| Conversations with Edna O'Brien Contributor(s): Kersnowski, Alice Hughes (Editor) |
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ISBN: 1496820150 ISBN-13: 9781496820150 Publisher: University Press of Mississippi OUR PRICE: $29.70 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: December 2018 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh - Literary Criticism | Women Authors - Biography & Autobiography | Literary Figures |
| Dewey: B |
| LCCN: 2013018593 |
| Series: Literary Conversations |
| Physical Information: 0.3" H x 6" W x 9" (0.44 lbs) 128 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - British Isles - Sex & Gender - Feminine |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: "Who's afraid of Edna O'Brien?" asks an early interviewer in Conversations with Edna O'Brien. With over fifty years of published novels, biographies, plays, telecasts, short stories, and more, it is hard not to be intimidated by her. An acclaimed and controversial Irish writer, O'Brien (b. 1930) saw her early works, starting in 1960 with The Country Girls, banned and burned in Ireland, but often read in secret. Her contemporary work continues to spark debates on the rigors and challenges of Catholic conservatism and the struggle for women to make a place for themselves in the world without anxiety and guilt. The raw nerve of emotion at the heart of her lyrical prose provokes readers, challenges politicians, and proves difficult for critics to place her. In these interviews, O'Brien finds her own critical voice and moves interviewers away from a focus on her life as the "once infamous Edna" toward a focus on her works. Parallels between Edna O'Brien and her literary muse and mentor, James Joyce, are often cited in interviews such as Philip Roth's description of The Country Girls as a "rural Dubliners." While Joyce is the centerpiece of O'Brien's literary pantheon, allusions to writers such as Shakespeare, Chekhov, Beckett, and Woolf become a medium for her critical voice. Conversations with contemporary writers Philip Roth and Glenn Patterson reveal Edna O'Brien's sense of herself as a contemporary writer. The final interview included here, with BBC personality William Crawley at Queen's University Belfast, is a synthesis of her acceptance and fame as an Irish writer and an Irish woman and an affirmation of her literary authority. |
Contributor Bio(s): Kersnowski, Alice Hughes: - Alice Hughes Kersnowski is professor of English at St. Mary's University. She is editor of Conversations with Edna O'Brien and coeditor (with Frank L. Kersnowski) of Conversations with Henry Miller, both published by University Press of Mississippi. |