Abstract
Edwin O’Connor’s protagonists were not children as Betty Smith’s, Edward McSorley’s and Mary Doyle Curran’s were, and they tended to have already reached middle class, as members of the clergy, politicians, newspapermen, and businessmen. O’Connor writes slightly later than the other novelists in this study, and so the process of becoming American has largely been completed. The memory of poverty was not far in the past, however. Characters such as Frank Skeffington in The Last Hurrah (1956) remember times of poverty with some fondness, as they were times of talk, and times of ethnic solidarity, with the Irish immigrant generation figuring prominently into their world. This chapter examines the often-ignored private side of The Last Hurrah, which is generally discussed as an end to a certain type of Irish American politics, rather than an entire way of life. It looks at the book as recording the end of family and communal relationships as they once were as well.
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Notes
- 1.
Charles Fanning, The Irish Voice in America, 324.
- 2.
Edwin O’Connor, Edge of Sadness, 372.
- 3.
O’Connor, Edge of Sadness, 375.
- 4.
Fanning, 316.
- 5.
James Silas Rogers, “Edwin O’Connor’s Language of Grace,” 109.
- 6.
David Dillon, “Priests and Politicians: The Fiction of Edwin O’Connor,” 74–76.
- 7.
Dillon, “Priests and Politicians,” 73 (my emphasis).
- 8.
Hugh Rank, Edwin O’Connor, 58.
- 9.
Edwin O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 325.
- 10.
Charles Duffy, A Family of His Own, 168–69.
- 11.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 248.
- 12.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 249.
- 13.
Maurice Halbwachs, The Social Frameworks of Memory, 38.
- 14.
Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 41.
- 15.
Kelleher, John V. “Edwin O’Connor and the Irish American Process,” 141.
- 16.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 196.
- 17.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 199.
- 18.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 197.
- 19.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 301.
- 20.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 155.
- 21.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 336.
- 22.
Kelleher, “Edwin O’Connor and the Irish American Process,” 140–41.
- 23.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 65.
- 24.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 301.
- 25.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 107.
- 26.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 65.
- 27.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 158–59.
- 28.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 155.
- 29.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 108.
- 30.
In “Edwin O’Connor and the Irish American Process,” Kelleher says O’Connor was not sentimental about the past. Rather, he was “impatient with sentimental, unhistorical praise of the good old days” and saw “that the human mixture in every age and clime had about the same general proportions of decent men and rogues and fools,” but he did see the relative goodness in the society both men “had known as boys,” 140. What this means in The Last Hurrah is that the next generation after Frank’s is not all bad. There are a few bright lights who respect the traditions of the past and are eager to learn more about them.
- 31.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 54.
- 32.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 56.
- 33.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 57.
- 34.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 141.
- 35.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 177.
- 36.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 177.
- 37.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 178.
- 38.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 177.
- 39.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 177.
- 40.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 176.
- 41.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 176.
- 42.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 175.
- 43.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 175.
- 44.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 174.
- 45.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 314.
- 46.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 246.
- 47.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 246.
- 48.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 249.
- 49.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 300.
- 50.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 96.
- 51.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 300.
- 52.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 126.
- 53.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 168.
- 54.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 168.
- 55.
O’Connor, The Last Hurrah, 322.
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O’Leary Anish, B. (2021). The Last Hurrah for a Way of Life: The Private Side of Edwin O’Connor’s Famous Novel. In: Irish American Fiction from World War II to JFK. New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83194-3_8
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