Variety
James T. Farrell-The Critic
Calcified
V
IEWED STRICTLY
as literary criti–
cism, James T. Farrell's three
volumes of essays* are of slight in–
terest. His criticism usually reduces
literature to an anterior political or
sociological concept; seldom does
it penetrate into the interior struc–
ture and relationships of a work
of art. Yet Farrell's essays require
analysis for at least three reasons.
1) The full-time novelist en–
gaged in sustained critical effort
is such a rarity in America that one
wonders: why this exception?
2) Farrell defends the desirable
values; he is an anti-Stalinist mili–
tant Marxist; he opposes academic–
ism, moral absolutism, mysticism.
He has courageously defended his
opinions at a time when they are
increasingly unpopular. Since Far–
rell has been one of the few well–
known intellectuals to retain con–
nections with the anti-Stalinist left,
it is important to inquire if agree–
ment with his social-political views
necessarily
involves agreement with
his variety of literary criticism, or
if one may separate the two and
consider his criticism as uniquely
~erived
from his literary situation.
3) Farrell's importance in Amer–
ican life is greater than his work
warrants or his critics grant. Writ-
*A Note on Literary Criticism; The
League of Frightened Philistines;
and
Literature and Morality.
)
ers become
mythologized
into rep–
resentatives of cultural configura–
tions: Hemingway was thus adu–
lated by an entire generation and
today Farrell is becoming the cen–
ter of a myth. :He is the hero of
provincial intellectuals who pa–
tiently accumulate manuscripts in
trunks or attics, confident that they,
like Farrell,
will some day break
through to fame. In him they see
the triumph of persistence over cul–
tivation, personal power over
"mere" ability to write well, and
American bluntness over cosmo–
politan intellectualism. With a new
depression there may well arise a
group of social novelists who will
acknowledge Farrell as their men–
tor.
Farrell's criticism, having always
been a function of his creative
work, may be read as an attempt
to formulate, solve, or escape his
problems as novelist.
A Note on
Literary Criticism
codified his re–
vulsion from Stalinist party-line
criticism; virtually all of his subse–
quent formal critical
strictu~s
are
of interest only in
't~rms
of that
reaction. Much more illuminating
are his individual essays.
The suspicion of literature and
the sociological reduction.
Though
formally rejecting a tight identifi–
cation of culture with ideology,
Farrell is a very rigid critical task–
master.
In practice
he cannot re-
