SOURCE: "James T. Farrell: Moralist," in Harper's Magazine, Vol. 209, No. 1253, October, 1954, pp. 93-4, 96, 98.

In this excerpt, Grattan describes Farrell as an optimistic moralist who believes in man's entitlement to freedom.

At fifty James Thomas Farrell begins to show some of the burnish of an "old master" and if he is still a bit hagridden by the identification, "author of Studs Lonigan," it is becoming commoner to recognize that he has written other fine novels, and his latest—The Face of Time—rings as true as a well-cast bell. Yet there is an element of ambiguity in the recognition now being accorded him which Horace Gregory has lately tried to resolve in his favor by assigning him and his work to a vague place "beyond the provinces of art" where, it seems, Tolstoy, Balzac, and Dickens also reside. The ambiguity of the judgment of him derives not so much...