Critical Essay | Critical Review by Richard Match

Critical Review by Richard Match

SOURCE: "Farrell in Perspective," in The New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review, Vol. 24, No. 9, October 19, 1947, p. 5.

In the following assessment of The Life Adventurous and Other Stories, Match observes that Farrell's writing, as a whole, provides an honest and compelling vision of American lower-class society.

A taste for the realistic fiction of James T. Farrell is like a taste for sea food.

This reviewer, who happens to like the Farrell brand of realism, will concede that the author of Studs Lonigan has his blind spots, but there seems no reason to insist that any one imaginative writer encompass all of America in his work. The fact remains that Farrell has written of a particular section of American life as no other man has. His Chicago novels told a significant part of the American story, the part he knew best, and told it with honesty,...
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