A Singular Country:

...The tweeds were crisp and pressed, the beard was trimmed, and begob, the shoes were polished to a luster that would have allowed their wearer to look down and wink at the reflection...

...Did I not open the Boston Globe this very morning and turn to the science section for my weekly education on quarks and stars, only to find Chet Raymo, our local physicist/journalist, has gone on a little holiday to the auld sod and quick as a fax is turning out copy about the alarming destruction of hedgerows in rural Ireland...

...And the answer: "Sir I have just this second every last one of them counted and there be not a bother on them...

...And beware, oh beware, you innocent American tourist, if your eye falls on one of these grand ruins and you take it into your naive, simpleton head to go out and buy it, and restore it to its former grandeur...

...Donleavy (and I) think that the Irish countryside is the most beautiful in the world and was, until a few years ago, left alone in its simple beauty...

...Elizabeth Shannon rosy-cheeked gentlemen in gray or blue worsted that hadn't felt the flat side of an iron since the day they were bought, and the only shine to be seen was on their seats and elbows...

...The New Irishman, equally urbane and continental now, is at the ready for such visitors, genial and hospitable as always...

...Pretty soon, what was once an elegant, austere Georgian mansion, filled with cheerful fox-hunting, shooting, drinking, and carousing gentry, now lies empty and forlorn, and local cattle (including the three gone missing) roam through the spacious drawing rooms, the libraries, the dining rooms...

...Donleavy's interpretation of the sexual revolution in Ireland, the news of which has spread to England (perhaps faster than it has spread to the West of Ireland) so that now your Church of England vicar's daughter comes to Ireland for her little holiday, "boasting about her multiple orgasms and letting it be known that she, given the appropriate Irishman, is ready and willing for a gallop...

...They will tumble and bounce on the soft green Irish turf, which seems designed for just such an encounter, and the vicar's daughter will return to England, wondering what all those stories about puritanical Irishmen were all about...

...Explaining why they are the way they are, with suitable warnings, admonitions, and raucous descriptions, he ends up with a beguiled acceptance of the foibles of a beloved and frustrating land...

...You will have the encouragement and advice of your local real estate agent (with whom you spent the afternoon in the pub), whose brother-in-law is the general contractor...

...Your faith in mankind, God, Ireland, and your own judgment will be diminished forever, not to mention your pocketbook, which will be forever empty...

...Your man, J.P., is not gentle with any of his characters, but his most vicious attack lashes out at the builders of the new Irish "cottage," the stone, stucco, and brick eyesores that dot the outskirts of cities and blight the countryside with their "multicolored stonework...remote controlled dancing tassels on the window shades...

...The good nature of your foreman will never be jarred throughout the torrents of abuse you hurl at him, nor will he be in the slightest moved towards completion of the project...

...They'd only be two heifers or is it the three, gone missing...

...Donleavy quotes an announcement he heard once on the Dublin-Sligo train: "For the benefit of those travelers who are on the wrong train and who want to proceed to Belfast this is to inform them that this is the train to Sligo...

...Even though we both know that for the inhabitants of the new cottages, with their electronic tassels and their modern conveniences, life is infinitely easier, cleaner, warmer, and cozier...

...The three gone missing finally add up to a bankrupt estate, and so your impoverished gentleman, having already sold the trees, the good silver, and the paintings, begins parceling off the land and "the days in your life do be flying by like lightning and your feet do tiptoe unnoticed towards your grave always nicely situated down its peacefully sylvan dell...

...she is nothing, if not pan-European...

...As Mr...

...Nevertheless, the last scene in the book, in which they become embroiled in a hotel bedroom menage following the rigors of a day at the Dublin Horse Show, complete with mistaken identities, foiled gallantry, booted by knickerless maidens, and an unloosened stream of fire extinguisher foam over all, is vintage Donleavy-an Irish Feydeau farce, and a wonderful gallop to the end of a very funny book, perfect for a good summer's end read.r a good summer's end read...

...But alas, not even the tweeds and the authentic walking stick could turn me on to Mr...

...Early on in the book, Mr...

...Then we hear about Mr...

...Donleavy has felt compelled to explain the Irish to us once again, but this time, to my ear, he has not only got it all right, it's outrageously funny...

...That announcement sets the tone for the rest of the book...

...Donleavy says, not everyone in Ireland writes, "but don't expect very often to come across the few that don't...

...A decade later, I moved to Ireland and, lo and behold, within days of arriving, I spotted the author himself, strolling along Grafton Street looking like an advertisement for Country Life, more Irish than any Irishman would have dared aspire...

...Oh, beware, for you will have fallen into a state of suspended action known in Ireland as "Sure, we'll be on the job tomorrow," and your gentle soul and quiet demeanor will crumble and fall away as you rage and scream but all for naught...

...Donleavy's novel, The Ginger Man, was published in the early 1960s, it was my favorite novel of that year, the first of its genre that I had read-books by Americans explaining Ireland and the Irish...

...It seemed only fair that an author-gentleman of such satirical effort deserved to be read again, the streets of Dublin being populated as they were in those days by A SINGULAR COUNTRY J.P...

...the kitchens become grand places for pigsties and roosting hens...

...Still, it seems a terrible shame that the new affluence of the country didn't bring with it an elegant sense of design...

...As every book on Ireland must have, there is a short history lesson, where Donleavy is at his best, describing the demise of the Anglo-Irish gentry...

...Perhaps he has lived in Ireland for too long now, but "Harry and Mabel" aren't quite believable...

...Promises will be made of miracles: plumbing to put Niagara to shame, state-of-the-art electrical systems, a watertight slate roof with a lifetime guarantee, and plasterwork restoration to equal the great Francini Brothers, ah sure, and all done for a song and in a season...

...not to mention the plastercast life-sized eagles, wings outstretched, that would knock your hat off as they sit on the verge of going airborne...

...And let me tell you further that if you press the bell which glows even in the darkest night, you may be sure that the button will be capable of bringing alive chimes in the household to the tune of' Ave Maria.'" Mind you, the rest of the world is burdened by such eyesores, but Mr...

...When a Big House owner asks, in his practiced stage Irish (since he has learned that his staff won't do anything quickly or even at all if addressed in a plummy English accent): "Ah begorra Paddy now how do them cattle be faring over beyond...

...Donleavy W.W.Norton, $18.95, 198 pp...

...The wild, whacky antics of the Ginger Man had turned into such dense parody that I found them incomprehensible and-the worst of Irish sins-boring...

...You, on the other hand, will never be the same again...

...Using the Irish vernacular-or the Donleavy version thereof-(a most dangerous thing to be doing and for sure something the Irish will club him over the head about in print if not also in person should he find himself alone in a bog at night), and without sentiment but plenty of burlesque, he stages ribald introductions to a dozen kinds of Irishmen and women...

...Although he risks the wrath of his wife and her friends, he no longer risks imprisonment and/or banishment not to mention excommunication, as in the days of yore...

...Strained Anglo-Irish relations mean nothing to her...

...I laughed my way through it, and eagerly opened its two successors, A Singular Man and The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B. I was not only disappointed but mystified...

...And wasn't there an after-whiff of something delicious as he passed by...

...Donleavy loses his stride when he starts describing the American couple who come to Ireland for their holidays and are totally confused and bemused by what they hear and see...

...Native or stranger, if one can hold a pencil one can't be in Ireland for more that forty-eight hours before one is compelled to write about it...

...Donleavy's prose again- until now, another decade later, when I opened A Singular Country...