You don't hear much about James T. Farrell anymore
The novelist and short-story writer known for his
realistic portraits of the lower-middle-class
Irish in Chicago, and best remembered
for his Studs Lonigan trilogy
A consummate realist in viewpoint and method-
who now will ever read the Danny O'Neill Pentalogy
or the Bernard Carr trilogy
He wrote about people who were
victims of injurious social circumstances
and of their own spiritual and intellectual shortcomings
He depicted human frustration, ignorance, cruelty
violence, and moral degeneration
with a sober, relentless veracity
And he determined that he would write
"regardless of the consequences."
"I have a lot of work to do," he said.
"I write 20 hours at a stretch;
I hate sleep and I fight it."
His sentences follow one another
like bricks in a well made row.
His prose is simple and direct,
powerful and blunt.
His courageous stance against Stalinism
took a toll on his literary reputation,
and later, as the naturalism he employed in
his best fiction slipped out of vogue,
his work fell into neglect and his star dimmed.
Jul 8, 2025
Jul 8, 2025 at 4:45 AM UTC
You don't hear much about James T. Farrell anymore
The novelist and short-story writer known for his
realistic portraits of the lower-middle-class
Irish in Chicago, and best remembered
for his Studs Lonigan trilogy
A consummate realist in viewpoint and method-
who now will ever read the Danny O'Neill Pentalogy
or the Bernard Carr trilogy
He wrote about people who were
victims of injurious social circumstances
and of their own spiritual and intellectual shortcomings
He depicted human frustration, ignorance, cruelty
violence, and moral degeneration
with a sober, relentless veracity
And he determined that he would write
"regardless of the consequences."
"I have a lot of work to do," he said.
"I write 20 hours at a stretch;
I hate sleep and I fight it."
His sentences follow one another
like bricks in a well made row.
His prose is simple and direct,
powerful and blunt.
His courageous stance against Stalinism
took a toll on his literary reputation,
and later, as the naturalism he employed in
his best fiction slipped out of vogue,
his work fell into neglect and his star dimmed.
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