (1971) and Schultz (1979) (all available as eBooks from Lilliput), along with several works of non-fiction such as The Unexpurgated Code: A Complete Manual of Survival and Manners (1975). He lived along the shores of Lough Owel near Mullingar in County Westmeath.
Title: A Letter Marked Personal
Author: Donleavy, J.P.
ISBN: 9781843516972
Binding:
Publisher: The Lilliput Press Ltd
Publication Date: 2019-10-01
Number of Pages: 304
Weight: 2.0984 kg
'Reading Mr Donleavy is no longer like being dragged into a beer-brawl in some violent Irish pub, but more like sitting down to an evening of good whiskey and mad laughter in a rare conversation somewhere on the edge of reality.' HUNTER S. THOMPSON 'Donleavy was very much a part of the small Dublin bohemia ... who kept alive a spirit of irreverence, invention and free thought that stopped Ireland from succumbing to complete stultification.' THE IRISH TIMES
'Reading Mr Donleavy is no longer like being dragged into a beer-brawl in some violent Irish pub, but more like sitting down to an evening of good whiskey and mad laughter in a rare conversation somewhere on the edge of reality.' HUNTER S. THOMPSON 'Donleavy was very much a part of the small Dublin bohemia ... who kept alive a spirit of irreverence, invention and free thought that stopped Ireland from succumbing to complete stultification.' THE IRISH TIMES
Long anticipated, finally delivered. -- Bill Dunn * Irish Times *
Donleavy's final novel is a more than worthy addition to his canon. -- Pat Carty * Hot Press *
In A Letter Marked Personal J.P. Donleavy has given us his valedictory novel and left us with reminders of his lyrical style, colourful characterisation, black humour and that he is saying something fundamental about the human condition. -- Colin Overall * Books Ireland *
'Reading Mr Donleavy is no longer like being dragged into a beer-brawl in some violent Irish pub, but more like sitting down to an evening of good whiskey and mad laughter in a rare conversation somewhere on the edge of reality.'
-- Hunter S Thompson
'Donleavy was very much a part of the small Dublin bohemia ... who kept alive a spirit of irreverence, invention and free thought that stopped Ireland from succumbing to complete stultification.'
-- The Irish Times
