SOURCE: "A Case of Death: The Fiction of J. P. Donleavy," in Contemporary Literature, Vol. 12, No. 3, Summer, 1971, pp. 329-44.

In the following essay, LeClair observes developments in Donleavy's sustained treatment of the theme of death in his novels.

"I'll die with a case of death," says Sebastian Dangerfield, hero of J. P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man, when his wife threatens to have him evicted from their flat.¹ Sebastian manages to charm his way through this and the other "indignities" the world subjects him to, but his "case of death" is not so easily dispensed with. It hangs on, showing its symptoms in daydream and nightmare, during intercourse and argument. Although Donleavy does not allow this condition to reach literal consummation in The Ginger Man, the "case of death" and the psychic effects it works on his characters are the controlling elements in The Ginger Man and his other...