The Onion Eaters was published by Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence in 1971, and it represents the most extreme development of Donleavy’s comic method — a novel that abandons any pretense of conventional plot in favor of a sustained assault of farce, surrealism, and anarchic energy.
Clementine of the Three Glands inherits Doolittle Doolittle Charnel Castle, a vast, decaying Irish pile, and attempts to live in it quietly. But the castle attracts invaders — an endless procession of uninvited guests, each one more outrageous than the last: enormous women of insatiable appetite, crazed aristocrats, violent servants, escaped lunatics, and sexual adventurers of every description. Clementine’s attempts to maintain dignity, privacy, and sanity against this onslaught provide the novel’s comic structure — he is the still point at the center of a human hurricane.
The novel is deliberately excessive — Donleavy piles grotesquerie upon grotesquerie until the reader either surrenders to the absurdist rhythm or gives up entirely. The “onion eaters” of the title are the spongers and parasites who infest the castle — people who eat raw onions (the cheapest food available) while consuming everything else Clementine possesses.
Collecting The Onion Eaters
First edition (Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, New York, 1971): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $20–$50
- Without jacket: $5–$15