James T. Farrell

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James Thomas Farrell (born February 27, 1904 in Chicago ; died August 22, 1979 in New York ) was an American writer .

life and work

Farrell became one of the most famous American writers in the 1930s with novels about the industrial proletariat of Irish descent in Chicago, from which he himself came. In particular, his trilogy Studs Lonigan , the 1960 feature film No star is lost and 1979 with Harry Hamlin was filmed in the lead role as a miniseries for television, found many readers and is still regarded as one of the outstanding works of naturalistic prose in the tradition of Theodore Dreiser that shaped American literature in the 1930s. Farrell also saw his novels as political statements. Like many American modern writers, he was under the influence of the Great Depression and the Great Depression of the Communist Party and after 1936 (after the Moscow Trials ) he switched to its Trotskyist wing; 1938-45 he was a member of the Socialist Workers Party and turned against a participation of the USA in World War II, behind which he imagined imperialist motives. Since 1942 he was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Farrell was a "prolific writer" and published more than 50 books by the time of his death. However, it fell in favor of the public, and above all of the critics, after the Second World War, when the zeitgeist called for less politicized literature.

Works (selection)

  • Young Lonigan (1932)
  • Gas House McGinty (1933)
  • Calico Shoes (1934)
  • The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan (1934)
  • Guillotine Party and Other Stories (1935)
  • Judgment Day (1935)
  • A Note on Literary Criticism (1936)
  • A World I Never Made (1936)
  • Can All This Grandeur Perish? and Other Stories (1937)
  • No Star Is Lost (1938)
  • Tommy Gallagher's Crusade (1939)
  • Father and Son (1940)
  • Decision (1941)
  • Ellen Rogers (1941)
  • My Days of Anger (1943)
  • Bernard Clare (1946)
  • Literature and Morality (1947)
  • The Road Between (1949)
  • An American Dream Girl (1950)
  • The Name Is Fogarty: Private Papers on Public Matters (1950)
  • This Man and This Woman (1951)
  • Yet Other Waters (1952)
  • Reflections at Fifty and Other Essays (1954)
  • French Girls Are Vicious and Other Stories (1955)
  • A Dangerous Woman and Other Stories (1957)
  • My Baseball Diary (1957)
  • It Has Come to Pass (1958)
  • Boarding House Blues (1961)
  • Side Street and Other Stories (1961)
  • The Silence of History (1963)
  • What Time Collects (1964)
  • Lonely for the Future (1966)
  • When Time Was Born (1966)
  • A Brand New Life (1968)
  • Childhood Is Not Forever (1969)
  • Invisible Swords (1971)
  • Judith and Other Stories (1973)
  • The Dunne Family (1976)
  • The Death of Nora Ryan (1978)

Film adaptations

  • 1960: No star is lost ( Studs Lonigan )
  • 1979: Studs Lonigan - TV miniseries with Harry Hamlin

Secondary literature

  • Edgar M. Branch: James T. Farrell . Twayne, Boston 1971
  • Kathleen Farrell: Literary Integrity and Political Action: The Public Argument of James T. Farrell . Westview Press, Boulder CO 1999, ISBN 0-8133-9071-0 .
  • Robert K. Landers: An Honest Writer: The Life and Times of James T. Farrell . Encounter Books, San Francisco 2004, ISBN 1-893554-95-3 .
  • Alan M. Wald: James T. Farrell: The Revolutionary Socialist Years . New York University Press, New York 1978, ISBN 0-8147-9179-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Studs Lonigan in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  2. ↑ No star is lost in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  3. ^ Members: James T. Farrell. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 27, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Farrell, James T.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Farrell, James Thomas (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 27, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Chicago , Illinois , USA
DATE OF DEATH 22nd August 1979
Place of death New York , USA