The Saga Library, Volume 2

Farrell's famous 800-page saga, written proudly in the tradition of Theodore Dreiser, began with his very first book, Young Lonigan (1932), and was completed with two sequels, The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan (1934) and Judgment Day (1935). Critical acclaim from the beginning was high. A Guggenheim fellowship and selection in the Book-of-the-Month Club followed immediately; and the Modern Library canonized the trilogy only three years after the publication of the third volume. Of the work that followed, a second trilogy and some of the short stories, focusing on Farrell's alter ego Danny O'Neill, are occasionally read by scholars for their insight both into the adolescent preoccupations fueling Farrell's writing and into the origins of those preoccupations in the Irish American community itself. In 1929, while a student at the University of Chicago, Farrell wrote a short story, "Studs," in which a South Side Chicago street gang gathers at the wake of their buddy, the title character, who has died of double pneumonia at the age of twenty-five ...»