SOURCE: "A Capacity for Nothing," in The Saturday Review of Literature, Vol. XXIX, No. 45, November 9, 1946, p. 20.

In the following review, Rothman deplores the pessimism and spiritual sterility characterizing Farrell's collection of short stories When Boyhood Dreams Come True and Other Stories.

The Studs Lonigan trilogy is in many ways a great piece of work; and the Danny O'Neill tetralogy, although it is less sustained, contains large sections of intense, imaginative, sometimes brilliant writing. That is why so many of us have regarded Mr. Farrell's later books with increasing dismay. The novels and the short stories that have come from him since then have betrayed, most unhappily for those who rated Farrell high among contemporary writers, an ebbing of literary power. They have been marked, upon the superficial writing level, by dulness and fatigue, and more profoundly by a barrenness of spirit. His last novel, Bernard Clare, seemed to...