When J. P. Donleavy's first novel, The Ginger Man, was published …, it created something of a stir, especially among young readers who saw its hero, Sebastian Dangerfield, as an attractive representative of their generation. Less impressed were some critics, who found the book at best a celebration of adolescent wishfulfillment. They would not be surprised by the shallowness of Donleavy's seventh novel, The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman….

I, on the other hand, now see in The Ginger Man an unfulfilled promise. Dangerfield, a GI in Dublin, a Yank in Trinity, was an interesting new hero…. And it seems to me that Donleavy had seized upon a valid idea—to place in Dublin, where the average citizen feels "like an outcast from life's feast" (Joyce's phrase is implicit in the book), a man with an insatiable appetite; a man who, observing that "67 per cent of the population have...