Quote of the Day (O’Connor)

“It was early in August when Frank Skeffington decided--or rather, announced his decision, which actually had been arrived at some months before--to run for re-election as mayor of the city.”—Edwin O’Connor, The Last Hurrah (1956)

(The author of one of the greatest—no, make that two of the greatest—American political novels was born in Providence, R.I., on this date in 1918. He died in 1968, only 49 years old, and I can’t help lamenting how much the literary world lost with his untimely passing. His friends lost something more: the infinite pleasure of his company. As you might guess from the dialogue of his novels, he had a great ear for dialogue who made listeners chuckle with his accomplished mimicry. Reminiscenses from friends such as Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Alfred Kazin were invariably warm and fond.

I wrote that O’Connor wrote two great political novels. The second is now forgotten when it isn’t being confused with a later product of another medium: All in the Family (1966). Like The Last Hurrah, it was viewed as a roman a clef—in this case, since it dealt with a rich Irish-American patriarch, a charismatic politician son, and a second son who served as campaign manager, as a commentary on the Kennedys. The controversy might have initially spurred sales, but it probably lessened its critical reputation—unfairly, I think, since the events of the book, by their conclusion, diverge considerably from that of the famous Massachusetts clan.

If you want another side of O’Connor, I urge you to hunt down The Edge of Sadness (1961). If it was All in the Family’s lot to be confused with a sitcom, it was this other novel’s misfortune to be overshadowed by a catchphrase spawned by another novel from the same year—Catch-22, by Joseph Heller. O’Connor beat Heller for the Pulitzer Prize—a move widely interpreted as O'Connor's consolation prize for being snubbed for The Last Hurrah.

The Edge of Sadness features an often-hilarious protagonist in Charlie Carmody, but the character who by the end of the book stands out the most is the narrator, Fr. Hugh Kennedy, a burnt-out case and recovering alcoholic. His assignment to a decaying inner-city parish looks like a dead end, since he has little or no rapport with his immigrant flock. Bit by bit, however—like most of us—Fr. Kennedy receives grace in unexpected ways. As with The Last Hurrah, O’Connor has caught perfectly an institution in transition. You won’t find a heroic priest out of the Bing Crosby-Spencer Tracy-Gregory Peck mode of the 1930s and 1940s, but you’ll certainly find one believable and human--one who, like St Paul, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation," might serve as an appropriate humble stand-in for Christ in a post-scandal clerical world.)