Word: balthazar
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...BEASTLY BEATITUDES OF BALTHAZAR B, by J. P. Donleavy. Fumbling seductions and moneyed monkeyshines fill Donleavy's tall tale of a rich and dreamy young man in Paris, Dublin and London...
...that matter, Balthazar's whole life appears predestined to failure. The idyl with his 24-year-old nanny Bella, when he is but twelve, leads to his first sexual experience, the fathering of a never-to-be-seen son, and an agonizing separation. His next amorous adventure, initiated by Beefy when they both turn up at Trinity College in Dublin, is with a poor working-class girl named Breda. For that, he and Beefy are both booted from college. An engagement to wealthy Miss Fitzdare ends in a tragic riding accident. And, trapped into an ugly, upper-class London...
While the overall tone of the book is tragic and almost elegiac, the individual scenes are often hilarious and demonstrate Donleavy's adeptness at using his lyrical Joycean prose to explore human emotions. A scene of touching pathos, for example, is broken up when Balthazar is discovered naked and feverishly ill in Breda's bed by her employer's wife. The female fight that follows is unmatched in literature for its comic ferocity. Hair curlers are grabbed, bellies butted, Balthazar's breakfast food spilled, bottles of urine knocked over, dresses ripped-all while Balthazar lies abed...
...book. But there is a dramatic shift in focus from the blatant hardships of the lower classes in Ginger Man to the more subtle and delicate troubles of the moneyed aristocracy. In both cases, there doesn't seem to be much justice for such money-haunted people as Balthazar, Beefy, Dangerfield and O'Keefe. "God's mercy on the wild Ginger Man," wrote Donleavy. God's mercy on poor Balthazar...
...Like Balthazar B, James Patrick Donleavy, who is currently on a U.S. lecture tour, is a shy man with fine features and a soft, halting voice. And like Balthazar, he compensates for his shyness with a bold appearance, in this case, a scraggly Van Gogh kind of beard, heavy tweeds and knickers (augmented in foul weather by a cape and a Sherlock Holmes hat), and a walking stick. To all outward appearances, then, he seems like a turn-of-the-century product of the British Isles. In fact, he was born in Brooklyn of Irish parents...