 First edition | |
| Author | J. P. Donleavy |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Little, Brown and Company |
Publication date | November 1963 |
| Pages | 403 |
A Singular Man is a 1963 novel by J. P. Donleavy.
First published in Boston, the novel is set in an unnamed city that is believed to be New York [1] and was the author's second novel following the critically acclaimed The Ginger Man .
The story follows the life of the mysteriously wealthy and aloof George Smith and centers on Smith's love for Miss Tomson, whom in a review, Time magazine referred to as "a genuinely imagined dream figure of sexual grace." [2]
Although Donleavy began work on the novel A Fairy Tale of New York following completion of The Ginger Man, his second completed and published novel was A Singular Man. His interview in The Paris Review # 63 explains why he found it impossible at the time to finish A Fairy Tale of New York but was able to write A Singular Man.
Main characters include:
In a review for the National Observer , Hunter S. Thompson referred to Donleavy's novel as "a masterpiece of writing about love" and referred to Donleavy as "a humorist in the only sense of the word that has any dignity." [3]
Newsweek described the book as "excruciatingly funny" but "a darker novel than its predecessor." [4]
Renata Adler praised the book in a review describing it as "a love story, a melodrama, an unresolved detective story, a melodrama, a soap opera, a vaudeville routine, and a very fine light novel by a stylist who can afford to give considerable rein to his rather quirkish imagination." [5]
Donleavy, James Patrick:
Hunter Stockton Thompson was an American journalist and author. He rose to prominence with the publication of Hell's Angels (1967), a book for which he spent a year living with the Hells Angels motorcycle club to write a first-hand account of their lives and experiences. In 1970, he wrote an unconventional article titled "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" for Scanlan's Monthly, which further raised his profile as a countercultural figure. It also set him on the path to establishing his own subgenre of New Journalism that he called "Gonzo", a journalistic style in which the writer becomes a central figure and participant in the events of the narrative.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1955.
"Bluebeard" is a French folktale, the most famous surviving version of which was written by Charles Perrault and first published by Barbin in Paris in 1697 in Histoires ou contes du temps passé. The tale tells the story of a wealthy man in the habit of murdering his wives and the attempts of the present one to avoid the fate of her predecessors. "The White Dove", "The Robber Bridegroom", and "Fitcher's Bird" are tales similar to "Bluebeard". The notoriety of the tale is such that Merriam-Webster gives the word "Bluebeard" the definition of "a man who marries and kills one wife after another". The verb "bluebearding" has even appeared as a way to describe the crime of either killing a series of women, or seducing and abandoning a series of women.
The damsel in distress is a narrative device in which one or more men must rescue a woman who has been kidnapped or placed in other peril. Kinship, love, lust or a combination of those motivate the male protagonist to initiate the narrative.
Werewolf fiction denotes the portrayal of werewolves and other shapeshifting therianthropes, in the media of literature, drama, film, games and music. Werewolf literature includes folklore, legend, saga, fairy tales, Gothic and horror fiction, fantasy fiction and poetry. Such stories may be supernatural, symbolic or allegorical. A classic cinematic example of the theme is The Wolf Man (1941) which in later films joins with the Frankenstein Monster and Count Dracula as one of the three famous icons of modern day horror. However, werewolf fiction is an exceptionally diverse genre, with ancient folkloric roots and manifold modern re-interpretations.
James Patrick Donleavy was an American-Irish novelist, short story writer and playwright. His best-known work is the novel The Ginger Man, which was initially banned for obscenity.
The Ginger Man is a novel, first published in Paris in 1955, by J. P. Donleavy. The story is set in Dublin, Ireland, in post-war 1947. Upon its publication, it was banned both in Ireland and the United States of America by reason of obscenity.
Olympia Press was a Paris-based publisher, launched in 1953 by Maurice Girodias as a rebranded version of the Obelisk Press he inherited from his father Jack Kahane. It published a mix of erotic fiction and avant-garde literary fiction, and is best known for issuing the first printed edition of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.
Renata Adler is an American author, journalist, and film critic. Adler was a staff writer-reporter for The New Yorker for over thirty years and the chief film critic for The New York Times from 1968 to 1969. She has also published several fiction and non-fiction books, and has been awarded the O. Henry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the PEN/Hemingway Award.
Maurice Girodias was a French publisher who founded the Olympia Press, specialising in risqué books, censored in Britain and America, that were permitted in France in English-language versions only. It evolved from his father’s Obelisk Press, famous for publishing Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. Girodias published Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, J. P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man, and works by Samuel Beckett, William S. Burroughs, John Glassco and Christopher Logue.
"The Princess and the Pea" is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a princess who is tested to become wife to a lonely prince. The tale was first published with three others by Andersen in a cheap booklet on 8 May 1835 in Copenhagen by C. A. Reitzel.
"The Tinderbox" is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a soldier who acquires a magic tinderbox capable of summoning three powerful dogs to do his bidding. When the soldier has one of the dogs transport a sleeping princess to his room, he is sentenced to death but cunningly summons the dogs to save his life.
A gingerbread man is a biscuit or cookie made of gingerbread, in human shape.
The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B is the third full-length novel by Irish American writer J. P. Donleavy and follows the picaresque experiences of the eponymous character from his birth into his mid-twenties. The book was published in the US by Delacorte Press in 1968 and the following year in Britain by Eyre and Spottiswoode. Although it was favourably reviewed at the time, it was also criticized for its regressive dependence on the same subject matter as in The Ginger Man.
Ef: A Fairy Tale of the Two is a Japanese two-part adult visual novel series by Minori for Windows PCs. The first game in the series, Ef: The First Tale, was released on December 22, 2006, and the second game, Ef: The Latter Tale, was released on May 30, 2008. The opening video for the game was animated by Makoto Shinkai, and a majority of the music was produced by Tenmon, who has worked in the past with Shinkai and Minori. Female character design was by Naru Nanao of Da Capo fame, while male character design was by 2C Galore.
Cinders is a visual novel video game based on the Cinderella story that was developed and published by Polish indie studio MoaCube for Windows, Mac OS in 2012 and Nintendo Switch in 2019. The game was developed and published by MoaCube.
Anna-Marie McLemore is a Mexican-American author of young adult fiction magical realism, best known for their Stonewall Honor-winning novel When the Moon Was Ours, Wild Beauty, and The Weight of Feathers.
Amanda Leduc is a Canadian writer. She is known for her books Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space and The Centaur's Wife.
Ginger's Tale is a 2020 Russian animated realistic fantasy fairy-tale musical family film written and directed by Konstantin Shchekin. Tatyana Ilina and Ekaterina Mikhailova also were script writers. Vverh Animation Studio produced the film which became its second and final animated film produced at the animation studio after its closure in 2021.
