The honorable menace: a new centennial biography of James T. Farrell seeks to revive the truculent author of Studs Lonigan--and to make a neocon of him.(The Literary Life)("An Honest Writer")(Book Review)

IN 1954, JAMES T. FARRELL PUBLISHED a collection of essays called Reflections at Fifty. It is long since out of print, like most of his novels and, so far as I can tell, all of his nonfiction volumes. Digging it out now, Reflections is a re minder of what the author of Studs Lonigan was like--or rather, of how he wished to present himself--halfway to his centennial, which we mark this year.

A fitting shorthand expression for that role would be the "Great American Novelist." One of the pleasures, as well as the frustrations, of reading Farrell is that the cliche fits ...

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