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The Oracle
Millions of women idolized him - but his wife and mistress knew what he really was...
160 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1956
12 people want to read
About the author
Edwin O'Connor
31 books38 followersEdwin O'Connor was an American journalist, novelist, and radio commentator who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1962 for his novel The Edge of Sadness (1961). His ancestry was Irish, and his novels concerned the Irish-American experience and often dealt with the lives of politicians and priests.
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April 10, 2012
This was O'Connor's first novel, published in 1951. Five years later his second novel, THE LAST HURRAH, would be a huge success, and the novel following that, THE EDGE OF SADNESS, would win the Pulitzer Prize in 1962.
A rather slight, serio-comic novel set between WWII and Korea - Christopher Usher is a former sportswriter (a fact he loathes being reminded of)-turned-radio commentator, with an audience of five million listeners; he has a rather grandiose idea of his own importance, an idea not quite shared by his wife or co-workers - his contract is up for renewal and he has demanded a bigger slice of the pie commensurate with his status and renown, and this is upsetting the careful balance between his career, his marriage, and his mistress (a failed actress with a taste for sapphires).
Within a few years of THE ORACLE's publication the important celebrity-creating medium would become television (O'Connor was a TV columnist) and a new generation of puffed-up egos would gain even wider exposure, a situation which, of course, continues unabated today.
THE ORACLE is quite unlike O'Connor's subsequent fiction, as it in no way focuses on the Irish-American/Catholic experience and is, despite the seriousness of some of the topics it touches on (such as the use of the bomb, as well as the impending crisis in Asia) much lighter in tone. But the author's sure touch with slightly-eccentric characterizations is well-evident here.
A rather slight, serio-comic novel set between WWII and Korea - Christopher Usher is a former sportswriter (a fact he loathes being reminded of)-turned-radio commentator, with an audience of five million listeners; he has a rather grandiose idea of his own importance, an idea not quite shared by his wife or co-workers - his contract is up for renewal and he has demanded a bigger slice of the pie commensurate with his status and renown, and this is upsetting the careful balance between his career, his marriage, and his mistress (a failed actress with a taste for sapphires).
Within a few years of THE ORACLE's publication the important celebrity-creating medium would become television (O'Connor was a TV columnist) and a new generation of puffed-up egos would gain even wider exposure, a situation which, of course, continues unabated today.
THE ORACLE is quite unlike O'Connor's subsequent fiction, as it in no way focuses on the Irish-American/Catholic experience and is, despite the seriousness of some of the topics it touches on (such as the use of the bomb, as well as the impending crisis in Asia) much lighter in tone. But the author's sure touch with slightly-eccentric characterizations is well-evident here.
Displaying 1 of 1 review