If there is an archetypal post-World War II American writer-in-exile it may well be James Patrick Donleavy who, in 1967, renounced his American citizenship to become an adopted son of his parents' native Ireland. Though frequently explained away as a mere dodge to take advantage of Ireland's liberal tax laws for artists, Donleavy's decision to forsake his homeland may reflect a much more complex attitude toward America than simple economics would explain. "Something in one's bowels was saying no to this land," Donleavy writes as he recollects his inability to survive as an artist in the United States, "where my childhood friends were growing up, just as their parents did, to be trapped trembling and terrified in a nightmare." Much of Donleavy's reaction to America is based upon his early recognition that "obscurity and rejection" are all "America gives in abundance" to her writers, and his realization that "a...