SOURCE: “Frank O'Connor and the Modern Irish Short Story,” in Modern Fiction Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1, Spring, 1982, pp. 53-67.

In the following excerpt, Peterson compares and contrasts the short fiction of Frank O'Connor with the works of Mary Lavin and James Joyce.

Frank O'Connor, one of Ireland's most prolific and successful short-story writers, has long been a major influence, through his critical writings, on efforts to describe and judge the modern Irish short story. In The Lonely Voice, his most influential book of criticism, O'Connor defines the short story “as a private art intended to satisfy the standards of the individual, solitary, critical reader.”¹ Because of its solitary nature, the short story inevitably draws its subject matter, its characters and situations, from an isolated or “submerged population.” The reason, according to O'Connor, that Russia, America, and especially Ireland have produced so many great short-story writers is that each country...