Word: tales
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...FAIRY TALE of New York is a risky title for a book. It's risky because so many other fairy tales have been written about New York--about people who go there to put flesh on their hopes or to work out their frustrations. But, largely because of its freshness and style, J.P. Donleavy's new book manages to outlast most of its competition...
...multimillionaire garment manufacturer. Sued by the widow of a rich corpse that Christian has butchered in the embalming, he wins the suit by charming judge and jury. Women, including cafeteria acquaintances and wives of coworkers, fall at his feet. Christian is the parody of the fairy tale hero, lusting after fallen princesses in honky-tonk New York...
What makes Fairy Tale a successful book is Donleavy's ability to subtly exploit the cruelty and humor contained in the gap between Christian's appearance and reality. Set in New York, the style that gives the fairy tale hero instant acceptance is the same one that turns Christian into a man who is both exploiter and exploited. It is his style which wins him jobs and pushes him into brawls and disastrous affairs...
Beneath its florid style, Donleavy's fairy tale of New York is stark and compelling. Parts of A Fairy Tale of New York appeared as a play, "Fairy Tales of New York," which was produced on the London stage in 1961. In the novel, an enlarged and fundamentally altered work built around the play, Donleavy has stripped the classic fairy tale of its sharp dichotomy between good and bad, while retaining many of its mythic qualities. He has written an intensely personal vision of universal gloom. Like his hero, Donleavy was raised in New York, and like him, he sports...
...this is a vision which may prove unsatisfactory. Fairy Tale is a book of vignettes and strings of first impressions, and therefore Christian sits uneasily as a symbol of New York, and the work is not equipped to cover the sweep of a great city. For such broad subjects, Fairy Tale is a narrow perspective, but like its hero and his hometown, it gains a hearing by being brash and bizarre...