A Fairy Tale of New York by J.P. Donleavy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ambition Fulfilled

Donleavy writes like a literate magpie. Twitchy. Snapshot-flicks of the head. Short calls of alarm and surprise. Just hard shapes, no colour. Startled by sudden movement. Alert to sounds. Fragments of instinct and memory. Picking up shiny bits. Never still.

Until, that is, he cuts into his Noo Yawk dialogue. Then it’s comedy with a noir edge that catches the character of the place - its suspicious immigrants, its world weary cops, its sarcastic taxi drivers, its canny street people, and its masses of folk on the make in one way or another. Whatever else happens in the City “Commerce continues.”

The protagonist, Cornelius Christian, doesn’t have (or need) much time to grieve his departed wife. He discovers through her funeral a new calling which involves helping others grieve, for a price: “A great life. This disposal of the dead. The only thing that can stop me now is failure.” It’s the New York therapy for death: ambition, from the Latin ambire, to seek popular reputation. It is not possible to live there without self-promotion. In New York City, “Without a siren it's hard to get noticed.”

Donleavy‘s not averse to a bit of slapstick about the situation when it’s necessary:
“Do you like good books and music.''
"Yes I do."
"I do too. Really good books. I really love books."
"I like books."
''I knew you did. It's written all over you.'”
And where could superficiality be more appropriate than in a funeral cortège. There’s nothing beneath the skin of the dead. In New York, its all about presentation in any case. No one gets past the cover of a book... or a person. Why bother?

Donleavy knows America as only an immigrant can - from the outside. That’s the only place from which the Dream can be seen clearly: “Perched on the rocky knolls those houses where people live who look safe from life. Behind their cozy window panes. In rambling rooms. Refrigerators full with ice cream, olives, pimento cheese. Sliced bologna and roast beef all ready to lay thickly between the mayonnaise slathered rye bread. Sit on a big sofa in the sprawling living room. Sink your teeth in all that eating and wash it down with soda pop. A big fire blazing. Dozens of radiators tingling hot all over the house.” Cozy, safe, warm, and fed. What else is there to desire?

But inside the Dream it’s an entirely different experience. Inside “The weak give the strong a marvelous appetite.” Popularity, after all, is a relative thing; and everyone else is a competitor. Reputation is shark bait not just reward. You win, I lose. It’s that simple. Inside, therefore, the Dream has certain unexpected dimensions. As in this laconic chapter epilogue:
“Happiness
Is
A big cat
With a mouse
On a square mile
Of linoleum”

Most people end up as mice in New York; and thus maintain the required level of ambition. But a problem of course arises for the few cats for whom the Dream is realized. The Dream has no goal except itself: “But now Cornelius I'm going to tell you something, what good is it having an ass worth millions if I've already got millions. The whole point of having an ass worth millions is to sell it for millions. I sold mine for millions. And I've got millions. But I've still got my ass. I guess I could sell it for more millions. That's the answer. More millions.” Ambition for ambition’s sake is... well a defective and self-defeating ambition. But don’t let on. The City would empty overnight.

I think Donleavy is one of the great stylists and story-tellers about New York City. Although Irish, he has what many New Yorkers would recognize as Yiddishkeit, a sort of empathetic affection for the underdogs, unfashionables, and disadvataged joes whose principle ambition is to survive. Despite that, I had never heard of him. Why not?, I ask myself. Must be be lack of ambition - either mine or his, I’m not sure which.

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