The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [0]
{February 7, 1904 – August 22, 1979}
Born in Chicago in 1904 and reared in a lower-middle-class environment, James T. Farrell gained early and at firsthand his knowledge of the lower levels of urban society—a knowledge which was to form the basis for much of his later fiction. Supporting himself by a variety of menial jobs, Farrell attended De Paul University, then the University of Chicago. It was there, while majoring in the social sciences, that he was encouraged to write by a sympathetic professor of English. One of his stories of this period proved the genesis for the Studs Lonigan, trilogy (1932-34-35), the work which launched Farrell’s literary career, and upon which his fame still principally rests. In the years since, his output of novels, stories and criticism has been unceasing, marked by an unswerving devotion to realistic social documentation that has earned him a unique plain in American letters. At present he lives in New York City, engaged upon a new series of novels, of which The Silence of History (1962) and What Time Collects (1964) form the first two volumes.
Introduction to the Signet Edition
Studs Lonigan was finished on February 1, 1935, shortly before my thirty-first birthday. I began working on what became this trilogy in June, 1929. I applied myself to the composition of this work and gave to it much of the best part of my early years as a writer. At times during this period I could not afford to pay my rent. I state these facts because I want to make it very clear that Studs Lonigan was not conceived and written merely in order to shock and make any quick or easy money. A man does not make sacrifices, take economic risk, put his future on the line, and give some of the best part of his years of young manhood to write a sensational shocker. Such books are hammered out in haste, often in a few weeks or months.
The separate volumes of this trilogy did not sell well when they were originally published by the Vanguard Press. The first of these volumes, Young Lonigan, sold about 533 copies. The second and third volumes, The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan and Judgment Day together sold about 4,200 or 4,300 copies, perhaps a little more. The only prize I have ever received in more than twenty-five years of literary endeavor was a $2,500 award from the Book-of-the-Month Club early in 1937. This was one of four prizes which that organization gave to writers who had written books deemed valuable by a vote of critics but which had not had a big sale. Books which had sold 5,000 copies or less were eligible for these awards. Authors did not apply for them. Rather, books were proposed and voted on by the critics of the nation. Studs Lonigan had, at that time, sold a few copies over 5,000 in a one-volume edition which Vanguard Press issued after the three separate volumes of this trilogy had been published. The sale had been something like 5,062 or 5,083. These few extra copies were not considered as rendering Studs ineligible.
I later learned that I received this award due to the efforts and enthusiasm of the late Heywood Broun, who was one of the critics voting on the books to be selected. Heywood and his wife Connie admired Studs Lonigan. After the voting, Heywood also told me that some of the communistically oriented critics and reviewers had made an effort to influence him against pushing Studs Lonigan, and that they had, in addition, proposed other books with the sole aim of swinging the votes of some critics and reviewers away from Studs Lonigan. He laughed with amusement as he told me this story in the bar of the New Weston Hotel, here in New York. Clearly, Studs would not have received this, my only award, but for Heywood. Some of the critics and reviewers, quite understandably, were not politically experienced and did not know precisely what was motivating some of the opposition to Studs Lonigan. Heywood did, and not only did he refuse to be a party tom, but he also thwarted the political maneuver.
Prizes may help a writer, and those which bring a monetary sward are usually