Farrell, James Thomas

Farrell, James Thomas

(fâr`əl), 1904–79, American novelist, b. Chicago. In his fiction Farrell expressed anger against the brutal economic and social conditions that produce emotional and material poverty. His work, noted for the frankness of its language and its detailed realism, is in the tradition of naturalismnaturalism,
in literature, an approach that proceeds from an analysis of reality in terms of natural forces, e.g., heredity, environment, physical drives. The chief literary theorist on naturalism was Émile Zola, who said in his essay Le Roman expérimental
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. Farrell's first series of novels about life among the Irish Catholic population of Chicago's South Side was the Studs Lonigan trilogy: Young Lonigan (1932), The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan (1934), and Judgment Day (1935). Another of his series was the Danny O'Neill pentalogy: A World I Never Made (1936), No Star Is Lost (1938), Father and Son (1940), My Days of Anger (1943), and The Face of Time (1953). Farrell's other works include numerous collections of short stories; several volumes of essays, including Reflections at Fifty (1954); and innumerable novels, among them Ellen Rogers (1941), Boarding House Blues (1961), and The Dunne Family (1976).