Studs Lonigan—A Tough Guy with a Streak of Yellow

Radio Record, Volume X, Issue 3, 24 July 1936, Page 24

Studs Lonigan—A Tough Guy with a Streak of Yellow

Semi-Morons in a.Grim’ Chicago Story

"STUDS LONIGAN" is an untidy book. In places, especially. in.; the’. closing ' chapters, it reaches ‘greatness, but xhany’ of its" 840 pages até a sore trial. Despite the. ‘quotation. by Frank Norris .at the beginning-"A literature that cannot be. vulgarised .is no . literature

at- all and will perish’-the book is disorderly ‘and slangy. In the beginning Studs is a boy of 15, the son of lower middle-class parents in Chicago. America is praising President Wilson at this timethe year is 1916-for keeping the country out of war and introducing the Federal reserve system to "render panics impossible." Studs is tough -he’s. going to "do things’; he’s not going to waste his time on a lot of punk education’; he sees himself as Studs Lonigan, the hero of the World War! Studs Lonigan, the great aviator who flew the Atlantic alone! Studs Lonigan! Studs Lonigan! But he hasn’t the guts’ to make ‘the grade. The poolroom calls, brothels call; he guzzles' poisonous Prohibition liquor, smokes madly, gets into scraps on street corners. Some of his cronies die; some of consumption, some from drinking::bad liquor; Studs .gets a fright and decides to pull up. He

boasts shrilly of his toughness in case the .other guys guess how: scared and yellow he really is. He marries a decent girl, but the "call of the wild" is too insistent, and he goes back to his old habits. At 30, burned out with his excesses, he dies. For ‘all that, Studs had something good in him. He may have ‘been easily tempted-but temptation isn’t temptation when everybody round you is doing the same thing and not giving "two hoots; he was a braggart who deserved a good clout on the nose-and got it more often than not; he hadn’t any very lofty ideas about womenbut then the women he met in Chicago had even less lofty ideas about men. It is a terrible story, an indictment of an educational system which produces semi-morons like Studs and his crowd, and a capitalist society which permits the strong and cunning to SS 2 0 Oe OE a A a a

abuse the weak and the simple. And, although the author, James T, Farrell, may not have jntended it, his book is a highly moral lesson on the theme that Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do "Studs Lonigan.’ James F. Farrell, Constable, Our copy from the publishers,