James Patrick Donleavy's long and prolific career as a novelist, playwright, short-story writer, and essayist has made him a well-known contemporary author. Born in the United States, Donleavy has lived in Ireland for most of his adult life, and he became an Irish citizen in 1967. His status as an American writer in exile has often been seen as an important parallel to that of his protagonists, all of whom are, if not technically aliens in their societies, certainly alienated from them. Leading marginal lives as cultural outsiders, his characters are spiritually and often physically threatened by a hostile society and are typically in economic and legal as well as psychological trouble. Despite Donleavy's frequently praised technical virtuosity--and his four decades of continual productivity and popularity--he has had infrequent success with academic critics. In response Donleavy claimed in a 1988 interview with Jean W. Ross that their response to his...