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"But Jesus, when you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both it's health, you worry about getting rupture or something. If everything is simply jake then you're frightened of death." FIRST EDITION of Donleavy's classic, one of the most celebrated novels of the 20th-century. "The Ginger Man, the first and most famous novel by the fleet-fisted, Bronx-born Donleavy, is a grasping, brawling testament to what the author once cited as a chief artistic principle: 'To make your mother and father drop dead with shame.' The book has never been out of print, having sold an estimated 45 million copies in hundreds of editions. Especially beloved in Ireland, where it was banned for its first 20 years, it recently clawed its way into the 99th spot on the Modern Library's list of the 100 best 20th-century novels in English. Dorothy Parker called it 'the picaresque novel to stop them all'; V.S. Naipaul observed that 'on every page there is that immediacy that all good writing has.' "And indeed, it's an intoxicating read, quintessentially Irish in its cobbling of joy and sadness, sentimentality and violence. For more than five decades, young readers have had whole literary vistas opened by it, among them the late Hunter S. Thompson, who obsessed over the book as a struggling young writer in New York. Alive in a way few books are, its combination of gorgeous writing, brilliant comedy, pathos, and unrelenting amorality has made it a cult classic, a rite of passage, practically a literary religion" (Joe Keohane, The Boston Globe). Paris: The Olympia Press, [1955]. Octavo, original green wrappers. Part of "The Traveller's Companion Series." With correct first edition price of 1,500 Francs printed on rear wrapper. Early owner signature on front free endpaper. A hint of wear to wrappers, otherwise fine. $1400.
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