Product Description

Alfonso Stephen O'Kelly'O known as Stephen, son of rumoured former bootleggers, ex-naval gunner, unemployed compuser, student of dairy cattle in Wisconsin and of music in Italy, has little to recommend him as a marriage prospect but his tender heart, his chivalry, and his comprehensive knowledge of the great city of New York. So when the exquisitely pneumatic and extraordinarily wealthy Sylvia Triumphington, adored adoptive heiress to the Triumphington family forture, sets her sights on him, Stephen is caught quite off guard. Marrying into the Triumphington fortune, Stephen gets more than he bargained for. Sylvia's unexpected taste for rough sex, her obsession with finding her real mother, and her proclivity for spending Stephen's non-exsistent money are enough for him to handle but then there is the arrogant and unpredictable adoptive father and his elegant and insatiable wife, Drusilla, to whom Stephen conspicuously and inconveniently is attracted. And then, of course, is the wrong information.... Featuring fourteen refined and witty illustrations by Elliot Banfield, the artist whose drawings enhanced the colorful antics of The Lady Who Liked Clean Restrooms,, Wrong Information is Being Given out at Princeton, is an elegy on passion, a glorious, irreverent, and picaresque journey.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1505548 in Books
• Published on: 1999-12-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Judging by his previous novel, The Lady Who Liked Clean Restrooms, and this new one, Donleavy, most famous for The Ginger Man (it was banned in America in 1955), seems fixated on odd or disagreeable people whose bizarre behavior puts them on society's margins. Here, the antihero is Stephen O'Kelly'O, a Rudolph Valentino look-alike, son of Irish bootleggers, naval veteran and generally oversexed layabout. In post-WWII Manhattan, he meets the very rich Sylvia Triumphington and almost immediately elopes with her. "I should have realized right there and then that I was getting involved with a deeply spoiled bitch," Stephen muses. That might be so, but Sylvia is at least poignantly rendered (she is preoccupied by the fact that she was adopted), and it is a shame that she is not the protagonist. Instead, we see the world through Stephen's eyes?a chore, since the self-styled "composer with artistic sensibilities" is impossible to like or take seriously. Stephen's social commentaries are so jejune they are funny; he uses Marxism as an excuse to avoid finding a job and insouciantly asks Sylvia's adoptive father to sponsor his musical career. But soon Stephen is having it off with Sylvia's adoptive mother, who has some kinky tastes of her own. Like Stephen's character, this novel is a muddle that's lewd without purpose and mean-spirited without irony. In fact, the book's promise ends at its amusing (and misleading) title. Illustrations by Elliott Banfield.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Back from service in World War II, Stephen O'Kelly'O is trying to settle down to his life's work as a composer in New York. While looking for a patron, Stephen is easily distracted by Sylvia, the spoiled and somewhat sadistic daughter of the fabulously wealthy Triumphington family. Stephen and Sylvia marry in haste, but when Sylvia eventually walks out, her mother, Drucilla, seduces Stephen. After Sylvia's death, Drucilla offers to "keep" him as composer and lover. Stephen refuses the offer, steps onto the Staten Island Ferry, and meets the love of his life. Best known for The Gingerman, Donleavy (The Lady Who Liked Clean Rest Rooms, LJ 6/15/97) plays on New York's diversity to craft a story of lives controlled by chance. The chaos that results is somewhat depressing, despite the impression of a happy ending. The illustrations by Ellliot Banfield are entertaining. Recommended for large fiction collections.?Joanna M. Burkhardt, Univ. of Rhode Island Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Watch Hill
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Donleavy, author of the controversial Ginger Man (1955) and more recently The Lady Who Liked Clean Restrooms (1997), tells a good story here--if the reader can tolerate his use of crude language, unremitting focus on the raunchier aspects of sexuality, and his characters' blatant misogyny, not to mention his penchant for unusual grammatical structure. Stephen (a native New York Irishman with the unlikely last name of O'Kelly'O) marries Sylvia shortly after they meet. Why not? He is an ex-navy man recently returned from fighting in World War II and a struggling composer and pianist. She is a young, beautiful dancer, the adopted daughter of an extremely wealthy couple. They're soon in trouble, though, when Sylvia's parents cut off her allowance. Stephen's infidelity and her own anguished search for her birth mother cause Sylvia to flee. Stephen gets himself into some tricky situations that are both volatile and depressing, including an affair with Sylvia's adoptive mother. He is further brought down by his observations of the dehumanizing aspects of city life and acts out in various ways the humiliation and rage that have-nots often feel around the conspicuously wealthy. All the money in the world, however, can't buy Sylvia the one thing that drives her: a connection with her biological mother. O'Kelly'O actually begins to show some character in the face of tragic losses, which makes for a hopeful ending. The distinctive style of Elliot Banfield's illustrations, along with Donleavy's uncanny ability to capture the linguistic cadence of the period, provides an undeniable late '40s feeling. Grace Fill

Customer Reviews

Donleavy at his best! The finest novel of the year!
Of all the novels I've read for pleasure or for review purposes during the past decade, none entertained and moved me as much as this splendid novel. At the age of 72, J.P. Donleavy hasn't lost a bit of his ability to pluck a fine elegiac melody on your heartstrings, nor has he lost his lively way with words, that "signature" of sentence fragments that make better English than any other writer's of our time. And here he returns to his home town, New York City, to depict it as no other writer ever has.

What amazes me is that hordes of "readers" are falling all over themselves to buy Tom Wolfe's latest, and so few people are jumping at the chance to savor a truly great novel like this one. There's no justice in the book-buying world.

Much more rewarding than merely "boisterous" or "ribald"...
If you enjoy Donleavy, you should give this novel a try; it's marvelously well-written. If you like his prose style you might conclude, as I do, that he's writing better than ever. The prose is, at times, simultaneously fractured and yet perfectly constructed. A paradox, I know, but that's what Donleavy can pull off at his best. The reviews of the novel will likely (and reasonably enough) focus upon its ribald scenes, characteristic outbursts of blarney, etc., etc...Donleavy has certainly not lost the flair for the comic and absurd scene. Beyond that, however, is an emotional punch that really hangs with you after finishing the book. The scene from with the title is taken is, for instance, quite brief and very powerful.

Steve Vivian

Tender, comic, lyrical pointillism
J.P. Donleavy's narrative voice is unique. Setting him apart from all other writers. With a lyrical pointillism that is fragmented. Painting pictures of incredible poetic beauty. Sad and tender. And then, again, hilarious. Evoking all of one's senses. This tale is very New York. Where Donleavy was born. Before moving to Ireland, TCD and the Irish countryside. His subject, this time, is a starving composer living among wealthy friends and in-laws. Tormented by every woman he meets. Unable to understand just one of them. Even briefly. Bewildered by popular American culture. Which rains fortunes on untalented artists. Hiding the gifted in total obscurity. And starving them into anonymity. They await redemption. And recognition of their artistic merit. As the astonishing talents of Donleavy go unrecognized by the literary mainstream. Read Donleavy -- one of the most gifted and worthy and unheralded writers of our day.