My Father's Son

Autobiography of Frank O'Connor #2

by Frank O'Connor

In this memoir Frank O'Connor recreates his young manhood - the beginning of his life as a writer and his relationship to Yeats and the other leading figures of Ireland's great literary renaissance.

Genres: Memoir

235 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1968

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

[Leslie]

I liked the first part of his autobiography better.
This one is amazing due to the number of literary figures he was friends with.
And at a time when men knew how to be friends with each other. It was okay to say, "I loved him." without people wondering... hmmmm
He knew Yeats! That is wonderful although his portrait of the poet is not especially shining.
He really discusses in depth his involvement with the Abbey Theater - and all the mistakes that were made during that time.
The book got amazingly boring (unless you really care about the history of Irish theater pre-WWII.

[Paul Wilner]

Quiet, moving, beautifully written and emotionally honest account of growing up before and during The Troubles, political and familial.

[Susan]

My Father's Son, the second volume of Frank O'Connor's autobiography, begins with O'Connor barely able to make ends meet and still mailing his laundry home for his mother to do (the cheapest alternative, she told him). He then moves on to his career as a beginning literary man in Dublin and his friendships with A.E., W.B. Yeats and others. O'Connor is a wonderful and insightful storyteller. His stories about Yeats, A.E. and the Abbey Theater make this book highly recommended for anyone interested in Irish literature and poetry.

[Lancelot Brun]

Je me suis ennuyé de bout en bout. J’ai peut être lu 20 pages avec intérêt, tout au plus. Cela vient sûrement du fait que je n’y connais rien à la littérature irlandaise, et que le livre fait constamment référence à cette dite littérature. En tout cas, ce n’était pas fait pour moi