JAMES T. FARRELL
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cultural commentary on some editors. This was a magazine put
out by a big midwestern steel company.
Chicago is a fascinating city, humanly and sociologically. It's
like a great state in itself. In South Chicago , for miles out to Gary,
Indiana, there are lines of steel mills, and yet Chicago cannot
produce enough steel for its own needs. It has light and heavy
industry. It was a consumers' market ; it became a kind of
metropolis for the Midwest, for the farm belt, largely as a cultural
consequence of the Civil War. In the early part of this century
it was through Chicago and the Midwest that America was
largely-but of course not wholly-informed of its own con–
SCIOusness.
A fundamental idea all through my writing is the sense of
destiny, what happens to people. One of the things that a writer
does is to rescue many of the obscure from total oblivion. He
leaves a memory of their humanity, their sorrow, their sufferings,
their tragic fates, perhaps. That, I think , is one of the motivating
factors of a writer. I am not in any sense apologetic about coming
from the Midwest, although it' s called Middle America, and the
liberal establishment , the philistines in the East, don't like that
area. But I
am
a midwesterner and I also consider myself a citizen
of the world .
Interviewer:
Was the 1920s midwestern culture expressive of the
movement of America at that time?
Farrell: Before
the 1920s it was. In the 1920s we have clear evidence of
the beginnings of a development of consumer orientation in
American life. Prior to that the major orientation was centered on
the idea of work, advancement, and achievement. Chicago
exemplified the work ethic. As long as work, achievement, and
progress (there is much that could be said about progress, so I'm
not making a blanket endorsement) were prevailing ideas and
dominated the thinking of Americans, Chicago and the Midwest
formed an important cultural center. When consumption, leisure,
and amusement became more important , economically as well as
culturally, then the Midwest declined in its cultural influence and
impact. Prior to the 1920s the major industries of the United
States-mining, railroads, steel, that is-were developed into an
industrial plant adequate to fulfill the needs and demands of the
market nationally and internationally. There was much free
capital and a need for employment in other fields, and money
