ABSTRACT
James T. Farrell's knowledge of human tragedy and frustration came from his boyhood and his exceptional innate insight. His studies allowed him to understand both his origins and the complexities of the human condition, and to appreciate how interwoven are the economic, psychological, political, and cultural. Farrell's narrative style and his realistic and nonartistic language are appropriate to present the blunt experiences of specific individuals from specific neighborhoods, with specific psyches and human relationships. Although Farrell read Marx and Engels as a student, and was attracted to various radical causes at an early age, he did not become formally involved with organized political activities until he moved permanently to New York City in 1932. Farrell was prepared to accept socialism as a historic stage of social evolution—in the way that capitalism succeeded feudalism, as a more advanced system—but only from a scientific perspective and not as a true believer in communism as millennial salvation.
