A Singular Man was published by Atlantic–Little, Brown in 1963, and it surprised readers who expected a sequel to The Ginger Man. George Smith is not Sebastian Dangerfield — he is rich where Dangerfield was poor, silent where Dangerfield was voluble, and consumed by death where Dangerfield was consumed by appetite. But the prose style is recognizably the same: the shifting perspectives, the lyrical interior monologue, the alternation between tenderness and brutality.
Smith is a millionaire of uncertain origins living in New York City, surrounded by people who want his money — lawyers, ex-wives, servants, hangers-on. His great project is the construction of a mausoleum of extraordinary size and beauty — a monument to his own death that he supervises with the same attention other men give to their careers. The mausoleum is both a joke (a rich man’s ultimate vanity) and a serious meditation on mortality (Smith knows he will die, and he wants to face it honestly rather than with the pretense of indifference that society demands).
The novel’s emotional center is Smith’s relationship with Sally Tomson, his secretary — a young woman of devastating beauty and good humor who offers him the possibility of genuine human connection, which he cannot quite accept. Their scenes together are among Donleavy’s most tender writing, and Sally’s death (in a car accident that may or may not be suicide) is the novel’s emotional catastrophe.
Collecting A Singular Man
First edition (Atlantic–Little, Brown, Boston, 1963): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $40–$120
- Without jacket: $10–$25
- First UK edition (Bodley Head): $30–$80