The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [450]
In the parabolic course of a comet, the 1920’s blazed into American history—with a long prelude and a long aftermath that are not ignored in Farrell’s scope-of-life trilogy. Behind the irreverence, the flaming youth, and the artificial stimuli were false patriotism, abnegation of ideals, the retreat from sustaining hope, and the use of sex as a palliative. In the world in which Studs Lonigan grew up the old, predictable order was passing, but nothing had filled the vacuum left by lost values in human relationships. Many American intellectuals such as Farrell, who spoke through the character Danny O’Neill, verged toward the belief that a revolution in culture had to be either Bolshevist or futile.
While Wall Street in the twenties was hatching golden eggs and even soda jerks were gifted with the Midas touch, millions were still toiling for security. The business ethos that dominated the smug middle class and pervaded the thought of the laboring masses regarded Success as the prime virtue of a man. This meant in Studs’ case that when young he must use his fists and when older he must make a lot of money. The Law of Success was superimposed on an otherworldly religion; not Jesus Saves but—Money Saves. Life seemed unable to gratify the hunger of the Studs Lonigans for an experience richer than reckless dissipation.
The mundane trivialities and the grotesqueries of living that Farrell minutely details are all noteworthy in producing the impressive and almost clinical picture of a world in gradual decay. Through this attention to the smallest particulars emerges Farrell’s irony, the acid fruit of his compassion for the wayward and suffering Studs. Studs tried but could not come to terms with the reality of the twenties, a life he eventually did not want but which owned him nevertheless. Farrell’s irony in the last analysis is as much an exhibit of his underlying melancholy as it is a means of maintaining the optimism implicit in social protest.
The trilogy, moreover, has an extraordinary authenticity, within its limits, as it focuses upon the big-city Irish and captures their past in movement. Farrell deals with areas never handled so realistically before and rarely since, as Irish immigrants are shown in all the intermediate stages of becoming “Americanized.” Fitzgerald and later O’Hara forgot or shied away from delineating the mass of Irishmen who made up part of the base of the social pyramid. In Studs Lonigan an altogether new American breed is shown, developing out of the assimilation and acculturation processes. By recording their life in Chicago, with all the similarities and contrasts of the human comedy to be found among them, Farrell hoped to encompass the breadth of American culture. Certainly, with this trilogy and subsequent works, he made a powerful effort in this direction. And he has given back to the Irish the dignity of truth about themselves.
The cleverest storyteller, the most far-ranging imagination, cannot create the sources of inspiration. It was an essentially transplanted peasant culture that rooted Farrell’s strengths and weaknesses as a writer. He was born on February 27, 1904, in Chicago, where, as in no other American city until mid-century, there was a continuous inflow of poor national and minority groups, and corrupt politicians to woo them. In Studs’ eyes Chicago did not have the romantic aura that impressed Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. In his vain search for meaning and a sense of belonging he took for granted the physical aspect of the city. Farrell, therefore, devoted