The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story

by Frank O'Connor

The legendary book about writing short stories, by the Irish master of the form, is back in print! A virtual master class in which the witty O'Connor discusses technique and his favorite writers, including Chekhov, Hemingway, and Joyce.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction, Short Stories, Literary Criticism, Crafts, Essays, Ireland

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

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

[د.سيد (نصر برشومي) · Rating 4 out of 5]

افتح يا سمسم مغارة القصة القصيرة واستمتع ببريق جواهر كتابها... ترجنيف وجوجول وتشيخوف وموباسان وبو وهمينجواي... عش مع الواقعي والرمزي والدقيق الواضح والغامض... انتقل من روسيا لفرنسا لإنجلترا لأمريكا... من المعطف والشقاء وموت موظف لمكان نظيف وحسن الإضاءة.
إذا كنت تكتب قصة قصيرة اوتنقدها اوتستمتع بها أوتهتم بتاريخ شكل أدبي ترى من خلاله مسار الفكر الغربي المعاصر ستجد الصوت المنفرد كنزا... تحديده للقصة القصيرة بأنها الصوت المنفرد عبقري... روح الغرباء... الآخر... سجناء نفوسهم... صمتهم... شعرية ما لا يقال... المحذوف إلى الأبد...
أوكونور كان يلقى محاضرات أكاديمية جمعها هذا الكتاب... لكن لاحظ المجاز والأسلوب الساحر والتعبير عن الاتجاه الفني بحس الفنان... ياه... مسافة كبيرة بينه وبين كتب أكاديمية تكرهك في الإبداع.
اختيارات مفكر... تحليل خبير... تعبير مبدع... مجالسة صاحب محب... يحترم عقلك وروحك.
إذا كنت تحب المعلومة المباشرة والعرض الجاف... لا تختر طريق هذا الأيرلندي البليغ.

[د.سيد (نصر برشومي) · Rating 5 out of 5]

أجمل ما تطالع في فن القصة القصيرة
عنوان الكتاب "الصوت المنفرد" هو علامة روحية لذاك الفن الي انتشر رواج الصحافة ليعبّر عن أزمة الذات في مواجهة تحديّات المدنية المعاصرة التي يفقد فيها الإنسان شعلة نفسه المضيئة منهارا لتقاليد مجتمعية صارمة تسيطر علي نفسه وحلمه وتحول بينه وبين انطلاق ملكاته المتطلّعة لاحتضان الوجود
من تورجنيف وجوجول إلى هيمنجواي معاصر المؤلف يضع الكتاب أمام القارئ خمائل القصة القصة القصيرة من خلال أشجارها السامقة التي تلتقي في الجذور حين تستخلص أزمة الوحدة التي يعانيها البشر مع كل ما في حياتهم من مباهج وفعاليّات وصخب
ويمضي كل صوت في جذعه منفردا حتى تلتقي الأغصان التي تمنح قارئ القصة القصيرة ظلا لشمسه الخفية بأعماقه فيدرك أن وحدته مرئية في أوراق القص وأن كاتب القصة القصيرة يعيش تجربته ويلمس أشجانه وينطق بصوته المختنق الذي لا يريد أحدا أن يسمعه مثلما حدث مع الحوذي أيونا بوتابوف في قصة الشقاء لتشيخوف التي تعد أيقونة القصة القصيرة في العالم حتى الآن شرقا وغربا
الكتاب رائع في بنيته التي اختارت فن السيرة
واستندت إلى المجاز في الأسلوب
ومنحت القارئ مكانا في واحة الفكر والجمال لرؤية أعلام القصة القصيرة
وهذا الجمال كان مدخلا لرؤية فرانك أوكونور في فلسفة الفن القصصي
فاستطاع أن يكتب نصا بوليفونيا ثلاثي الإيقاع
التاريخ والجمال والفكر

[Sean Carman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absolutely brilliant examination of the short story, and something I wish I had read years ago. O'Connor examines the form through the work of its masters, starting with Gogol and his overcoat and progressing through other greats who came out from under it, including Chekhov, Hemingway, Katherine Mansfield, Kipling, and James Joyce. See O'Connor compare the sensibility of the short story to that of the novel! Thrill to his sensible critiques of Hemingway's minimalism and Babel's curious interest in violence. I want to add that O'Connor's chapter on Chekhov made me appreciate the Russian short story king in a completely new way, and I already loved Chekhov for so many other reasons. If you like short stories, and especially if you are trying to write them, this book is required reading.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you write short stories, then you should definitely read Frank O'Connor's book, The Lonely Voice. Or so I've heard from other writers. This older book (published originally in 1963) is an excellent review of several short story authors. Some will no doubt be familiar to you, such as Hemingway, Kipling, and Lawrence. Others, especially the older Irish authors, may seem like a reading list from a class you slept through in college.

Ideally, you should read these other authors before listening to O'Connor's critiques of their work. I didn't, so I'm sure much of what he was talking about escaped me. Still, there are nuggets of writing (and reading) wisdom throughout The Lonely Voice. Also, O'Connor pulls no punches--even with such iconic writers like Hemingway. I can imagine him sitting at an Irish pub cutting apart Isaac Babel's work in the same way he might one of his students.

If you can get a copy of this book, check it out. If you want more out of it, skim the book for the authors that O'Connor talks about. That way, you can read their stories before O'Connor tears them apart. As for me, I have a long list of short stories to read, compliments of Frank O'Connor.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally managed to get a copy of this legendary study - a series of lectures told with erudition, amazement, and even the occasional chuckle. Unlike Rust Hills' similar book on the subject, this one never rambles, has plenty to say, and says it memorably.

Favourite bits are when O'Connor takes Hemingway to account:

'Much of the time his stories illustrate a technique in search of a subject.'

'Nobody in Hemingway ever seems to have a job or a home unless the job or the home fits into the German scheme of capital letters.'

[On 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber'] 'To say the psychology of this story is childish would be to waste good words.'

I think he's unduly harsh on Chekhov's 'The Grasshopper', though, and would have liked more on Babel and less on Turgenev, but these are minor grumbles. Worth any serious reader's time.

[E.J. Cullen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The brilliant O'Connor, never satisfied, re-edited and re-edited each of his stories new and old right up to his deathbed. Agree or disagree with his many opinions and literary criticisms, you are never bored.

[Mark Mullee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fabulous, if slightly outdated collection of essays on the short story. You will finish it with a better idea of the possibilities and limitations of the form, and how different writers have made their mark on its relatively short history. Frank O'Connor delivers loosely overlapping essays on Turgenev, Chekhov, Maupassant, Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, A.E. Coppard, Katherine Mansfield, Ernest Hemingway, and Mary Lavin. The introduction alone is worth reading, establishing with great insight and wit O'Connor's basic theories about the short story, which he then develops in the context of a single author (or a comparison of two authors) in each of the essays.

A few of the essays left me with a slight distaste afterward, especially his essay about Mansfield, which on the whole was dismissive of her work and was studded with weird comments about her life, the myth of her life with her suffering submissive husband, and her sexuality: "Though I know nothing that would suggest she had any homosexual experiences, the assertiveness, malice, and even destructiveness in her life and work make me wonder whether she hadn't." (!?!) This quote shows one of the instances when O'Connor reveals his analysis to be not quite appropriate for our century, but I could also quote a hundred brilliant, clear-seeing lines from the other essays in this book that together lay out a solid set of critical tools for reading the short story.

[Katarzyna Bartoszynska · Rating 2 out of 5]

A handful of interesting insights, but overall rather tedious. I did like that he had a chapter on Mary Lavin, who I think is a tremendous and totally under appreciated writer, but ultimately, I didn't feel like he had all that much to say about the short story as a form (books on the short story rarely do, unfortunately).

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

wonderfully observed insights, simultaneously incisive and conversational, all in all a masterful lecture. he does have several themes he returns to incessantly - the idea that a short story writer must speak for a place (e.g. therefore Hemmingway's cafés and transit stations are inherently lessened), and that all succesful short stories MUST concern themselves with a submerged population, as well as a certain prediliction towards quite classicist notions without admitting as much. but none of those notions take away from the wisdom and focus of his discussions, i only question the narrow frame by which he defines them.

[ِAhmed AboELkheir · Rating 4 out of 5]

هذا الكِتاب مُهم لكُل من يُريد أن يعرف أكثر عن القصة القصيرة وخصوصًا الكلاسيكية منها.
كِتاب قد تحققت فيه جميع العوامل، من حيث المُتعة، التنظير و النقد المُحكم - ولكن قد إنخل في بعض مواضيعه ولكن لا بأس -، وهذا كُله قد غُلِف في إطار جيد حيث الترجمة الخالعة من أي شوائب أو فضائح و غيرها
.
مُهم لكُل قاص أو روائي، أو المستمع بهذا أو ذاك .

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this collection of essays up after seeing the late writer Larry McMurtry quote Frank O'Connor on the the short story: the “short story remains by its very nature remote from community – romantic individualistic, and instransigent (like the cowboy myth), conveying an intense awareness of human loneliness.”

It's an interesting collection of essays but I'd start with the Epilogue, where O'Connor talks about teaching story writing. He notes that he sometimes spent a month of teaching by keeping students from writing "and confining them to the elaboration of subjects written in four lines -- five if they must be garrulous."

In his Introduction he does say, "There are three necessary elements in a story -- exposition, development and drama. Exposition we may illustrate as 'John Forescue was a solicitor in the little town of X'; development as 'One day Mrs. Fortescue told him she was about to leave him for another man'; and drama as 'You will do nothing of the kind,' he said."

O'Connor is harsh in his critique of certain authors, including Hemingway and Katherine Mansfield, often for reasons that I found silly. Of Mansfied he says "she wrote stories that I read and forget, read and forget. My experience of stories by real storytellers, even when their stories are not first-rate, is that they leave a deep impression on me." It sounds like the problem lies elsewhere than with Mansfield.

[Islam · Rating 4 out of 5]

أجمل كتاب في القصة القصيرة

[Sophie · Rating 2 out of 5]

the short story as something less often found in the novel-an intense awareness of human loneliness. Though this book is dated and racist and homophobic, there are still little useful perspectives on the short story that has since evolved in ways I think Frank might not approve.

Yet contact itself is the principal danger, for to marry is to submit to the standards of the submerged population, and for the married there is no hope but ot pass on the dream of escape to their children -41

That peculiar American sweetness toward the stranger-which exists side by side with American brutality toward everyone-is the sweetness of people whose own ancestors have been astray in an unfamiliar society and understand that a familiar society is the exception rather than the rule...-41

what is perfect can only fade.

"Life is like that," Chekhov seems to say. "Sometimes it's passion and sometimes it's peppermint lozenges."

In Chekhov's criticisms of people it was never the obvious, serious things he stressed.

This was enormous, and enormous because he felt that no matter how sad life might be it was still beautiful.

I understand that when you love you must either, in your reasonings about that love, start from what is highest, from what is more important than happiness or unhappiness, sin or virtue in their accepted meaning, or you must not reason at all-Chekhov

Most of her work seems to me that of a clever, spoiled, malicious woman. Though I know nothing that would suggest she had any homosexual experiences, the assertiveness, malice, and even destructiveness in her life and work make me wonder whether she hadn't

rather like that with which one touches the fur of a strange animal or bird, and this is followed by a breakdown of personal identity and communication on a deeper level.

There is often a marked struggle at the beginning of the story before the author can detach himself from what is not storytelling and the story becomes airborne; a paragraph or more of fumbling prose like the tuning up of an orchestra

As we all know, good wives admire nothing in a husband except his capacity to deal with lions, so we can sympathize with the poor woman in her trouble.

and heightens the intensity that is so necessary in a story but so embarrassing in a novel, where everything has to have a sort of everyday quality.

not the life of the mind interrupted by occasional yells from the kitchen, but the life of the kitchen suddenly shattered by mental images of extraordinary vividness which the author tries frantically to capture before the yells begin again.

[AJ Nolan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read this book before, but re-reading it was lovely and well worth it. O'Connor's perspectives on the short story are still as fresh as the day he wrote them, and I particularly like, and agree with, his perception of the short story being uniquely able to grapple with the human condition of loneliness.

[Theryn Fleming · Rating 2 out of 5]

My The Lonely Voice post.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd, somewhat outdated little book. Still, contains some interesting thoughts on how character and setting blur together.

[MShafie · Rating 5 out of 5]

یک آنالیز تأثیر گذار بر داستان کوتاه...!

[Ernest Ohlmeyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Lonely Voice was one of the earliest (ca. 1963) studies of the modern short story. Its author, Frank O'Connor, was himself a master story teller, and he sought in this work to begin to assign a formal literary characterization to the short story. Previously, it had largely been viewed as a greatly shortened or condensed version of the novel. O'Connor tried to analyze what makes the short story inherently different from the novel, apart from its length. To him, the novel is a more leisurely unfolding of a broad story filled with many characters and details. The short story, in contrast, seems to be a concentrated depiction of emotional crisis, individual loneliness, personal epiphany, etc. The short story frequently dwells on, in O'Connor's view, the travails of a "submerged population" which is a distinct subset of the broad human canvas depicted in many novels. While O'Connor's theories have not been fully accepted by later critics, it nevertheless was an early attempt to impart a structural and contextual uniqueness to the story vis-a-vis the novel. In later chapters of his book, O'Connor goes on to analyze the short fiction of a number of major writers including: Turgenev, Maupassant, Chekhov, Kipling, Joyce, Katherine Mansfield, D H Lawrence, Hemingway, A E Coppard, Isaac Babel and Mary Lavin. His critiques are not without personal prejudices and idiosyncrasies, and he can at times be very critical of certain writers. I found The Lonely Voice to be an original and very useful introduction to short story criticism, and I highly recommend it. It has wet my appetite for probing deeper into the theory of the short story, which has become one of my favorite literary forms.

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frank O'Connor has opinions about what short stories and novels are and he is going to make damn well sure you know what those opinions are. I found his opinions interesting and often enlightening. Ultimately, I found his definition of a good story to be a bit one-note. His focus on "Submerged Populations" is fascinating and has changed the way I view storytelling, but I don't feel like stories about "submerged" populations are the only kinds of stories that have value. In the end, it's entertaining enough if you read it closely, and you will probably walk away having learned a few things, but the whole thing ultimately feels limiting, as a writer. It closes more doors than it opens.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

In contrast to the novel with its emphasis on an entire social world and its focus on the heroism of its protagonist, the short story focuses on lonely and "submerged populations": "Gogol's officials, Turgenev's serfs, Maupassant's prostitutes, Chekhov’s doctors, and Sherwood Anderson's hopeless provincials, always dreaming of escape." If we approach a novel for companionship, we don't approach the story in the same spirit. The story has an intense consciousness of human loneliness. This is O'Conner's claim, which I don't think is ultimately sustainable, at least in the terms he puts it. The loneliness and alienation that inevitably attends modern life is of course the stuff of novels, too--Hardy and Kafka for instance. That said, I think that because of its smaller scope, the story tends to focus on a smaller cast of characters and very often on a single individual--which we find far-removed from the elaborate social background of the novel. Perhaps this is why O’Conner associates the form with Pascal’s “The eternal silence of those infinite spaces terrifies me.” It’s also the case that the story adopts plots and narratives that could not be sustained in a novel-length work of fiction. It makes sense, then, that the forms characters are those destined never to have starred in a novel of their own. Outside of the tradition of lonely voices O’Conner cites, “Amos Barton” and “Un Coeur Simple” and Woolf’s characters are great examples of these lonely voices. One thing irritates me about this book: O'Conner's undervaluation of Maupassant.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

For lovers of the short-story genre, and especially for lovers of Frank O'Connor's work, this provides insight into the development of the genre and its early authors given from a master of the form.

[Brenda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Insightful

Thoughtful study on the form of the short story with insightful commentary on such authors as Joyce, Hemingway, Flaubert, and Chekhov.

[هشام العبيلي · Rating 3 out of 5]

مقدمة المترجم وتلخيصه للكتاب كانت أكثر فائدة من المحتوى نفسه .

[Diem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let's get this out of the way, Frank O'Connor, while not necessarily a practitioner of any kind of phobic behavior or -isms definitely has retrograde ideas about women and LGBTQ people. That makes sense because he is writing this in 1962 and he is not a young man when he is. That said, those ideas detract from the book and his opinions generally, but not enough to dismiss this very valuable book.

It is not a guide to how to write short stories. It is a discussion about how to define, read and think about short stories. To that end, it is excellent even when one disagrees with him, which I did often.

Unforgivable: referring to Hemingway's Nick Adams stories as "the Wisconsin stories". This is Michigan erasure, sure and I take deep offense.

[Reza Elahi · Rating 5 out of 5]

در سال‌های ابتدایی تجربه‌ی نوشتنم، این کتاب مثل یک شبح وارد زندگی‌ام شد و مصداق راه صد ساله، در یک شب چنان سبب درکی از داستان‌نویسی در من شد که در این بیشتر از ده سال، هنوز هم صدای تنها و نکاتش راهنمای بزرگ من در داستان‌نویسی است.
آنقدر شوق به اشتراک گذاشتنش را داشتم که دست آخر رشته پاره شد و نفهمیدم از کدام دست به دست شد و گمش کردم.
آن هم کتابی چاپ تمام و ناموجود.

[Michael Clement · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of very fine short stories with an introduction by Frank O'Connor. In this he offers his insight into the nature of the short story and he absolutely nails it. His story "Guests of the Nation" is included and is a masterpiece.