58
PARTISAN REVIEW
and moral degeneration gains momentum as he hunts desperately for a
job. His collapse symbolizes the destiny of :;ll the young men of whom
Studs is a composite. The reader gets a ·glimpse of possible resolution
in the communist parade which the father of Studs watches on his way
home to his son's deathbed. Studs dies simply because he cannot live.
Since the trilogy is so clearly a panorama of a social group, any
literary judgment of it must take into account the quality of experience
which Farrell describes. Farrell's writing has been called statistical, a
piling up of detail without the achievement of great psychological and
dramatic moments. Aside from the fact that there is a note of prejudice
and querulousness in such a criticism, since no one method is
ipso facto
superior to another, there is sufficient justification for the methods Farrell
employs to achieve his effects. The plateau quality of
Judgment Day,
its
even drive to resolution, the absence of sharp conflict-all evoke the
character of it:; actual counterpart: the lechery, the
Sunday
School
love, the
slumming, the mock-heroic athleticism, the morbid interest in sports, the
self conscious social chatter, the braggadacio, of a people who fluctuate
temporarily in economic position or merely psychologically between a
tenuous petty bourgeois respectability and a lumpen existence. True to
his place in Am.::rican history, Studs sinks slowly into a quicksand instead
of being swung by a whirlpool of forces like the characters in
Man's Fate
who are carried through a tempestuous uprising. And the way Studs
dies (heart trouble and pneumonia), taken out of its entire social meaning,
is not a major tragic theme. But this too takes on importance as a symbol
of slow petering out. Only a Thornton Wilder could set a Greek tragedy
in the environment of Farrell's characters.
There might be some question, however, about the possibility of
greater concentration in the trilogy. I cannot see how such a question
can be settled by speculation, but a general' reading of the novels gives
the impression that greater concentration would have improved the trilogy.
Perhaps one long novel might have sacrificed little in scope, while gaining
much in intensity.
As
a result, the scenes which remained would have
greater typicality, and the dramatic curve of development would rise and
fall more sharply. To be judicious, however, one would have to say that
such an opinion should be critically substantiated by careful reconstruction
of the trilogy, and that a revised trilogy by Farrell himself' would be the
final test.
Farrell's remarkable dictaphonic ear for American speech has been
remarked on. But it is sometimes forgotten, especially by pseudo-realistic
novelists, that a novel of any value cannot be compounded of slang con–
versation and what is sometimes thought of as "Americanese" for the
author's commentary. Farrell's talent lies in his recognizing that speech
is only one form of behavior, and that a modulation of idiom is necessary
to effect changes of mood, situation and character. The peak of Farrell's
linguistic accomplishment is reached when he weaves many phases of
Studs' experiences in terms of their idiomatic equivalents into a single
attitude, as when Studs rehearses the virtues of Roosevelt in terms of sex,
!'port and warfare as well as politics. Current American idioms have an
independent rhythmic interest, but their main value for fiction is in lighting
up character and situation.
