BOOKS
119
revolt of
~g,
fighting, whoring-the kind of revolt typified by
Studs Lonigan.
Yet
Studs Lonigan
is
no unrelieved naturalism; for underlying
the objectivity, the brutality and horrors
is
an impelling sympathy–
you feel, always, the writer's pity for these people and his under–
standing
of
their tragedy. Toward the end of the Lonigan series
Farrell is already moving away from the limitations of naturalism,
moving from mere sensory impressions to the creative inner life, from
the one-dimensional writing where we simply
see
people to that three–
dimensional writing where we begin to understand.
Those beginnings in
Studs Lonigan
appear to be moving toward
larger fulfillment in Farrell's new series. The first volume in that series
was
A World I Never Made
and the second the present work,
No Star
is Lost.
In both we meet the same people in the same environment
that one met in
Studs Lonigan.
But the movement is in a different
direction. Where the earlier series concentrated on Studs Lonigan,
moving in the direction of disintegration and disaster, the new series
concentrates on Danny O'Neill, whose prototype is Farrell himself,
and moves in the direction of a larger world which revolts against
environment and tries to master its own destiny.
That larger fulfillment is still only a beginning and a promise in
the first two volumes of this series, including
No Star is Lost.
They are
still too much like
Studs Lonigan,
a likeness largely imposed by the
sameness of material.
If
these two volih,nes were to have no successors,
they would still leave Farrell's place in American literature to be
determined by the Lanigan triology.
But these first two volumes are simply introductory to a series
of apparently grand proportions. The fortunes of Danny O'Neill, who
at the end of the second volume is only eleven years old, will take us
into a larger world that will include the most vital aspects of American
life.
As
the material broadens itself the method will broaden corre–
spondingly, will give more chance for the expression of that three–
dimensional writing which already appears in the first two volumes.
In
that larger world toward which the new series moves, men react
upon
their envirdnment and are not merely acted upon, they revolt
in the effort to change their environment. And as Farrell moves
toward this larger world there will be more impressionism and inter–
pretation in his writing and his realism will become more creative
while retaining all its honesty and power.
LEwis
CoREY
