From Publishers Weekly
Once regarded as a great chronicler of American urban life, James T. Farrell (19041979) wrote dozens of novels, most of which-except for the Studs Lonigan trilogy-are all but forgotten today. Wilson Quarterly senior editor Landers paints Farrell as an eccentric narcissist who held deep political convictions and an abiding faith in his own power to change the world. Farrell's fiction portrayed lower-middle-class Irish life on Chicago's South Side with an autobiographical naturalism that alienated him from childhood friends and attracted the attention of moralizing censors. In tandem with his "honest" writing, Farrell became deeply involved with communism and socialism, but "he awakened early to the horrors of Stalinism," and Landers recounts Farrell's in-fighting with fellow party members in detail. One wishes Landers spent as much ink on Farrell's personal life. Abandoned by his parents at an early age, he later struggled with failed romantic relationships, drug and alcohol abuse and years of poverty and creative uncertainty. Landers suggests, in the book's prologue, that Farrell's early abandonment was formative, though he does little later on to explore its continued significance. In the end, the ambitious, childlike Farrell is something of a tragic figure: Landers reveals that many of his peers, including Mary McCarthy and his secretary, Luna Wolf, thought him a hard-working compulsive who, for all his drive, lacked the stylistic genius to be a truly immortal author. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
James T. Farrell was acclaimed and lambasted for the "brutal realism" of his fictionalization of early-twentieth-century Chicago's working-class, Irish-Catholic South Side in his best-known books, the trilogy Studs Lonigan and the O'Neill-O'Flaherty series. Revered and resented for his honesty and fervor; avidly read and ranked beside Dreiser, Dos Passos, and Hemingway; and championed by Edmund Wilson and Richard Wright, Farrell was nonetheless soon forgotten, his gutsy, groundbreaking novels reduced to mere footnotes in the annals of literary history. Thankfully, Landers, of the Wilson Quarterly, now restores Farrell to his rightful place in American letters a century after his birth in this seminal and clarifying biography. By bringing Farrell's rough Chicago boyhood into crisp focus, Landers illuminates the primary source for his gritty fiction and the impetus for his becoming a boldly independent yet integral member of the radical Left. Landers convincingly argues that what Farrell, compulsively prolific and uneven, lacked in stylistic panache he made up for with keen observations and intensity, making him a literary force to be reckoned with, and treasured. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
James T. Farrell vaulted into the American literary firmament during the 1930s, becoming one of its brightest lights. "Studs Lonigan," his trilogy about a young Irish "tough" from Chicago's South Side, became a literary sensation and was acclaimed as a modern classic. Farrell went on to write some other excellent novels, and kept on writing for four more decades. But 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. Even "Studs Lonigan" came in recent decades to be little read. "An Honest Writer" recreates Farrells life and times and restores this important writer to his rightful place in the forefront of American literature. Robert Landers begins this landmark biography with Farrell's great subject: the vibrant Chicago of his birth and boyhood, the struggling Irish-Americans and others on the city's South Side, and his own family, whose eccentric members inspired some of the most memorable figures in his fiction. If the theme of Farrell's contemporary, Thomas Wolfe, was that "you can't go home again," the theme of his own work was that you never really leave. In Farrell's half-century as a writer, Chicago would remain as much a mythic landscape for him, a place standing for the whole of the American experience, as Yoknapatawpha County was for William Faulkner. In his chronicle of Farrell's effort to escape the heavy gravity of his youth and begin his audacious assault on the wider world, Landers gives us the archetypal journey of a young man discovering America at a time when the country was in the process of finding itself amid the crisis of the Great Depression. In his description of Farrell's search for love and sexual fulfillment, his relationships with friends and enemies such as Theodore Dreiser, Edmund Wilson and Nelson Algren, and his long quarrel with would-be censors who wanted to deny the harsh social realities portrayed in his works, Landers has given us a portrait not only of a man and a writer but of literary America in the middle decades of the 20th century. Drawing on the voluminous private papers that Farrell left behind upon his death in 1979, as well as on his own independent research and interviews, Landers opens a time capsule that reveals the connection between literature and politics from the 1930s onward. Initially drawn to the Communist Party when he left Chicago, Farrell was propelled by a radical vision in his early years as a writer and became deeply involved in the doctrinal disputes of the day. Yet he was ultimately a maverick who would not bow to any party discipline, and he awakened long before Hemingway, Malcolm Cowley and others to the horrors of Soviet totalitarianism. He freed himself from Marxist illusions for good at the onset of the Cold War, joining Sidney Hook, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and other leading anti-Communist liberals in the Congress for Cultural Freedom. With a deep sympathy for Farrell and an informed reading of the larger context in which he lived and worked, Robert Landers has produced a sparkling history of an era and a compelling portrait of one of its major figures. This authoritative biography arrives right on time for the James T. Farrell centenary in 2004.


About the Author
Robert K. Landers is a senior editor at the "Wilson Quarterly." He has worked as a reporter or editor at the "Providence Journal," the "Philadelphia Inquirer," the "New Haven Journal-Courier" and the "Register of Torrington," Connecticut. He lives with his wife, Susan, in Arlington, Virginia.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

James T. Farrell vaulted into the American literary firmament during the 1930s to become one of its brightest lights. Studs Lonigan, his trilogy about a young Irish "tough" from Chicago's South Side, was a literary sensation and acclaimed as a modern classic. Farrell went on to produce other excellent novels in four more decades of writing. But 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. In recent decades, even Studs Lonigan came to be little read. An Honest Writer recreates Farrell's life and times and restores this important author to his rightful place in the forefront of American literature. Robert Landers begins this landmark biography with Farrell's great subject: the vibrant Chicago of his birth and boyhood, the struggling Irish-Americans and others on the city's South Side, and his own family, whose eccentric members inspired some of the most memorable figures in his fiction. If the theme of Farrell's contemporary, Thomas Wolfe, was that "you can't go home again," the theme of his own work was that you never really leave. In Farrell's half-century as a writer, Chicago would remain as much a mythic landscape for him, a place standing for the whole of the American experience, as Yoknapatawpha County was for William Faulkner.

In his chronicle of Farrell's effort to escape the gravity of his childhood milieu and make an audacious assault on the wider world, Landers traces the archetypal journey of a young man discovering America at a time when the country was in the process of finding itself amid the crisis of the Great Depression. In recounting Farrell's search for love and sexual fulfillment, his relationships with friends and enemies such as Theodore Dreiser, Edmund Wilson and Nelson Algren, and his long quarrel with would-be censors who wanted to deny the harsh social realities portrayed in his works, Landers creates a picture not only of a man and a writer, but of literary America in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Drawing on the voluminous private papers that Farrell left behind upon his death in 1979, as well as on his own independent research and interviews, Landers opens a time capsule that reveals the connection between literature and politics from the 1930s onward. Initially drawn to the Communist Party when he left Chicago, Farrell was propelled by a radical vision in his early years as a writer and became deeply involved in the doctrinal disputes of the day. Yet he was ultimately a maverick who would not bow to any party discipline, and he awakened long before Hemingway, Malcolm Cowley and others to the horrors of Soviet totalitarianism. He freed himself from Marxist illusions for good at the onset of the Cold War, joining Sidney Hook, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and other leading anti-Communist liberals in the Congress for Cultural Freedom.

With a deep sympathy for Farrell and an informed reading of the context in which he lived and worked, Robert Landers has produced a sparkling history of an era and a compelling portrait of one of its major figures. This authoritative biography arrives right on time for the James T. Farrell centenary in 2004.

SYNOPSIS

American novelist Farrell (1904-79) was considered a literary titan in his time, especially for Studs Lonigan and his five-volume series about the O'Neills and the O'Flahertys. Reporter and editor Landers says he and his work deserve to be better known still, and explores his life and career to show why. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Once regarded as a great chronicler of American urban life, James T. Farrell (1904-1979) wrote dozens of novels, most of which-except for the Studs Lonigan trilogy-are all but forgotten today. Wilson Quarterly senior editor Landers paints Farrell as an eccentric narcissist who held deep political convictions and an abiding faith in his own power to change the world. Farrell's fiction portrayed lower-middle-class Irish life on Chicago's South Side with an autobiographical naturalism that alienated him from childhood friends and attracted the attention of moralizing censors. In tandem with his "honest" writing, Farrell became deeply involved with communism and socialism, but "he awakened early to the horrors of Stalinism," and Landers recounts Farrell's in-fighting with fellow party members in detail. One wishes Landers spent as much ink on Farrell's personal life. Abandoned by his parents at an early age, he later struggled with failed romantic relationships, drug and alcohol abuse and years of poverty and creative uncertainty. Landers suggests, in the book's prologue, that Farrell's early abandonment was formative, though he does little later on to explore its continued significance. In the end, the ambitious, childlike Farrell is something of a tragic figure: Landers reveals that many of his peers, including Mary McCarthy and his secretary, Luna Wolf, thought him a hard-working compulsive who, for all his drive, lacked the stylistic genius to be a truly immortal author. (Feb.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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