James T. Farrell and Baseball: Dreams and Realism on Chicago's South Side

Abstract

During the 1930s and 1940s, James T. Farrell was a prolific American writer; his naturalistic novels include the Studs Lonigan trilogy (Young Lonigan [1932], The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan [1934], and Judgment Day [1935]) and the Danny O'Neill pentalogy (A World I Never Made [1936], No Star Is Lost [1938], Father and Son [1940], My Days of Anger [1943], and The Face of Time [1953]). In James T. Farrell and Baseball, Charles DeMotte documents the significant role that baseball played in Farrell's life and fiction, especially the novels featuring the author's literary alter ego, Danny O'Neill. Farrell sought to re-create the Irish ethnic neighborhoods of Chicago's South Side, where he reached maturity during the first decades of the twentieth century. It was a turbulent time, as rapid growth and industrialization exacerbated ethnic tensions within South Side neighborhoods. As is evidenced by selections from Farrell's writings, baseball...