Corkers

By R.Z. Sheppard

COLLECTED STORIES by Frank O'Connor Knopf; 702 pages; $20

Frank O'Connor (1903-1966) once described the short story as "the literature of submerged population groups." It is a regional definition with an old-fashioned thump of authenticity. O'Connor, born Michael O'Donovan in Cork, was no innovator. His stories lowered the reader directly into the weedy, half-lit world of Irish town life.

O'Connor's literary roots owed much to small-town gossip. His father was a laborer who measured his days in pints. But the future writer had a strong mother figure in Minnie O'Donovan. She put bread on the table by working as a domestic, and acquired a taste for the classics by reading her employers' books. Minnie passed the love of Shakespeare and poetry on to her son. He later returned the love by publishing under her maiden name.

O'Connor, too, was largely self-taught. In 1923 he filled the gaps in his education while imprisoned for republican activities during the Irish civil war. Nationalism brought him in contact with other young Irish writers like Sean O'Faolain and Liam O'Flaherty. In 1931 O'Connor made his name with a book of stories entitled Guests of the Nation.

The title story of that collection leads off this regathering of many of the author's best-known works, including The Long Road to Ummera, The Bridal Night and My Oedipus Complex, one of the most amusing pieces ever written about a small boy's anger over having to share his mother with her husband. Guests of the Nation suppresses anger with a disillusionment that teeters on mawkishness. Belcher and Awkins are two British soldiers who have become rather friendly with their Irish nationalist captors. The order to execute the pair is carried out with misgivings, especially since the condemned men remain amiable to the end. It is not quite believable, and the use of dialect is stagy. Yet the story retains power because O'Connor's honesty as an observer survives his most melodramatic techniques.

The author's "submerged population" swims through an eternity of Irish religion, poverty and social riches. Attempts to show a bit of spunk often lead to trouble and comedy. The tumultuous courtship in The Masculine Principle is as psychologically complex as a Henry James relationship, though more lively. Another character, who forgets that his wife is having a baby and buys fish instead of fetching a doctor, is a man to remember.

It is a horseplaying priest, however, who best expresses O'Connor's unhappy but indissoluble Gaelic family. "O Lord," he prays, "a man gives up the whole world for You ... his friends and his job, and goes off to a bare mountain where he can't even tell his troubles to the man alongside him; and still he keeps something back, some little thing to remind him of what he gave up. With me 'twas the horses and with this man 'twas the sup of beer, and I dare say there are fellows inside who have a bit of a girl's hair hidden somewhere they can go and look at it now and again. I suppose we all have our little hiding-hole if the truth was known, but as small as it is, the whole world is in it, and bit by bit it grows on us again till the day You find us out." Frank O'Connor always got there between the hiding and the finding. --ByR.Z. Sheppard

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