Portraying creator of landmark 'Last Hurrah'

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A FAMILY OF HIS OWN: A LIFE OF EDWIN O'CONNOR.

By Charles F. Duffy

Catholic University of America Press, $49.95, 368 pages, illus.

REVIEWED BY BRUCE ALLEN

Edwin O'Connor (1918-68) will be remembered less for a small, though engaging body of work than as the author of a novel whose title added a phrase into our language. "The Last Hurrah" (1956) is, if not the definitive fictional treatment of Irish-American politics, at the very least a jauntily exuberant portrayal of a uniquely resourceful and charismatic rogue.

O'Connor's Frank Skeffington, inspired (as the novelist never quite admitted) by Boston's infamous serial mayor, James Michael Curley, is a vivid amalgam of Machiavellian cunning and sentimental blarney that ought to have provided Spencer Tracy with one of his juiciest film roles. Alas, that didn't happen: Tracy's sluggish performance and director John Ford's lethargic 1958 film version are uncharacteristic duds.

This first biography of Skeffington's creator, the work of a professor of English at Providence College, is a warmly affectionate, though not uncritical look at a commercially successful novelist whose unfortunately brief career and life ended long before he might have achieved his declared ambition: to become "the Faulkner of the Irish in America."

Born in Woonsocket, Rhode Island in 1918, "Sonny" (a nickname that lingered into his middle age) grew up as the eldest son of a second-generation Irish-American family made "comfortable" by his father's successful medical practice. Edwin was an excellent student, with a vagrant mischievous streak, who would mature impressively at Notre Dame (1935-39), where he came under the literary influence of energetic English professor (and self-destructive alcoholic) Frank O'Malley, and performed as an announcer for the college's radio station.