Only for the Moment Am I Saying Nothing: An Interview with J.P. Donleavy

Literary Review, Summer, 1997 by Thomas E. Kennedy

Did you know them?

Yes, Patrick Kavanagh, but I met na Gopaleen only a couple of times. However, I did know Brendan Behan well, who was quite a close friend.

Did you know Sean O'Faolain or Frank O'Connor?

No. I didn't know any of the older writers. And they were all writers who had quite big images in the world.

Are you interested in literary trends or theory?

Hardly at all. Yet writers, and their minds, and the way they work, are most fascinating to me. They are not like other people. So I miss that. But I know that if I went to America, it would be something quite else. A wonderful illustration, a young writer, you must know of him, Jay McInerney. I met him at one of these literary things in Calgary in Canada, and he had read things of mine, dedicated one of his talks to me. He looked like a young banker, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, a glamorous figure. But Calgary to me is a fascinating place, like a city just put together on the prairie. There are no people. It is so spacious and they have all these walkways, and this fascinating place, the Hudson Bay Company, a kind of great big shop, and I was walking through this with Jay McInerney, and I felt it should have been the most fascinating place on earth to see because of this great spread of open floors, all these goods, moccasins and skis and things, no people walking around, but not a thing in Calgary seemed to make any impression on him. Obviously he'd already seen plenty of this in America and of more interest would have been the New York literary scene. He was charming and a pleasant guy, I don't mean to indicate that he was boring or anything else, but this fascinated me, that his eyes seemed closed to what was around us, and I would say, "My God, look at this! The Hudson Bay Company, this was doing business with the fur trappers, the Indians!" Anyway, even if the Hudson Bay Company made no impression on him, I look forward to seeing him again.

You were speaking before about Maurice Girodias and Olympia Press. Is Olympia still functioning?

No, it is just largely pieces of paper describing the copyrights and so on. Girodias always said that anything he has done, if it found its way into anybody else's hands, it would turn to dust, and he is correct in this respect. There are a few things that didn't fall through, contracts that one could sue on, royalties that are due, etc., but the company does not exist or function.

They were also the first to publish Henry Miller?

No, Jack Kahane who founded Obelisk Press was the first to publish Miller, and then his son Girodias did.

Were you living in Paris at the time, and did you know Miller? I believe I read you said he was an influence.

I travelled and visited Paris a lot, but didn't live there, and I didn't know Miller, but I would think yes, he did have an influence on me. My exposure to literary matters would have come about through a Michael Heron and James Leathers, with whom I shared rooms at Trinity and both of whom had quite an excellent library of writers--Celine, Camus and a lot of the writers who never became completely famous then. Heron knew of Thomas Wolfe and e. e. cummings, knowledge of whom in those days in Ireland would be rarefied indeed, and then Henry Miller's books were penetrating all around Europe and in a way that no one could ever believe. I read recently a biography of Miller's that he in fact became quite affluent from his royalties. I am presently corresponding with the people who now sell reproductions of his pictures out in California, and they are doing silk screens of some of his watercolours. But Miller's work would have been very influential at that time, having that great extravagant enthusiasm.