= James_T._Farrell =

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= James_T._Farrell =
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Introduction
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James Thomas Farrell (February 27, 1904 - August 22, 1979) was an
American novelist, short story writer and poet.

He is most remembered for the 'Studs Lonigan' trilogy, which was made
into a film in 1960 and a television series in 1979.

Biography
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Farrell was born in Chicago, to a large Irish-American family which
included siblings Earl, Joseph, Helen, John and Mary. In addition,
there were several other siblings who died during childbirth, as well
as one who died from the 1918 flu pandemic. His father was a teamster,
and his mother a domestic servant. His parents were too poor to
provide for him, and he went to live with his grandparents when he was
three years old.

Farrell attended Mt. Carmel High School, then known as St. Cyril, with
future Egyptologist Richard Anthony Parker. He then later attended the
University of Chicago.

He began writing when he was 21 years old. A novelist, journalist,
and short story writer, he was known for his realistic descriptions of
the working class South Side Irish, especially in the novels about the
character Studs Lonigan. Farrell based his writing on his own
experiences, particularly those that he included in his celebrated
"Danny O'Neill Pentalogy" series of five novels.

Among the writers who acknowledged Farrell as an inspiration was
Norman Mailer:

Politics
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Farrell was also active in Trotskyist politics and joined the
Socialist Workers Party (SWP). He came to agree with Albert Goldman
and Felix Morrows' criticism of the SWP and Fourth International
management. With Goldman, he ended his participation with the group in
1946 to join the Workers' Party.

Within the Workers' Party, Goldman and Farrell worked closely. In
1948, they developed criticisms of its policies, claiming that the
party should endorse the Marshall Plan and also Norman Thomas'
presidential candidacy. Having come to believe that only capitalism
could defeat Stalinism, they left to join the Socialist Party of
America. During the late 1960s, disenchanted with the political
"center", while impressed with the SWP's involvement in the Civil
Rights and US anti-Vietnam War movements, he reestablished
communication with his former comrades of two decades earlier. Farrell
attended one or more SWP-sponsored Militant Forum events (probably in
NYC), but never rejoined the Trotskyist movement.

In 1976, he became a founding member of the neoconservative Committee
on the Present Danger.

Marriages
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Farrell was married three times, to two women. He married his first
wife Dorothy Butler in 1931. After divorcing her, in 1941 he married
stage actress Hortense Alden, with whom he had two sons, Kevin and
John. They divorced in 1955, and later that year he remarried Dorothy
Farrell. They separated again in 1958 but remained legally married
until his death. She died in 2005.

Legacy
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According to William McCann:
:No writer has described a specific area of American society so
thoroughly and comprehensively as Farrell did in the seven novels of
Studs Lonigan and Danny O'Neill (1932-43). A consummate realist in
viewpoint and method, he turned repeatedly in his fiction to the
subject he knew best, the Irish Catholic neighborhood of Chicago's
South Side. Drawing on lacerating personal experience, Farrell 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
sober, relentless veracity....Despite his Marxist leanings, Farrell's
fiction is not that of a reformer, or a doctrinaire theorist, but
rather the patient humorless representation of ways of life and states
of mind he abhors....Farrell’s place in American letters, however, as
certainly the most industrious and probably the most powerful writer
in the naturalistic tradition stemming from Frank Norris and Dreiser,
was solidly established with the Lonegan--O'Neil series....His later
novels are lamented and ignored.

The 'Studs Lonigan' trilogy was voted number 29 on the Modern
Library's list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.

On the 100th anniversary of Farrell's birth, Norman Mailer was a
panelist at the New York Public Library's "James T. Farrell Centenary
Celebration" on February 25, 2004 along with Pete Hamill, Arthur M.
Schlesinger, Jr. and moderator Donald Yannella. They discussed
Farrell's life and legacy.

In 1973, Farrell was awarded the St. Louis Literary Award from the
Saint Louis University Library Associates. In 2012, he was inducted
into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.

Studs Terkel, the Chicago-based historian, took the name "Studs" from
Farrell's famous character Studs Lonigan.

Novels
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Studs Lonigan trilogy
* 'Young Lonigan' (1932)
* 'The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan' (1934)
* 'Judgment Day' (1935)

Danny O'Neill pentalogy
* 'A World I Never Made' (1936)
* 'No Star Is Lost' (1938)
* 'Father and Son' (1940)
* 'My Days of Anger' (1943)
* 'The Face of Time' (1953)

Bernard Carr trilogy
* 'Bernard Clare' (1946)
* 'The Road Between' (1949)
* 'Yet Other Waters' (1952)

Other novels
* 'Gas-House McGinty' (1933)
* 'Ellen Rogers' (1941)
* 'This Man and This Woman' (1951)
* 'Boarding House Blues' (1961)
* 'The Silence of History' (1963)
* 'What Time Collects' (1964)
* 'Lonely for the Future' (1966)
* 'New Year's Eve/1929' (1967)
* 'A Brand New Life' (1968)
* 'Invisible Swords' (1971)
* 'The Dunne Family' (1976)
* 'The Death of Nora Ryan' (1978)
* 'Sam Holman' (1994)
* 'Dreaming Baseball' (2007)

Short fiction
===============
* 'Calico Shoes and Other Stories' (1934)
* 'Guillotine Party and Other Stories' (1935)
* 'Can All This Grandeur Perish? and Other Stories' (1937)
* '$1000 a Week and Other Stories' (1942)
* 'To Whom It May Concern and Other Stories' (1944)
* 'When Boyhood Dreams Come True and Other Stories' (1946)
* 'The Life Adventurous and Other Stories' (1947)
* 'An American Dream Girl and Other Stories' (1950)
* 'French Girls Are Vicious and Other Stories' (1955)
* 'An Omnibus of Short Stories' (1956)
* 'A Dangerous Woman and Other Stories' (1957)
* 'Side Street and Other Stories' (1961)
* 'Sound of a City' (1962)
* 'Childhood Is Not Forever' (1969)
* 'Judith and Other Stories' (1973)
* 'Olive and Mary Anne: Five Tales' (1977)
* 'Eight Short, Short Stories' (1981)

Other books
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* 'A Note on Literary Criticism' (1936)
* 'The League of Frightened Philistines and Other Papers' (1945)
* 'Literature and Morality' (1947)
* 'Truth and Myth About America' (1949)
* 'The Name Is Fogarty: Private Papers on Public Matters' (1950)
* 'Reflections at Fifty and Other Essays' (1954)
* 'My Baseball Diary' (1957)
* 'It Has Come To Pass' (1958)
* 'Selected Essays' (1964)
* 'The Collected Poems of James T. Farrell' (1965)
* 'When Time Was Born' (1966)
* 'Literary Essays 1954-1974' (1976)
* 'Hearing Out James T. Farrell: Selected Lectures' (1997)

Further reading
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* Douglas, Ann. "Studs Lonigan and the Failure of History in Mass
Society: A Study in Claustrophobia." 'American Quarterly' 29.5 (1977):
487-505 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2712570 online].
* Ebest, Ron. "The Irish Catholic Schooling of James T. Farrell,
1914-23." 'Éire-Ireland' 30.4 (1995): 18-32
[https://muse.jhu.edu/article/666849/summary excerpt].
* Fanning, Charles, and Ellen Skerrett. "James T. Farrell and
Washington Park: The Novel as Social History." 'Chicago History' 8
(1979): 80-91.
* Hricko, Mary. 'The Genesis of the Chicago Renaissance: Theodore
Dreiser, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and James T. Farrell'
(Routledge, 2013).
*
* Salzman, Jack. "James T. Farrell: An Essay in Bibliography."
'Resources for American Literary Study' 6.2 (1976): 131-163
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/26365838 online].
*
* Shiffman, Daniel. "Ethnic Competitors in Studs Lonigan." 'Melus'
24.3 (1999): 67-79.

Primary sources
=================
* Farrell, James T. "Literature and ideology." 'College English' 3.7
(1942): 611-623 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/371159 online].
* Flynn, Dennis, Jack Salzman, and James T. Farrell. "An Interview
with James T. Farrell." 'Twentieth Century Literature' 22.1 (1976):
1-10. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/441036 online]

External links
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* [http://mms.newberry.org/xml/xml_files/Farrell.xml The James T.
Farrell Papers] at The Newberry Library
* [http://mms.newberry.org/xml/xml_files/FarrellPaturis.xml The James
T. Farrell-Cleo Paturis Papers] at The Newberry Library
* [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1487 James
T. Farrell], 'The Literary Encyclopedia'
* [http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/farrell.html
"Revolutionary Novelist in Crisis"], from 'The New York Intellectuals'
by Alan Wald
* "Blanshard and the Catholics,"
[https://www.commentary.org/articles/james-farrell/the-irish-and-catholic-power-by-paul-blanshard/
October 1954]
* [http://www.marxistsfr.org/history/etol/writers/farrell/index.htm
Writers: James T. Farrell], 'Encyclopedia of Trotskyists Online'
* [http://www.bookrags.com/James_T._Farrell James T. Farrell Biography
Summary], 'BookRags'
*
[https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/findingaids/view.php?eadid=ICU.SPCL.FARRELL
Guide to the James T. Farrell Papers 1930-1948] at the
[https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/scrc/ University of Chicago Special
Collections Research Center]
*

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