James T. Farrell's reputation rests primarily on his novels of the 1930s, in particular the interrelated series about Studs Lonigan and Danny O'Neill. Farrell repeatedly claimed that, in the tradition of Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, and Sherwood Anderson, he wrote out of his own life, feelings, and experiences--sources, he believed, to which writers had to remain devoted. Hence most of his fifty-odd books focus on his Irish-American origins on Chicago's South Side. Farrell has often been dismissed as of limited importance because of his alleged dedication to the literary-philosophic theory labeled "naturalism"; however, Edgar M. Branch has more accurately described Farrell as a critical realist, "representing characters in a definite time and place and in complex relationship to other individuals. He has shown their destinies being shaped by the milieu and the period, by their particular roles in society, and by their qualities of character." Farrell consequently...