The Unexpurgated Code

By J. P. Donleavy

With the world a harsh and cruel place and an enemy out to get you if he can, courtesy will not make you rich overnight but by degrees it makes others feel good and this in turn will make you feel even etter ... With more and more folk from the wrong side of the tracks, it is important to make more room at the bottom. 'The Unexpurgated Code' takes plain folk through the useful rules of social climbing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Lilliput Press
• Release date: Feb 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781843512776

J. P. Donleavy

J.P. ‘Mike’ Donleavy has written more than twenty books since The Ginger Man, including The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, Meet My Maker the Mad Molecule, A Fairy Tale of New York, The Onion Eaters and Schultz (all available as eBooks from Lilliput), along with several works of non-fiction such as The Unexpurgated Code: A Complete Manual of Survival and Manners. He lives along the shores of Lough Owel near Mullingar in County Westmeath.

Reviews for The Unexpurgated Code

[hagelstein_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A subversive guide for the social climber – in the 1970s, or earlier. It’s like a character study of the “slobbering ass kisser, smirking interrogator, smug skeptic, bumptious begrudger and other malapert odious,” types that fill Donleavy’s novels. Donleavy offers advice on accent improvement, decorating tips (“above all, avoid looking as if all you’ve got is money. The colour that makes you do this is purple”), and changing your name (“The world’s richest families often have the names best suited to you.”)If you think death is an equalizer – think again. In Donleavy’s world, being “to the manor born” extends into the afterlife.The book is almost nothing but humor. Artists are described as “folk manfully maintaining that money is not everything.” The insane have “minds chockablock with conclusions” and “can be recognized by the immediate interest they are willing to take in you.”

[datrappert · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

For consumption in very small doses over a very long time, this can be occasionally amusing. (That it is also completely politically incorrect and out of keeping with modern times--or maybe any period of history--makes it difficult to swallow in larger pieces.) But no other book of manners will advise you on how to act at your own execution, so if you find yourself in such a situation, look no further.