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Old Morals, Small Continents, Darker Times, 1971
O'Connor, Philip F.
Elliott, George P., 1918-1980
1971
University of Iowa Press
Iowa City, Iowa
With a variety of themes and techniques, Philip F. O'Connor's stories progress in tone from hopeful to nearly hopeless in subjects from communal to private in milieu from personal to cosmic. The early stories, set in San Francisco, suggest Mr. O'Connor's Irish-American boyhood. Later stories sharply evoke the toughening experiences of adolescence. Finally, the stories enter an adult world where characters struggle desperately, often comically, in situations that are, at best, thinly hopeful. From the opening stories, which display a more traditional realistic mode, the fiction moves into lyricism and other experimental prose, with a striking effect on the reader's consciousness. Mr. O'Connor skillfully uses language to activate the senses and to draw one into the characters. His style alters with the demands of each story. “Each story has its own reasons and its own music,” the author says. The origins of his short stories are not ideas, but fascination with characters. “What people do is what interests me, and fiction is about that.”
Iowa School of Letters Award for Short Fiction: 1971 Judge: George P. Elliott
English
Irish Americans
United States -- California -- San Francisco
The Iowa Short Fiction Award & John Simmons Short Fiction Award
https://www.uipress.uiowa.edu/search/browse-series/browse-ISFA.htm
Iowa Short Fiction Award
186 pages
Digitized.
Copyright © 1971 by Philip F. O'Connor. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Contact the University of Iowa Press at https://www.uipress.uiowa.edu
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