The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [1]
Heywood is no more. I often miss him and his column, and for more reasons than what he did to win a prize for Studs Lonigan. Soon after this time, we disagreed politically. He turned his pen on me, and I wrote a reply. For a few years prior to his death, I did not see him. Heywood was a man all heart, impulsive, and I always believed that the political views of his with which I disagreed to the point of producing a break between us were the consequence of heart and not of evil.
Since those days Studs Lonigan has had many readers and friends, not only in this country but also in Europe, Asia and Latin America. I can only be grateful about this, although Studs Lonigan is now far behind me. Since I finished it I have written many other books, and I am concerned now with many scenes and problems different from those which interested me during the five years and odd months when I was struggling to create Studs. But Heywood’s generous enthusiasm resulted in a surprise windfall which permitted me to continue in the first post-Studs period in material circumstances which were not pressing. During much of the time when I was writing Studs, it was different.
As for Studs Lonigan, one way of regarding this trilogy is as a literary recreation which tells the life story of a boy and a young man. I view it as a tragic story of a boy and a young man. I view it as a tragic story of how defeat can come in a setting of spiritual poverty. I think, and many readers agree, that there is something of the story of more than one generation in these pages. It is my hope that this edition will be a source of new insight for some readers, and a stimulation for a quickened sympathy, as distinct from sentimentality, in reference to all-of those problems, confusions, feelings and emotions which are part of the condition of youth in the recent past and the present.
James T. Farrell
New York City
April 22, 1958
Studs Lonigan
Young Lonigan
The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan
Judgment Day
By James T. Farrell
1932, 1943, 1935, 1959, 1961, 1962
{Written June 1929 to February 1, 1935}
Contents
Young Lonigan 6
The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan 142
Judgment Day 432
Young Lonigan
East Side, West Side,
All around the town,
The tots sing ring-a-rosie,
London Bridge is falling down.
Boys and girls together,
Me and Mamie O’Rourke,
We tripped the light fantastic
On the sidewalks of New York.
POPULAR SONG.
A literature that cannot be vulgarized is no literature at all and will perish.
FRANK NORRIS.
except in the case of some rarely gifted nature there never will be a good man who has not from his childhood been used to play amid things of beauty and make of them a joy and a study.
PLATO, “REPUBLIC,” Jowett translation.
The poignancy of situations that evoke reflection lies in the fact that we really do not know the meaning of the tendencies that are pressing for action.
JOHN DEWEY, “Human Nature and Conduct.”
SECTION ONE
CHAPTER ONE
I
Studs Lonigan, on the verge of fifteen, and wearing his first suit of long trousers, stood in the bathroom with a Sweet Caporal pasted in his mug. His hands were jammed in his trouser pockets, and he sneered. He puffed, drew the fag out of his mouth, inhaled and said to himself:
Well, I’m kissin’ the old dump goodbye tonight.
Studs was a small, broad-shouldered lad. His face was wide and planed; his hair was a light brown. His long nose was too large for his other features; almost a sheeny’s nose. His lips were thick and wide, and they did not seem at home on his otherwise frank and boyish face. He was always twisting them. into his familiar tough-guy sneers. He had blue eyes; his mother rightly called them baby-blue eyes.
He took another drag and repeated to himself:
Well, I’m kissin’ the old dump goodbye.
The old dump was St. Patrick’s grammar school; and St.