FARRELL, JAMES T.

born Feb. 27, 1904, Chicago, Ill., U.S. died Aug. 22, 1979, New York, N.Y. in full James Thomas Farrell American novelist and short-story writer known for his realistic portraits of the lower-middle-class Irish in Chicago, drawn from his own experiences. Farrell attended the University of Chicago from 1925 to 1929. He began to write seriously about 1925, shaping his writing to reveal his conviction that destinies are shaped by environment. In 1932 he moved to New York City. That year the first volume of his well-known Studs Lonigan trilogy, Young Lonigan, was published. It was followed by The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan in 1934 and Judgment Day in 1935. The series traces the self-destruction of a young man who has been spiritually crippled by the morally squalid urban environment in which he lives. Danny O'Neill, a character introduced in Studs Lonigan, is the subject of a later series (193653), in which he reflects Farrell's acquired faith in humanitarian values and man's power to cope with circumstances. The Face of Time (1953) also is considered one of Farrell's best works. Farrell's relentless and rather humourless naturalism led some critics to suggest that his works are only shocking and highly detailed case histories; his fiction is nevertheless durable in its deep understanding of the lower-middle-class mentalities it describes. After 1958 Farrell worked on what was to be a 25-volume cycle, A Universe of Time, of which he completed 10 volumes. His complete works include 25 novels and 17 collections of short stories. Among his works of nonfiction are A Note on Literary Criticism (1936), a discussion on Marxist literature, and Reflections at Fifty (1954), personal essays.