Geoffrey O'Brien

This article is about the New York poet and critic. For the California poet and academic, see Geoffrey G. O'Brien.

Geoffrey O'Brien. Courtesy BookForum.

Geoffrey O'Brien (born 1948) is an American poet, editor, film and literary critic, translator, and cultural historian.

Life

O'Brien was born in New York City and grew up in Great Neck, Long Island. His mother, Margaret (Owens) O'Brien, was a theater actress, and his father was Joseph O'Brien, one of the original WMCA Good Guys.

O'Brien began publishing poetry and criticism in the 1960s. He has been a contributor to Artforum, Film Comment, the New York Times and the New York Times Book Review, Village Voice, New Republic, Bookforum, and, especially, to the New York Review of Books. He has also been published in numerous other publications, including Filmmaker, American Heritage, The Armchair Detective, Bomb, Boston Globe, Fence, GQ, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Men’s Vogue, Mother Jones, The Nation, Newsday, and Slate, and has contributed many essays for liner notes for The Criterion Collection. In addition, his work has been included in numerous anthologies.

He has been an editor of The Reader's Catalog (1987–1991), a faculty member of The Writing Program at The New School, a Contributing Editor at Open City, and a member of the Selection Committee for The New York Film Festival in 2003.

In 1992, he joined the staff of the Library of America as executive editor, becoming editor-in-chief in 1998. He served as editor-in-chief until his retirement in 2017.

Writing

Wikipedia: "Erudite but playful, O’Brien’s style as an essayist and reviewer is unique. Highly associative in approach, his dense, highbrow prose is often brought to bear upon the worlds of low-budget exploitation films and pulp fiction as well as more upscale and respectable venues of the cinematic, theater, literary, or popular music worlds. These wide-ranging pieces have been described as idiosyncratic 'prose poems'  and tend towards partial autobiography in which he recollects youthful experiences as reader or viewer which — although they may or may not have been shared by his own readership — can lead deeply into unexpected aspects of the material at hand."

Recognition

• 1988 Whiting Foundation Writing Award.
• 1994 Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award (Criticism)
• 1998 Fellow, New York Institute for the Humanities
• 1999 Fellow, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
• 2002 Fellow, Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio Study Center, Italy
• 2011 Fellow, Bosch Public Policy Prize, American Academy in Berlin

Publications

Poetry

• Maciste in the Valley of the Pagans. New York: Three Bears, 1983.
• A Book of Maps. New York: Red Dust, 1989. ISBN 978-0-87376-061-4
• The Hudson Mystery. New York: Red Dust, 1994. ISBN 978-0-87376-078-2
• Floating City: Selected poems, 1978-1995. Jersey City, NJ: Talisman House, 1996.
• A View of Buildings and Water. Applecross, WA: Salt Publishing|Salt]], 2002.
• Red Sky Cafe. Cambridge, UK: Salt, 2005. ISBN 978-1-84471-071-3

Non-fiction

History

• The Fall of the House of Walworth: Madness and murder in gilded age America, Holt, 2010.

Reviews and criticism

• Hardboiled America: The lurid years of paperbacks. New York, Toronto, & London: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1981
• revised & expanded as Hardboiled America: Lurid paperbacks and the masters of noir. New York: Da Capo Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0-306-80773-2
• Dream Time: Chapters from the sixties. New York: Viking, 1988; London: Secker & Warburg, 1988; Washington, DC: Counterpoint Press, 2002. ISBN 978-1-58243-191-8
• The Phantom Empire: Movies in the mind of the twentieth century. New York: Norton, 1993. ISBN 978-0-393-31296-6
• The Times Square Story. New York: Norton, 1998. ISBN 978-0-393-31846-3
• Bardic Deadlines: Reviewing poetry, 1984–1995. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1998.
• The Browser's Ecstasy: A meditation on reading. Washinton, DC: Counterpoint, 2000. ISBN 978-1-58243-245-8
• Doing It: Five performing arts (one of 5 authors). New York: New York Review of Books, 2001.
• Castaways of the Image Planet: Movies, show business, public spectacle. Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 2002. ISBN 978-1-58243-190-1
• Sonata for Jukebox: Pop music, memory, and the imagined life. New York: Counterpoint, 2004. ISBN 978-1-58243-329-5
  • also published as Sonata for Jukebox: An autobiography of my ears. New York: Counterpoint, 2004. ISBN 978-1-58243-329-5
• Stolen Glimpses, Captive Shadows: Writing on film, 2002-2012. Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2013.

Editor

• The Reader's Catalog: An annotated listing of the 40,000 best books in print in over 300 categories (edited with Stephen Wasserstein; Helen Morris). New York: Reader's Catalog, 1989; 2nd Edition, 1997.
• Bartlett's Poems for Occasions. New York: Little, Brown, 2004. ISBN 978-0-316-73501-8

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of U.S. poets
• List of literary critics

External links

Poems

• "Six Political Criteria" in Gulf Coast: A journal of literature and fine arts (24.1)

Books

• Geoffrey O'Brien at Amazon.com

About

• "Geoffrey O’Brien" by Luc Sante, BOMB 65/Fall 1998