Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the Irish-American writer, James T. Farrell.
Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By” and "Films To While Away The Class Struggle By"-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs and films that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some books that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. Markin
Book Review
Young Lonigan, James T. Farrell, Random House, New York, 1932
Over the past several years, as part of re-evaluating the effect of my half-Irish diaspora heritage (on my mother’s side) on the development of my leftist political consciousness I have read, and in some cases re-read, some of the major works of the Irish-American experience. Of course, any such reading list includes tales from the pen of William Kennedy and his Albany cycle, most famously “Ironweed”. And, naturally, as well, the tales of that displaced Irishman, the recently departed Frank McCourt and his “Angela’s Ashes”, a story that is so close to the bone of my own “shanty” Irish diaspora upbringing that we are forever kindred spirits. That said, here to my mind is the “ max daddy” of all the American disapora storytellers, James T. Farrell, and his now rightly famous trilogy, “Studs Lonigan” (hereafter, “Studs”).
Now my first kinship with James T. Farrell is not through literature, but rather through politics. For a period, and an important one at that, Farrell was a stalwart pro-communist, anti-Stalinist militant writer who served with distinction and honor on the John Dewey headed- Leon Trotsky Commission that tried to determine whether Trotsky was, or was not guilty, of serious crimes against his beloved Soviet Union during the height of Stalin’s Moscow Trials in the late 1930s. Farrell rendered further important services to the left-wing when he helped organize the defense of the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party during the beginning of World War II when the Roosevelt government had them jailed for opposition to that war. Thus, Farrell came with some good political credential in the eyes of this reviewer.
And in his storytelling of his people, the Chicago Irish, Farrell does not let us down either. “Studs” is only marginally concerned with political issues, and then only of the bourgeois kind rampant amount the Irish in the early part of the 20th century when they were taking over local politics in a number of cities from their former WASP guardians. However, he has hit so many “hot buttons” about “lace curtain” Irish sensibilities and the struggle against “shanty” Irishness that he, Kennedy, and McCourt could have easily compared notes for their respective works.
“Studs”, even at a young age, and this first book of the trilogy only goes up to his late teens, is already having his existential crisis at that tender age. And that crisis for him is the tension between that surface “lace curtain” Irish sensibility that both his father and mother are, in their own very familiar way (familiar to anyone who has had the least bit of traditional Irish upbringing), trying to instill and his natural inclination to go “shanty” (hang out on corners with the guys, drink, loaf, and chase girls, or at least dream of chasing girls).
For those who know, and even for those who don’t know, Farrell gives us a primer here of common Irish experiences; the central role of the Catholic Church in daily and weekly life, at least on the surface; the “virtues” of parochial school education received from the good battle-hardened sisters, amply loaded with words and weaponry; the need to keep the “dirty linen” of family life in the home, and away from inquisitive neighbors, especially those nearest; and, most importantly, the never-ending quest of what to do about girls (and for girls, boys, of course). That last point drives home, as it does for almost all of us, the real central problem of early teenage existence. Hey, all of this sounds to me like it could have been written today about Irish-American disapora kids, right? And that is what makes Farrell’s work resonant to our ears and our eyes ,and is such a good work of literature. More later, as “Studs” moves into manhood.
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