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The Happiness of Getting It Down Right: Letters of Frank O'Connor and William Maxwell, 1945-1966
The letters between the Irish writer Frank O'Connor and William Maxwell, his editor at "The New Yorker." A moving, witty collection of correspondence between William Maxwell and Frank O'Connor provides a fascinating portrait of a rich and enduring friendship and a study of the inner life of the writer from the perspective of two literary giants. With 8 pages of photographs.
- GenresNonfiction
282 pages, Hardcover
First published May 21, 1996
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About the author
Frank O'Connor
164 books132 followersLibrarian 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 26, 2020
An absolute delight to read.
May 17, 2015
I could read William Maxwell's letters forever and be happy. And Frank O'Connor, whom I have never read, was a delight to discover through his correspondence with Bill. I had the pleasure of reading a gorgeous first-edition, so the reading was as much a tactile joy as it was a literary one - which, in the best of cases, ought to be one and the same.
May 30, 2014
A delightful collection of correspondence about writing (and life) between the Irish writer Frank O'Connor and the New Yorker editor and writer William Maxwell. The conversation takes awhile to get fully going but is more than worth the wait for anyone interested in writing and/ or these writers.
"I had always wanted to write poetry, but I realized very early on that I didn't have much talent that way. Story telling is a compensation; the nearest thing one can get to the quality of a pure lyric poem. It doesn't deal with problems; it doesn't have any solutions to offer; it just states the human condition." Frank O'Connor
"I had always wanted to write poetry, but I realized very early on that I didn't have much talent that way. Story telling is a compensation; the nearest thing one can get to the quality of a pure lyric poem. It doesn't deal with problems; it doesn't have any solutions to offer; it just states the human condition." Frank O'Connor
October 30, 2011
For all writers, this is a gem. A wonderful, wonderful account of the editing process, the relationship between two of the very finest writers: O'Connor and Maxwell. Stunning.
February 16, 2014
Literary comfort food - and it delivers comfort in agreeable fashion.
Interesting primarily as a record of the amazing institution that was The New Yorker under William Shawn, a period during which editors confidentally issued instructions to improve works of fiction, confident that their instructions reflected the requirements of their boss, Mr. Shawn, somewhat less confident that the recipient of these instructions, the author, would respond in good part. O'Connor, one of the better artists who wrote frequently for the magazine, was the ideal respondent; Maxwell, who was a fairly prolific writer himself, was a good editor and understood his remit and his author. The second interest is how two men, of different generations, became friendly, friends, and deep friends - profound friends - in the middle years of the last century; what they had in common - younger, disturbingly pretty American wives of the same generation, children of the same age (in O'Connor's case, in a second family). Though only 5 years separated them, O'Connor seems like a man, Maxwell a boy, O'Connor had a life in the legendary past. The latter mailed a package on a Sunday night from the Dublin General Post Office, and joked about it - yes, that post office - because it was the site of the Easter Rising, appears in Ulysses, etc - but he was in the IRA, knew Yeats and AE, etc. Whereas Maxwell knew New Yorker people, past and present. (I was stunned to learn that Gus Lobrano, legendary fiction editor at the magazine, died in 1956, fairly early in this book - stunned because people in my generation who worked at the magazine (in other words, joined it as young women in the mid-70s)talked about Lobrano's death as if it were a recent tragedy).
As a picture of the 1950s, it is perfect; as a picture of two great writers interacting - I dunno. There is something of the fake in each of the men, but O'Connor gaily admitted it, Maxwell would have been appalled. They each have a palette of "atmospheric effects," which they could add at will. O'Connor spoke of himself as a man of stories; Maxwell has to pull them out of himself with greater effort, in a way familiar to anyone who knew novelists in the last century, or followed their travails in the newspapers. They are both better craftsmen at fiction-writing than any writer I can think of still working today; but to what avail? I'd rather read this book again than a story or novel of either one of them I haven't yet read.
Interesting primarily as a record of the amazing institution that was The New Yorker under William Shawn, a period during which editors confidentally issued instructions to improve works of fiction, confident that their instructions reflected the requirements of their boss, Mr. Shawn, somewhat less confident that the recipient of these instructions, the author, would respond in good part. O'Connor, one of the better artists who wrote frequently for the magazine, was the ideal respondent; Maxwell, who was a fairly prolific writer himself, was a good editor and understood his remit and his author. The second interest is how two men, of different generations, became friendly, friends, and deep friends - profound friends - in the middle years of the last century; what they had in common - younger, disturbingly pretty American wives of the same generation, children of the same age (in O'Connor's case, in a second family). Though only 5 years separated them, O'Connor seems like a man, Maxwell a boy, O'Connor had a life in the legendary past. The latter mailed a package on a Sunday night from the Dublin General Post Office, and joked about it - yes, that post office - because it was the site of the Easter Rising, appears in Ulysses, etc - but he was in the IRA, knew Yeats and AE, etc. Whereas Maxwell knew New Yorker people, past and present. (I was stunned to learn that Gus Lobrano, legendary fiction editor at the magazine, died in 1956, fairly early in this book - stunned because people in my generation who worked at the magazine (in other words, joined it as young women in the mid-70s)talked about Lobrano's death as if it were a recent tragedy).
As a picture of the 1950s, it is perfect; as a picture of two great writers interacting - I dunno. There is something of the fake in each of the men, but O'Connor gaily admitted it, Maxwell would have been appalled. They each have a palette of "atmospheric effects," which they could add at will. O'Connor spoke of himself as a man of stories; Maxwell has to pull them out of himself with greater effort, in a way familiar to anyone who knew novelists in the last century, or followed their travails in the newspapers. They are both better craftsmen at fiction-writing than any writer I can think of still working today; but to what avail? I'd rather read this book again than a story or novel of either one of them I haven't yet read.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews