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Chicago Stories
A Prairie State Book
These stories, chosen from ten separately published collections of James T. Farrell's short fiction, offer remarkable insights into the lives of
Irish Americans and other Chicagoans from 1910 to 1940. They are gems of the short fiction genre, unique, pioneering, and accomplished.
Farrell's stories offer a wonderful diversity of characters and experiences, from self-deluded, impoverished victims to portraits of the artist as a young Irish-American living on Chicago's South Side. Charles Fanning's introduction presents Farrell as one of the best Illinois writers of the first half of the century and his stories as among the best in realistic short fiction anywhere.
These stories, chosen from ten separately published collections of James T. Farrell's short fiction, offer remarkable insights into the lives of
Irish Americans and other Chicagoans from 1910 to 1940. They are gems of the short fiction genre, unique, pioneering, and accomplished.
Farrell's stories offer a wonderful diversity of characters and experiences, from self-deluded, impoverished victims to portraits of the artist as a young Irish-American living on Chicago's South Side. Charles Fanning's introduction presents Farrell as one of the best Illinois writers of the first half of the century and his stories as among the best in realistic short fiction anywhere.
- GenresFiction
296 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1998
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125 people want to read
About the author
James T. Farrell
269 books89 followersJames Thomas Farrell was an American novelist. One of his most famous works was the Studs Lonigan trilogy, which was made into a film in 1960 and into a television miniseries in 1979. The trilogy was voted number 29 on the Modern Library's list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 14, 2018
A collection of short stories, taken from ten separately published collections, by the great James T. Farrell of Studs Lonnigan fame. The authors gives us various slices of life for the working class Irish in Old Chicago from around 1920s to the late 1940s.
The generation he’s writing about here was my grandparents, all of whom were old-school Irish (or very near), so this takes me back to the attitudes, thoughts, discussions, and worries of the my youth. The characters all feel very real and, from what I’ve gathered, plucked from the author’s own past. He is able to capture with believably the ravages of old age, the anxiety of teens, the depressions of middle age, and the emotional turbulence of youth. He is able to highlight the rich and poor with equal sympathy (or lack thereof when appropriate), and as such not one character rings false. Each seems a living, breathing, thinking, entity unto themselves.
What always struck me about Farrell’s work, apart from the realistic characters, was the attention to minor detail of the world around him. His characters or narrator will causally mention some larger problem happening in the city at the time of the story, and a google search shows that something like that was going on in Chicago.
This is an old fashioned view of the world from a time when it was acceptable to chase blacks out of parks deemed “whites only”. And while Farrell occasionally editorializes the content, often it is presented unemotionally and without comment. This is how is was, this is how it is. From the workhouses, to the pool halls, to the churches, to the row houses, to the elegant apartments. The priests, the professors, the gamblers, the bums, the working stiffs, the employers, the middle men, the union men, the lovers, and the haters. Without emotion, nostalgia, or regret. The Irish Chicago of the past. Enjoy.
The generation he’s writing about here was my grandparents, all of whom were old-school Irish (or very near), so this takes me back to the attitudes, thoughts, discussions, and worries of the my youth. The characters all feel very real and, from what I’ve gathered, plucked from the author’s own past. He is able to capture with believably the ravages of old age, the anxiety of teens, the depressions of middle age, and the emotional turbulence of youth. He is able to highlight the rich and poor with equal sympathy (or lack thereof when appropriate), and as such not one character rings false. Each seems a living, breathing, thinking, entity unto themselves.
What always struck me about Farrell’s work, apart from the realistic characters, was the attention to minor detail of the world around him. His characters or narrator will causally mention some larger problem happening in the city at the time of the story, and a google search shows that something like that was going on in Chicago.
This is an old fashioned view of the world from a time when it was acceptable to chase blacks out of parks deemed “whites only”. And while Farrell occasionally editorializes the content, often it is presented unemotionally and without comment. This is how is was, this is how it is. From the workhouses, to the pool halls, to the churches, to the row houses, to the elegant apartments. The priests, the professors, the gamblers, the bums, the working stiffs, the employers, the middle men, the union men, the lovers, and the haters. Without emotion, nostalgia, or regret. The Irish Chicago of the past. Enjoy.
May 16, 2017
Generous sampling of Farrell's short stories, capturing life in Depression-era Chicago. The underrated Farrell was a master realist; the deeply scarred survivors of the South Side offered here are human to the core, the products of a sound ear, a Joycean empathy, and an innate understanding of geographic determinism.
March 24, 2007
There are so many ways and reasons you'll enjoy this collection. Some:
1. If you can picture the intersection of 57th and Indiana.
2. To picture the intersection of 57th and Indiana in the 1920s, 30s, 50s.
3. Danny O'Neill at 8, 14, 40.
4. "Boyhood." (It's perfect)
University of Chicagoans (and groupies) may be especially interested in "A Front-page Story," "All Things are Nothing to Me," and "Norman Allen" where the U of C, as setting and symbol, figures prominently.
By the way does anyone know why Farrell's Irish Catholic Chicagoans call the University "A.B.A"? As in:
"What's wrong with the Jesuit University?" Tommy belligerently asked Joe.
"It's too far out on the north side," Joe said.
"It would have been better than that A.B.A dump across the park..."
1. If you can picture the intersection of 57th and Indiana.
2. To picture the intersection of 57th and Indiana in the 1920s, 30s, 50s.
3. Danny O'Neill at 8, 14, 40.
4. "Boyhood." (It's perfect)
University of Chicagoans (and groupies) may be especially interested in "A Front-page Story," "All Things are Nothing to Me," and "Norman Allen" where the U of C, as setting and symbol, figures prominently.
By the way does anyone know why Farrell's Irish Catholic Chicagoans call the University "A.B.A"? As in:
"What's wrong with the Jesuit University?" Tommy belligerently asked Joe.
"It's too far out on the north side," Joe said.
"It would have been better than that A.B.A dump across the park..."
March 3, 2015
These stories are simple in execution, and brilliant at getting under your skin. I am extremely excited to reread this book.
Through the years, I've thought of one of the stories quite a bit, Norman Allen. In it, a young African-American scholar rises above poverty to prominence at a prestigious institution of higher learning where he (presumably? it's been almost a decade...) met the author of the story.
The story chronicles his slow at first, and then dramatic decline into mental illness. It is implied (or said outright?) in the story that part of the reason for his deterioration is the racial discrimination that he is subject to. The author visits him in the mental hospital towards the end of the story.
Anyway, it's great. The whole book. As I recall.
Through the years, I've thought of one of the stories quite a bit, Norman Allen. In it, a young African-American scholar rises above poverty to prominence at a prestigious institution of higher learning where he (presumably? it's been almost a decade...) met the author of the story.
The story chronicles his slow at first, and then dramatic decline into mental illness. It is implied (or said outright?) in the story that part of the reason for his deterioration is the racial discrimination that he is subject to. The author visits him in the mental hospital towards the end of the story.
Anyway, it's great. The whole book. As I recall.
October 21, 2014
Farrell is one of my favorites, although The Studs Lonigan Trilogy is better than his short stuff. It amazes me that the characters he describes--their language, their fears, their prejudices--are almost identical to their descendents, the folks I grew up with.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews