review of the short stories -frank o'connor

Colby QuarterlyVolume 6Issue 8 December Article 3

December 1963

A Consideration of Frank O'Connor's Short StoriesGeorge Brandon Saul

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Recommended CitationColby Library Quarterly, series 6, no.8, December 1963, p.329-342

Colby Library QuarterlySeries VI Decenlber 1963 No.8

A CONSIDERATION OFFRANK O'CONNOR'S SHORT STORIES

By GEORGE BRANDON SAUL

IFRANK O'CONNOR, born Michael O'Donovan to grueling

poverty in Cork in 1903, has said (An Only Child, 1961)that he adopted his mother's family name while in public servicein order to avoid involving his employers in his literary ac-tivities. By profession a librarian, he has also been a teacherand a director of the Abbey Theatre. As pronlptly app1eared,the threatened involvement should have been a proud one, forO'Connor is that rare author whose creative work has beenalmost invariably both significant and exciting. Certainly lit-erate Americans take a just pride of association in the factthat he canle to live in the United States in 1952, the year ofhis second marriage.

His output has been phenomenal, but he is one author whosegenius justifies his productivity. Of his not-purely-creativework, An Only Child is particularly charming. This auto-biography to his release froll1 prison at twenty (as a some-what innocent member of the Irish Republican Army) is oneof the finest things of its kind, modestly and genially told andespecially moving in its unsentimentalized tributes to his mother.But his travel-writing (Leinster, Munster and Connaught, 1950)is also full of piquancy, independence ("Ireland is not a na-tion, but a bad case of arrested development"), original judg-nlent, and good storytelling - even literary criticism. And histranslations fronl the Irish - conveniently to be examined inKings, Lords, & Cornmons (1959) - also deserve sp,ecial men-tion: the Cuala Press, of Yeatsian association, published twovolumes (The Wild Bird's Nest, 1932; Lords and Commons,1938), followed by The Fountain of Magic (London, 1939).

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Saul: A Consideration of Frank O'Connor's Short Stories

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330 Colby Library QuarterlyThe creative work ranges widely, from dramatic writing (two

collaborations with H. Hunt: The Invincibles and Moses' Rock;and one play solely his: Time's Pocket), through prose fiction(including two novels: The Saint and Mary Kate, 1932; DutchInterior, 1940), to verse. Three Old Brothers (1936), whichseeks to net lights of the sort caught by the later Yeats, failsin sonle degree in its high challenge and has technical flaws ofaccent and rhyme; but it is very readable, has some gratifyingphrases (like "... the/ Lancelight of the rustling branches"),and reaches a peak of hunli1ity and ecstasy in "Prologue andEpilogue, 2" whose concluding cry "From nlagic we conle, /To magic we go" is not only a haunting statement but a sug-gestion of the mental and spiritual cognition which enrichesO'Connor's work in the short story, where his finest poetry maybe found. It is this latter work which is to be considered here.

IISince O'Connor is unquestionably a major figure and the

fabled "general reader" can not readily obtain all the volumesin which his short stories have been collected, and since theostensibly collective editions are really selective, it seenlS usefulto list these books and give their contents in the Anlericaneditions, with a few comments and the warning that they donot rescue all the stories their author has published in periodi-cals since he began to appear in The Irish Statesman as a "dis-covery" of George Russell's.Guests of the Nation (London, Macmillan; N.Y., Macmillan,1931).

Guests of the NationAttackJumbo's WifeNightpiece with FiguresSeptember DawnMachine Gun Corps in ActionLaughterJoAlecSoiree chez une Belle Jeune FilleThe PatriarchAfter Fourteen Years

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Colby Quarterly, Vol. 6, Iss. 8 [1963], Art. 3

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Colby Library Quarterly 331The Late Henry ConranThe SistersThe Procession of Life

N.B.: Title story included in More Stories . . (inf.) and Stories (1956).

Bones of Contention and Other Stories (London, Macmillan;N.Y., Macmillan 1936).

Michael's WifeOrpheus and His LutePeasantsIn the TrainThe Majesty of the LawTears - Idle TearsLoftyThe Man That StoppedThe English SoldierBones of ContentionWhat's Wrong with the Country?A Romantic

N.B.: Second story reprinted in More Stories . .. and Stories (1956);3rd, 4th, & 5th in The Stories . .. (inf.); 4th & 5th also in Stories (1956).

Three Tales (Dublin, Cuala Press: 250 copies. "Finished inthe first week of Decembe,r 1941").

The Bridal NightThe Long Road to UmmeraThe Grand Vizier's Daughters

N.B.: All included in next volume.

Crab Apple Jelly (London, Macmillan; N.Y., Knopf, 1944).The Bridal NightOld FellowsThe Grand Vizier's DaughtersSong without Words"The Star That Bids the Shepherd Fold" ["The Shepherds"

in More Stories . ..]The Long Road to UmmeraThe MiserThe House That Johnny Built

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332 Colby Library QuarterlyThe New Teacher ["The Cheapjack" in The Stories . ..]The LuceysUprootedThe Mad Lomasneys

N.B.: 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, & 11th reprinted in TheStories . ..; 5th & last in More Stories ..; 4th, 6th, 10th, 11th, & 12thalso in Stories (1956).

[Selected Stories (Dublin, Fridberg, 1946). Not seen by me.]

The Common Chord (London, Macmillan, 1947; N.Y., Knopf,1948) .

News for the ChurchThe Custom of the CountryJudasThe Holy DoorD'on Juan (Retired)The Babes in the WoodThe Frying-PanThe MiracleA Thing of NothingThe StepmotherFriends of the FamilyDon Juan's Temptation

N.B.: 1st, 4th, 6th, & last reprinted in The Stories- ..; 2nd, 3rd, 5th,7th, & 8th in More Stories . ..; 1st, 2nd, & 3rd in Stories (1956).

Traveller's Samples (London, Macmillan; N.Y., Knopf, 1951).First ConfessionThe Man of the HouseThe IdealistThe DrunkardThe Thief ["Christmas Morning" in The Stories ...JMy First ProtestantThe Mortal CoilOld-Age PensionersLegal AidThe Masculine PrincipleThe Sentry

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Colby Library Quarterly 333JeromeThe Lady of the SagasDarcy in the Land of Youth

N.B.: 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 9th, & 10th reprinted in The Stories ...;2nd, 6th, 11th, 12th, 13th, & 14th in More Stories . ..; 3rd, 4th, 9th,& 10th also in Stories (1956).

The Stories of Frank O'Connor (N.Y., Knopf, 195'2; London,Hamilton, 1953). This adds to the inclusions indicated( "N.B.") in the listings abo,ve:

My Oedipus ComplexMyDaThe PretenderFirst LoveFreedom

N.B.: 1st & 3rd of these reprinted in Stories (1956).

More Stories by Frank O'Connor (N.Y., Knopf; Toronto, Col-lins, 1954). This adds to the inclusions indicated above:

Eternal TriangleThe Face of EvilMasculine ProtestThe Sorcerer's ApprenticeThe Romantic [N.B.: This title duplicates that of the last

story in Bones . ..]The Little MotherA Sense of ResponsibilityCounsel for OedipusA Torrent DamnedThe Old FaithVanityFather and SonUnapproved RouteLonely Rock

Stories by Frank O'Connor (N.Y., Vintage Books, 1956). In-clusions (18) indicated above.[Selected Stories of Frank O'Connor (London, ?, 1956). Notseen by me.]

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334 Colby Library QuarterlyDomestic Relations (N.Y., Knopf; London, Hanlilton, 1957).

The GeniusThe Study of HistoryThe Man of the WorldThe Duke's ChildrenDaydreamsPrivate PropertyA Bachelor's StoryThe PariahExpectation of LifeThe Ugly DucklingOrphansA Salesman's RomanceFish for FridayPityThe ParagonIf my count is accurate, O'Connor's collections through

Domestic Relations contain ninety-nine stories. Of these, TheStories . . . and More Stories . . . add nineteen to a stringentselection of thirty-seven of the sixty-five previously collected.This means that O'Connor rejected a third of the stories avail-able through 1954. One wishes his self-criticism had per-mitted him to spare from the rejected group the following:"Attack," "Jumbo's Wife," "The Late Henry Conran," and"The Procession of Life" from Guests . ..; "Michael's Wife"from Bones . ..; "The Grand Vizier's Daughters" from CrabApple Jelly; and "The Stepmother" from The Common Chord.Whether O'f not he counts them among his best, the,se storiesare all among the clearly superior fictions of their period. Butit is refreshing, how,ever distressing in this instance, to find anauthor capable of O'Connor's severe self-judgment.

Now to review the separate volumes.

IIIThe majority of pieoes in Guests of the Nation appear to be

rooted in the author's youthful experience as a mernb,er of theIrish Republican Army in southern Ireland. All are veryreadable, but not a few seem less fictions than historical episodesof guerilla warfare isolated into fictional pOlsture. However,

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Colby Library Quarte,rly 335the almost weird "Attack" and "Junlbo:'s Wife," tIle tale 0' apathetic woman who unwittingly betrays her abusive husbandto death as an informer on "the 'dirty Shinners [Sinn Feiners],' "are touching exceptions. Also outstanding is the much re-vised title piece, one of several which O'Connor says (Stories,1956) were "written under the influence of the great Jewishstoryteller, Isaac Babel," and a tragic suggestion of the oc-casional emotional cost of enforced fraternizing among captorsand captives and of the stupid cruelties of retribution. And"The Procession of Life," in which a sixteen-year-old lad learnsthe taste of liquor and tobacco, and barely escapes seduction bya street girl; and "The Late Henry Conran," of one who re-turns in a fury from Chicago after twenty-five years to chargehis wife with "defamation of character" because he has b,eenso labelled in his son's wedding announcement in a newspaper- are very delightfully Irish. Incidentally, the returning ghostof "The Patriarch" whose fingers burn marks in a panel has afellow in the later "First Communion."

Entertaining as this book is, its successor, Bones of Conten-tion, is clearly major by comparison, though the complicationsof the ironic title story seem less lucidly integrated to the plotthan desirable. For here is evident the O'Connor who seescommon things in a n,e,w way and expresses what he sees withlyric freshness, as an extract from "Michael's Wife" will suggest:

It may be also that she gathered something from those hours on thewater, in silent coves on grey days when the wind shook out a shoal oflights, or in the bay when the thunderous light moved swiftly, startingsudden hares of brightness from every hollow, blue from the hills,violet from the rocks, primrose from the fields . . . so that she nolonger felt a stranger when she walked in the nl0rning ... or from herwindow saw the moon plunge its silver drill into the water.

Where is the author to surpass that passage, with its. "shoalof lights," its "thunderous light," its "hares of brightness," its"silver drill"? - or readily match such masterpieces as "Inthe Train" (in which witnesses and policemen are returninghome with a woman who has just escaped hanging for poisoningher husband merely because none of her scornfully disapprovingneighbors will "inform" against her - a woman whose lastdisclaimer is a confession of utter desolation), or "The Majestyof the Law" (in which old Dan Bride elects to "suffer" jail

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336 Colby Library Quarterlyagainst his enemy - as the ancient filid might have starvedthemselv'es for similar vengeance - rather than pay a fine foropening the fellow's skull in an argument), or "Orpheus andHis Lute" (whose Irishtown band, having pawned its instru-ments on the provocation of thirst, beats up a rival band fOTits instruments during a parade, gives a remarkable performance,and then marches quietly off to jail)? Yet these, we are told(Stories, 1956), were the products of "a phase in which I wasfumbling for a new style."

Even most of the lesser tales of this volume are rewarding,not least the touching "The English Soldier," in which TomDonegan asserts that women "are more religious than men"b'ecause "they try to take advantage of God on account of Himb,eing a man." But "Lofty" is, essentially just a charactersketch; "What's Wrong with the COuntry?", a series of ironicalexchanges to no conclusion on the Irish conundrum; and "ARomantic," a triviality by O'Connor's usual standards.

Crab Apple Jelly, in tum, is one of those rare volumes ofshort stories which, like Stephens's Etched in Moonlight orCoppard's Black Dog, isolate themselves as completely luminousexperiences in a lifetime of reading. Why its "The GrandVizier's Daughters," whose climax come's close to achieving theaccents of epic tragedy, was not included in either of O'Cionnor'scollective volumes is hard to understand. Hard, too, wouldit be to forget the pathetic two monks - bound to silence-and their harmless vices in "Song without Words"; or theavaricious priest, Father Ring, who figures in more than onetale, almost ghoulishly diverting legacies from rightful heirs tothe Church and making himself otherwise obnoxious; or thegently mad lad of "The Bridal Night," a haunting masterpieceindeed; or the bitter, tornlented girl, and her perverse marriage,of "The Mad Lomasneys"; or the "uprooted" Tom and NedKeating, priest and schoolteacher resp,ectively, lonely for thepeasant life they have forsaken - men "hunted down" each "byhis own nature" and, perhaps, the crimson-streaked "apple-green light over Carriganassa." It was with the tales of thisvolume that O'Connor began his effort, obviously a most suc-cessful one, at what he later called (Stories, 1956) "puttingback the narrative impulse" into stories, since broadcasting hadshown him that storytelling had lost "the ton:e of a man's voice,

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Colby Library Quarterly 337speaking." Nor is he unjustified in feeling that tales like "TheMad Lomasneys" and "The Luceys" "describe for the first timethe Irish middleclass Catholic way of life with its, virtues andits faults without any of the picturesqueness of earlier Irishwriting which concentrated on colour and extravagance." D'e-spite this he t,eUs us in the preface to The Stories . .. (1952)that he questions whether "The Luceys," "struggled savagelywith over twenty years," is yet in final form.

The Common Chord, which has less-varied subject matterthan an O'Connor volume usually shows, deals largely withsexual preoccupations (inevitably complicated by RomanCatholicism), malcontent marriages, and illegitimacy, the un-palatable priest Father Ring reappears, and an irony veeringbetwe,en amusement and tragedy is not unapparent. Most com-pelling among the shorter piecies are "The Stepmother" (re-markable tale of a good, and unjustly treated, specimen); "TheFrying-P'an" (concerned with the anlorous, anCU essentiallytragic, complications that result when the wife of a priest's friendappeals to that priest, actually in love with her, for sympathy,her husband being spiritually a "spoiled priest" who never pro-ceeded to ordination and now regards his monthly coition asadultery); and "Judas" (in which a young man resigns his loveat the tugging of the "silver cord"). "The Miracle" is a de-lightful account of a doctor's revenge in which we meet BillEnright, "prepared to treat the Canon as a bandit of similardignity to himself." But the most impressive item in the boo,k(which - see "The Custom of the Country" - does not lackevidence to suggest that few could match the Irish RomanCatholic in uttering strictures on his church or "clericalism")is really a novelette, "The Holy Door."

This tale - with its just aphorism "There is nothing a good-living woman likes better than confessing her husband's sins"- poses the priest-approved dodge of conquering a mentalblock by imagining sexual substitution of the sort indulged bythe absurd wife in O'Faolain's very different "Woman WhoMarried Clark Gable." But results. are not farcical in the caseof O'Connor's Polly, childless despite a pilgrimage to Rome towitness the once-in-seven-years opening of "The Holy Doolr."Religious neuroticism and stupidity do not in the end preventthe then-widowed husband from winning romantic love, andprompt progeny, from his first wife's ex-confidante, Nora, and

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338 Colby Library Quarterlythereby foiling his almost incredibly vicious mother, jealous ofhis paternal inheritanc'e for her other son - an unnatural ex-an1ple of her category and O'Connor's most nlalevolent figure.The noctumalepisode in which the son returns from walkingNora home and has a scene with this mother after finding shehas placed his dead wife's photograph betw'een two candles ona mantel is one of the most powerful in nl0dem literature.

Traveller's Samples returns us to the more usual variety, andthe quiet laughter, characteristic of O'Connor. From thewIlolly delightful and greatly worked-over opening tale, "FirstConfession" (on some of whose matter An Only Child is il-lun1inative, as it is in respect of certain other O'Connor tales),through "The Thief" (later "Christmas Morning," and as touch-ing as any of Coppard's fine tales of children), to "Darcy in theLand of Youth" (in which two Irish boys lose their inhibitionswith a couple of English factory girls during wartime), thereis great plenty, including something like an echo of epic tragedyin Old Mike's boast of his ancient greatness ("Old-Age Pen-sioners") .

Not least touching here is "The Man of the House," of a ladsent to get his mother cough medicine and egged into sharing itwith a little girl, consequently returning home heartbroken. Notleast ironic is "The Lady of the Sagas," in which the teacherD,eird're Costello, bemoaning the provincialism of her town(Cork?) and remembering the sagas (she was named for theIrish "Helen"), actually rejects a solicitor she had wanted tomarry when he admits he has never bedded a girl or had aparticular amorous interest previously pretended. But irony,too, garnishes "My First Protestant," of whose Joe Daly it issaid, "Drink was his trouble and he bore it with great dignity."And here, too, are such personal favorites of O'Connor's as"The Idealist," "The Drunkard," "Legal Aid," and "The Mas-culine Principle."

As previously indicated, O'Connor's first collective volume,The Stories . . . (1952), adds only five to a gathering of pre-viously assembled tales, but those five include "My Da," thestory of a poor boy (eventually a priest) and his drunkenmother with which the author was on publication s.till unsatis-fied, and the wholly delightful "My Oedipus Complex" (O'Con-nor admits in An Only Child that as a boy he "was jealous"

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Colby Library Quarterly 339of his father, which implies a healthy retort to neurotic psychia-trists. Reflecting on this volume and its complement, MoreStories . .., one is reminded of Dryden's conunent on Chaucer,"Here is God's plenty."

More Stories . .. is a parallel book filled with people subtly,but gently and smilingly, observed; and it is noticeable that"pious" is frequent among the descriptive adjectives appliedto the women. The interest generally lies not in startling ornovel situations, but in how the characters conduct themselvesin their human predicaments. O'Connor is conlpletely candidthroughout, never "smart," never given to misjudging by fool-ing himself through sentimental misreading. As usual, he tellshis stories with an air suggestive of personal experience as theirsource. In this he again recalls A. E. Coppard, whose work headmires. More than once he appears to imply that the RomanCatholic religion in its postures runs counter to an honest read-ing of actual human experience: e.g.) in presenting Una's re-flections after coition with a married man in "The Sorcerer'sApprentice." Here, too, in "A Romantic," is to be found oneof his rare descents to sarcasm, in "In a small place like Corkfunerals are frequently less harrowing than separations: onehas no illusion that the dead are enjoying thenlselves in one'sabsence."

More Stories . .., as shown in my tabulation, adds fourteenfresh tales to its reprinted fifteen, and at least nine of theserank with O'Connor's best, with "Unapproved Route" and"Lonely Rock" ("Ladies of the House" in its Harper's print-ing) superlative. The former is a tale of love crossed byfriendship through an unwanted pregnancy. One renlemb,ers itno less surely for such segments as "woman's vanity, the main-spring of her character" - - O'Connor may well have been re-nlembering his mother as he wrote this (se,e An Only Child) and"Rosalind and Kate could have been sisters, they had so littlein common." "Lonely Rock," with its "Women like their ownmystifications, which give them a feeling of power; they dislikeother people's, which they always describe as slyness," is par-ticularly notable for the sensitivity which makes the authorobserve, in J:eporting a tense emotional situation, "I noticed as iffor the first time the billows of wind break over the house."The "lonely rock" appears to be the old mother in this triangle

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340 Colby Library Quarterlyof a husband's open unfaithfulness and a wife's almost in-credible reasonableness.

Among the other good things not previously collected shouldbe instanced "Eternal Triangle" (hilarious account of the in-volvement of a watchman, a prostitute, and a drunk in anabortive Irish "rising" that turns petty tragedy into roaringcomedy), "Masculine Protest" (of a returned runaway and hisunderstanding father), "The Little Mother" (a quietly sardonicmasterpiece concerning the oldest of three wild girls, who be-comes a responsible tyrant to her sisters and father after hermother's death puts her in control), "A Sense of Responsi-bility" (basically the definition of a thoroughly good man:without moralization, almost aMorality), "Counsel for O'edi-pus" (an amazing tragicomedy), "Vanity" (on an aged bishop"shopeless effort to keep a personal secret, though "The essenceof authority consists in keeping your secrets"), "Father andSon" (a tender revelation of the understanding considerationof a pres.ent for a former wife), and even "A Torrent Danmed,"if only for "Moustaches on young men are always a sign ofneuroses," and "He was beginning to discover, as every mandoes sooner or later, that one woman is not enough ... thateven two women are not enough; a man needs one for stability,onle for sympathy, and a third for inspiration."

Domestic Relations, finally, is not O'Connor's most impres-sive volume, though still far beyond the scope of nlost of hiscontemporaries, and memorable for at least two tales - "TheUgly Duckling" (of Nan Ryan, a girl "whose decisions seemedall to have been dictated by some inner torment" and who, afterbreaking two betrothals, ends in a convent; a tale, entitled"That Ryan Woman" in the Saturday Evening Post, containingthe perceptive "No man is ever as anti-feminist as a reallyfenlinine woman"), and "A Salesman's Romance" (a humorousmasterpiece in which a nlan wins a legal case but loses hisfiancee to the opposing lawyer, then finds his experience crystal...lizing into a saleable story).

Half a dozen of the stories here are written in the first per-son. All but one were gathered from the New Yorker, Made-moiselle, the Saturday Evening Post, and Esquire, mostly thefirst. The book title itself suggests something of a conlp'fomise.And here, in "Expectation of Life" (the story which has the

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Colby Library Quarterly 341ugly colloquialism enthuse), w,e find one of O'Connor's, veryfew cliches; in "Fish for Friday," one of his few trivialities.But even so, there are still characters, e.g., Mrs. O~'Brien, in"The Study of History" - "there was something about her highspirits that made her nlore like a regiment than a woman," andone suddenly thinks of a female in Coppard's Handsome Ladyso vast that she could be thought of only as a circumference.

In his preface to The Stories . .. (1952), O'Connor confessesto additional revision of his inclusions, in that volume despitehabitual rewriting over long periods: "some of the stories hadbeen rewritten twenty, thirty, even fifty times," though a few -perfect things like "My Oedipus Complex" and "The BridalNight" (one of his most intensely lyrical) - remain "more, orless what they were when first they came into my head." Yetall this rewriting leaves no impression of viol~ted freshness o,rlamed spontaneity. Witness especially such thoroughly recastmatter as "My First Communion."

But even assiduity is no ultimate explanation of the effectsan artist like O'Connor achieves. Nor are models and "in-fluences." O'Connor accepts Turgenev as his "hero amongwriters," acknowledging indebtednes.s also to other Russians"and to Goethe, Heine, and Whitman. But I think his clearestindebtedness is simply to the good God who gave him his gift,p'art of which is his laughter, and to his own integrity in respect-ing it. His is his own Bill O'Donnell's ("The Mad Lomasneys,")"smile, which seemed to well up from depths of good humourwith life rather than from any immediate contact with others."For O'Connor has the good s,ense to know that ",earnest peoplerarely are fair to themselves" ("Orphans"), which may explainwhy his readings of life are even more casual than RobertFrost's.

In the end, it is perhaps sufficient merely to recognize thatO"Connor is a poet whose keenest lyricism is in his short stories.This is the fact that places him with such men as Coppard(whom he most frequently parallels in my own mind) andJames Stephens, for though he is less buoyantly mercurial thanthe latter, he is ,equally clear-eyed and honest. And that is toimply that he stands with the richest and most refreshing talentsof his age, and to explain how he can stron into and out of themazes of middle- and lower-class Irish experience, aware-

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342 Colby Library Quarterlyand making his readers aware - of all its casual graces andcruelties, always with a curious air of innocence about him.For his subject matter practically always involves the everydaylife of ordinary Irish folk, whether of rural or urban type-ordinary, that is, in the extraordinary way of their kind. Aboutthese people he finds real stories to tell, not merely beguilementsof what now passes for psychological analysis, though he man-ages to expose character in startlingly clear outlines. Yeats, itis recalled, felt that his stories w,ere doing for Ireland whatChekhov's had done for Russia, but I think the intended com-plin1ent underrates O'Connor, who is never guilty of Chekhov'ssometimes clinical approach or near sentimentality.

Be it added that O'Connor's tales are what they should be inlength, true "short stories" for the most part. There is not asign of commercial nlotivation, or yardage, in any. Even whenthe organism demands the breathing space of a novelette, it isnever inflated. And each story is simply, directly, and - mostgenerally - quietly told. The language is without affectation,without dishonesty of overtone; is worthy of both the teller andhis tale, and their burden of humane comprehension, of sym-pathy, of unsentimental poetry.

Honesty is the quality I recognize constantly in ponderingO'Connor, honesty and a genuine sort of wise innocence. Iremember the lad in "Daydreams" who, since it implied pay-ment for chivalry, could not retain his reward from a prostitutewhose 5 he had rescued from a "protector"; and the boy whofelt he could never be sophisticated "because always beyond theworld of appearances I would see only eternity watching" ("TheMan of the World"); and that other youth ("The Face of Evil")who reflects, "Not to become involved, to remain detached-that was the great thing; to care for things and for people, yetnot to care for them so much that your happiness became de-pendent on them" - always assured that the boy is the youngO'Connor hinlself, since his work reflects just such fineness andphilosophy. Then I remember the admitted boy of An OnlyChild who once gave his only Christmas toy, an engine, to theJesus of a convent crib because he knew the loneliness of agiftless child - and realize that something of this kindlinessand sympathy conditions the tales of that boy grown, one whowith Robert Gibbings may well prove Cork's proudest claimto literary distinction.

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Colby QuarterlyDecember 1963

A Consideration of Frank O'Connor's Short StoriesGeorge Brandon SaulRecommended Citation

review of the short stories -frank o'connor

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