Evening star., 1943-11-07
Ny Days of Anger
By James T. Farrell. (Van-

By James T. Farrell. (Van-
guard PreSs.)
This is the latest novel in the
sequence which James T. Farrell
has been devoting to Danny O'Neill
1t follows Father and Son."
which came out a couple of years
ago. Danny is the boy who does
not fit in the world of Studs Loni-
gan, that lower middle class world
of ChicagoS Irish which Mr. Farrell
has frankly portrayed as abomina-
BILE. In the previous novels which
have dealt with Danny he has been
shown, not as rebel, but as an
unsuccessful conformist; he has
been made by his author to strive
painfully 10 be as vulgar and british
as his happy associates. In the
present book he gives up the effort
and establishes break between
himself and the whole society of
which the immortal Lonigan is the
archtype. He does not do SO by
conscious revolt, however, but by
growing within himself until he
is aware that he has the strength,
the Sureness and the hope OF life,
while those whom he has admired
have only the weakness, the fears
and Illustration. He is the only
character in the Lonigan world
whom Mr.. Farrell has permitted
to attain the state of self knowledge
The novel begins with Danny's
attempt to get higher education
than is afforded by the psrochial
high schools. He attends first a
night school and then Chicago Uni
versity. Three years are included
in the novels span but the great
part of Danny's development comes
toward the end and then 1t more
or less bursts on the reader. There
is little preparation, little indlca-
ton of the authors intention. The
reader sees Danny fumbling along
in the hopeless manner of his past
in one chapter; in the next he meets
an emancipated soul. The growth
which leads to the emancipation is
not described and is hardly indi-
Gated.
Except for its imposed conclusion,
then. the novel reads much like Mr..
Farrells previous Chicago tales. eX-
cept that, as this material has been
used and reused, it has lost in the
handling. The Danny ONeill his
tory is plainly autobiographical. 1t
ends with Danny determined to be
writer and swearing eternal enmltY
to all the forces which have made
the world of his youth so hldeouS.
But this is only an editorializing
of the story which was told by
indirection in studs Lonigan.' Any
one who read that trilogy knows the
life Of its author, even without
knowing so much AS the authors
that the man who
wrote so soaring document has
lived in the scenes which it de-
scribed and experienced the horrors
which it depicts. By telling us, Spe-
cifcally, in new novel, how Danny
revolted. Mr.. Farrell only puts the
stamp of conVentionality on the
stuff Of his earlier masterpiece, for
nothing in the novel form is more
conventional than the tale of the
young person who rebels against
his environment. In Studs Loni-
gan Mr.. Farrell escaped that
stereotyping, for he made that series
the story of the environment alone;
there was no one in it who rebelled,
all its characters were environ
mental creatures. and it was pre-
cisely this unrelieved quality which
gave the work its power. The ONeill
books, by throwing the environment
into subordination to the hero, lose
that concentration. And so they
must be rated below the preceding
ones.
1t seems likely that this will be
the last Of the Chicago novels TO
come from the Farrell pen and, in
view of the foregoing considerations,
one cannot be sorry. The story is
finished. 1t remains to be seen if
the fury which inspired the best Of
its volumes will be apparent in the
new work which Mr.. Farrell plans
IN Io tho {,ltllre