The Best of Frank O'Connor (Everyman's Library) by O'Connor Frank (2009-06-09) Hardcover

by Frank O'Connor

Excellent Book

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Irish Literature, Ireland, Ebooks, Short Story Collection

Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.

Frank O’Connor (born Michael Francis O'Connor O'Donovan) was an Irish author of over 150 works, who was best known for his short stories and memoirs. Raised an only child in Cork, Ireland, to Minnie O'Connor and Michael O'Donovan, his early life was marked by his father's alcoholism, indebtness and ill-treatment of his mother.

He was perhaps Ireland's most complete man of letters, best known for his varied and comprehensive short stories but also for his work as a literary critic, essayist, travel writer, translator and biographer.[5] He was also a novelist, poet and dramatist.[6]

From the 1930s to the 1960s he was a prolific writer of short stories, poems, plays, and novellas. His work as an Irish teacher complemented his plethora of translations into English of Irish poetry, including his initially banned translation of Brian Merriman's Cúirt an Mheán Oíche ("The Midnight Court"). Many of O'Connor's writings were based on his own life experiences — his character Larry Delaney in particular. O'Connor's experiences in the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War are reflected in The Big Fellow, his biography of Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins, published in 1937, and one of his best-known short stories, Guests of the Nation (1931), published in various forms during O'Connor's lifetime and included in Frank O'Connor — Collected Stories, published in 1981.

O'Connor's early years are recounted in An Only Child, a memoir published in 1961 but which has the immediacy of a precocious diary. U.S. President John F. Kennedy quoted from An Only Child in his remarks introducing the American commitment to land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Kennedy described the long walks O'Connor would take with his friends and how, when they came to a wall that seemed too formidable to climb over, they would throw their caps over the wall so they would be forced to scale the wall after them. Kennedy concluded, "This nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space and we have no choice but to follow it."[7] O'Connor continued his autobiography through his time with the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, which ended in 1939, in his book, My Father's Son, which was published in 1968, after O'Connor's death.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book! It not only contains a generous selection of the short stories for which O"Connor is so justly admired, but examples of his auto-biographical and critical writing as well as some of his poetry--including translations from the Irish. This is not a book one "finishes"; it is one to return to again and again.

The contents are skilfully arranged thematically:

War
Childhood
Writers
Lonely Voices
Ireland
Better Quarrelling
Abroad
Last things

I think this is the best book with which to introduce oneself to this great {IMO greatest} Irish short story writer. It is also the best volume to have on hand if one simply wants to visit an old friend.

[Eleanor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, funny, heart-breaking, unforgettable. A truly great writer. If you don't already know him, read him.

[Eamon Loingsigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A calming, understanding voice that listened to normal people, then went and wrote about them and their humble lives. A classic Irish Republican voice who tells how it really was during and after Ireland finally raised the Tri-Colour.

[Alda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those authors for whom Salinger says in The Catcher in the Rye :
“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.”

That’s the sensation that this book and author gave me.

The Albanian translation by Sokol Çunga is the best!

[Andrew Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Everyman’s Library edition contains about 70 short stories, which accounts fornalmost half of his legacy. Most of his stories happen in Ireland, often around Cork, his birthplace. He is sometimes compared to Chekhov but I find his stories profoundly emotional, especially when dealing with loneliness, homesickness and human condition.

Among his many brilliant stories I found three deserving special mention:
Guests of the Nation A shocking story of two English hostages kept by the Irish rebels during the civil war in Ireland. The rebels treat them as equals and do not see them as enemies. One day they are ordered to kill the hostages in response to English hanging of four Irish rebels. They proceed with this task and the last minutes of the hostages are shocking to the core.
My Oedipus Complex A funny story of a little boy living with his mother, while his father is away during the First World War. He is very happy with her. One day his father arrives back from the front and the boy feels anger of getting less attention from his mother. He tells them that father should sleep in a separate bed as he prefers to sleep with mother only, as previously. When he is told that their family may soon increase in number, he observes "If another bloody baby
comes into this house, I’m going out". With the new baby, his father moves out to the boy’s bed. The boy feels sorry for him and soon after their relationship improves.

First Confession This is perhaps a most hilarious of all the stories. A young boy is due to attend his first confession, but misses a practice session. He decides to do it on his own. While inside the confessional he doesn’t know what to do and ends up standing on a ledge of the shelf below the gratings. He proceeds to tell his sins and mentions that he wanted to kill his grandmother, because she was preferring his sister. At the end he falls down the shelf and out of the confessional to a great commotion among the faithful waiting for their confession. The priest
asks him to wait till he finishes with the other waiting people and then talks to the boy about his motives and possible penalty of getting hanged. He tells him that he had seen other men being hung for the same crime telling him that it had not been worth doing.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

My introduction to Frank O'Connor came through his famous short story "Guests of a Nation". Some stranger on the internet said I should read it, and I was astonished. Such rich language, humor, empathy, outrage, and, in the end, sorrow. Surely one of the most devastating endings in the history of short stories.

I immediately had to find more of his works, and my local Half Price Books store had a copy of this volume, authoritatively titled The Best of Frank O'Connor. There are a few other collections of his works in varying stages of being in print and being more or less comprehensive, and I can't speak to their qualities. The great thing about this book, though, is that it doesn't just package all his short stories without context; it includes letters, essays, reviews, and other pieces of his writings thematically placed among the stories to give insight into his influences and thought processes. It makes it all the more interesting to spend some time sifting through his work. Truly a rewarding experience.

[Wilhelm Weber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book, amazing stories and just good reading. You get to know the people - priests, rebels, children growing up, couples, widows, poets, writers, thinkers, policemen, traders, sailors, teachers, priests, nuns even. You get to read about the beauty of the island, the towns and villages, the poverty, the passion, faith, traditions, hospitality, friendship, suffering and hardship - and the deep longing and haunting loneliness over ages. Sometimes its plain spooky, most times written good humouredly and then sometimes hillariously funny. This is a lovely book and recommended reading - even if to the end I got the idea O'Connor was but observing and not part of that life and those people himself. A bit distanced - even if just at an arm's length. So just 4 and not the full five, which just for reading pleasure would have been surely well earned.

[Fred McGavran · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Best of Frank O’Connor begins with “Guests of the Nation” and other stories from the author’s time with the Republican Army, then stories from his childhood in Cork and reflections on other writers, and then stories about people and a landscape so real the reader may feel as if she or he has lived there, too. O’Conner’s characters are formed, nurtured, and sometimes crushed by the strictures and landscape of Irish life, but they remain sympathetically themselves, and the loss of one of them is enough to end an evening’s reading. Every writer should read these.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

MARCH

37. by Frank O'Connor

Finish date: 12 March 2022
Genre: 6 essays
Rating: D-
Review:

Bad news: Very disappointed with the 6 essays I selected in this book. I'm even having a hard time writing a review about it! If these writings are considered 'O'Connor's best'...then I have been deceived.

Bad news: I keep kicking myself for not having read some short stories in this book instead of the essays. O'Connor is called the Irish Chekhov...so he must be doing something right!

Good news: I did discover one of O'Connor's books that I ordered from UK. It was $$ but is what I'm looking for. Hopefully I will learn more in his lectures given at Trinity University Dublin than what I read in this book: A Short History of Irish literature: A backward look (1968)

Personal: In hindsight these essays were a waste of time. They lacked depth and I felt that the essays were "...phoned in!" I will at least include my notes. IMO...skip the essays in this book and go right to the short stories...as I should have done!

Introduction to a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:
According to FC Joyce’s book is compulsory reading for every young man and woman. I wanted to know why? Didn't really get an answer from this essay. I had no idea that Joyce uses Aristotle’s On the Soul as one the books he consulted while writing his book.

James Joyce: A Post-Mortem:
Such a great first sentence…the best hook: ”I think I almost said ‘Thank God’ when Joyce died." Frank O’Connor examinations and dissects segments of Ulysses ( worth reading) and Finnegan’s Wake (…a colossal failure.) (pg 192)

My Father’s Son - George Russel and W.B. Yeats:
Portraits of G. Russel (editor of the Irish Statesman) and W.B. Yeats, Irish romantic poet 20th C . The essay read like a New Yorker Magazine profile…a little reporting, commentary, and analysis...but not much.

Silgo and Yeats:
This selection was taken from O’Connor’s traveling writings. It is just a few anecdotes of the friendship between O’Connor and Yeats…nothing impressive. Mentioned is Yeats’s self-penned epitaph: "Cast a cold eye on life, on death, horseman, pass by.”

Centenary Address at the Graveside of W.B. Yeats:
This address was written on the 100th birthday of W.B. Yeats. O’ Connor’s task is to say a few things Yeats would have liked him to say about his son, his wife and the greatest weakness of the Irish.

The Tailor and Anstey
The Tailor and Ansty is a 1942 book by Eric Cross about the life of the Irish tailor and storyteller, Timothy Buckley, and his wife Anastasia. The book was banned. O’Connor writes a scathing essay on the effects of this ban that proved…years later to have been unjustified.

[Jas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I knew when I looked at how many stories are collected that I would never read them all.

Some of these are excellent, such as the familiar Guests of the Nation. Some are interesting, such as My Oedipus Complex, featuring an unreliable narrator. Some simply seem obscure to me, maybe because I'm not deeply familiar with the infighting among Irish partisans, who often seem to hate each other more than they do the English.

This being a library book, I can return to it.

[Mary Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was lovely to be reminded why I enjoyed O'Connor's writing so much when I was younger. He is an excellent storyteller and writer, with that characteristic Irish wit that just sneaks in there so subtly. And he'll hit you with that sudden brutality that will rip your guts out, too, describing images and situations that will haunt you.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

[Farzan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a great writer of word, but a superb writer of life.