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The story of Edwin O'Connor's forgotten life A FAMILY OF HIS OWN: A LIFE OF EDWIN O'CONNOR By Charles Duffy Catholic University of America Press, 376 pages, $49.95
If you know an Irish American named James Michael, there's a good chance he's named after the legendary yet infamous, irrepressible James Michael Curley, who dominated Boston politics during the first half of the 20th century Curley, who served several terms as Boston's mayor, was the ostensible model for Frank Skeffington in Edwin O'Connor's novel The Last Hurrah. Many recall the story of the Irish American mayor's final campaign, opposed most notably by the city's powerful cardinal, and the film featuring Spencer Tracy The phrase last hurrah, moreover, retains a permanent place in our lexicon. Sadly, the book's author, O'Connor, has been largely forgotten. That will change perhaps with the publication of Charles Duffy's sympathetic, fair, yet flawed biography, A Family of His Own: A Life of Edwin O'Connor.
This is the English professor from Providence College's first book and the first O'Connor biography. As Duffy portrays him, O'Connor was witty, affable and possessed a wide circle of friends. Also prone to melancholy, he zealously protected his privacy. Absent anything such as letters and jour- nal entries and the dramatic storylines that enliven writers' biographies - substance abuse, mental illness, troubled marriages -...