January 2, 2009
Richard Yates
Every young writer wants to create The Great American Novel. With Revolutionary Road, Richard Yates did, and the upcoming movie will bring much-deserved attention to Yates, whose work has not received the general acclaim it should. Along with Revolutionary Road, Yates also wrote an absolutely brilliant and heartbreaking collection of stories, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness. You can read an excellent primer of Yates' life and work here. There's also a modest but nicely assembled tribute site to Yates here.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:34 PM
February 23, 2008
Frank O'Connor
One of the great things about the Internet is that, very often, if you just happen to think of something, you can then go out and find it. The other day I was thinking about the great Irish short story writer Frank O'Connor, and, sure and begorrah, there was one of my favorite stories of his, "First Confession", and a Paris Review interview (PDF file). (Note that the typesetting on the short story is a little off, but it still reads well.)
Somehow, I didn't discover O'Connor until graduate school. By then I considered myself a pretty serious student of the short story, and I soon realized that O'Connor had created many of the best ones, including "First Confession," but also including "My Oedipus Complex." Then my advisor recommended O'Connor's book on the craft of short stories, The Lonely Voice, and I was hooked. By that point in graduate school I was overwhelmed with books on the craft of writing. Along with maybe two or three others, I still pick up and read The Lonely Voice when I need a little wisdom.
Wikipedia has an article about O'Connor, but it is pretty thin. There's a reprint of a book chapter here--a nice introduction to the 1998 book, Frank O'Connor: New Perspectives. If you like these stories, I recommend his Collected Stories.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:12 AM
