by Peter Clarke
I recently picked up a used copy of “A Fairy Tale of New York,” the 1973 novel by Irish-American novelist J.P. Donleavy. When I opened the cover, an old newspaper clipping fell out. I unfolded the clipping to find this article: J.P. Donleavy’s Manor Life by Connie Fletcher.
Beyond detailing Donleavy’s shockingly uneventful home life, the article features the following sections, where Donleavy explains why he feels America destroys writers and also why the Irish Finance Act of 1969 compelled him to move permanently to Ireland.
From J.P. Donleavy’s Manor Life, or How America Destroys Writers
Donleavy is a self-made Irishman. He enjoys what Ireland can do for writers.
“America destroys writers,” he says. “In Europe, a writer is regarded as a writer for all his days. In America, you’re always up at bat. Americans don’t know you’re there unless you’re glad-facing on the television. The whole attitude in America is, what have you done lately?”
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Donleavy didn’t settle permanently in Ireland until 1969, when the new tax laws allowed authors and artists to live here tax-free. Before that, he lived in London. He wrote “The Ginger Man” on a budget of $11 a week, largely at his parents’ home in the Bronx.
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Donleavy separates himself from other “returning Irish.” “Most of the returning Irish do have pretensions of grandeur of some sort. It is a tradition in Ireland that Irishmen who have made a lot of money in England or America or Australia will return home and buy up all the big country houses. That’s their dream and they do it.”
Donleavy’s being in Ireland, he claims, has everything to do with the Irish Finance Act of 1969, which exempts authors and artists from paying taxes on money received from their works. He moved to Ireland from London “practically immediately” and became an Irish citizen after the finance act became law.
“Having tax-free status is as good as winning the Nobel Prize.” Says Donleavy. He has no other source of income besides his writing, he says.
Peter Clarke is the editor-in-chief of Jokes Review. He’s the author of the comic novels Politicians Are Superheroes and The Singularity Survival Guide. Follow him on Twitter @HeyPeterClarke.