Jason Koski/University Photography

Author Edna O'Brien talks with Michael Koch, senior editor of Epic Literary Magazine, before her talk Oct. 28 in Goldwin Smith Hall.

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Edna O'Brien is tall, with kinetic hair and a warm, shy smile. Born in 1930 and raised in an Irish convent, she appears younger than her years. Humble but regal, she is accessible but a bit otherworldly. "I lead a secluded life," she said at an Oct. 28 colloquium in Goldwin Smith Hall. "I live alone. I cut myself off from the world."

With 20-plus books and several produced plays to her credit, O'Brien's self-discipline has proved a boon to Anglo-Irish letters.

O'Brien's visit to Cornell was sponsored by the Eamon McEneaney Memorial Reading Fund through the Program in Creative Writing. McEneaney, a star Cornell lacrosse player and poet, died in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. O'Brien was introduced by another famous writer, Alison Lurie, the F.J. Whiton Professor of American Literature Emerita.

Occasionally, during what she called an "informal conversation," O'Brien quoted from memory her work and that of James Joyce and William Faulkner, her literary heroes. She told of the Irish public's outrage over the sexually explicit "Ulysses" at its publication in 1933 and the cultural backlash she experienced when Ireland banned her first books, "The Country Girls Trilogy" (1960-64), for sexual content. O'Brien is still questioned about the distant controversy. "You get branded like an animal," she said. "Let's move on -- that was 40 years ago!"

The past is the subject of O'Brien's current novel in progress, "Twilight," "provoked" by a photo of her mother. "A woman of adventure," her mother left Ireland in 1914 to work as a maid in Brooklyn for eight years before returning home, where she hastily married O'Brien's father. Because she was not "a woman of disclosure," O'Brien has recently gone to Coney Island in search of "divine details" that will enable her to reimagine her mother's early life. "She hated that I was a writer," considering it a shameful occupation. "She said, 'A paper never refused ink.'"

In 1954 O'Brien moved to London with her husband and two children. She has lived there since. T.S. Eliot's "Introducing James Joyce" set her on the literary path. O'Brien said that a close, ongoing connection to good writing is essential to her work. "I love great books. I love re-reading, because that's our education."

Asked about the state of current U.S. and British poetry, O'Brien offered: "Some of it is not utterly remarkable. There's too much emphasis on being published or known rather than doing the work." Discussing popular fiction, she said, "There's no excitement or reverence for the language. That's a great pity and a great irritation. There are different standards between flinging down one's experience and literature." Ultimately, O'Brien believes, readers look for depth of feeling.

Asked if the novel is dying, O'Brien said, "There's a thin thread of survival. What may be dying is appreciation for luminous prose. The need to write is very strong, the thing that propels one to write a book. Kafka regarded writing as a criminal act. Flaubert's mother said her son's love of language, of putting sentences together, had hardened his heart.

"Just do it."