SOURCE: "Case Study of Dreams," in The Saturday Review of Literature, Vol. XXXIII, No. 49, December 9, 1950, p. 16.

In the following review of An American Dream Girl, Algren argues that Farrell's lack of emotional involvement in his writing is an artistic failing.

"Work, senseless dates, fears, terrors, with near breakdowns every six months," Farrell describes the dream-girl of his title story, "she would go to bed and there lie in terror of something unreal and unseen, and she would get up at all hours and take taxicabs just to be with anyone who would lie with her and hold her . . . tell her she was a good girl and that she wasn't alone. This was her life."

Nor, as his readers are long aware, is there a great deal more than this to the lives of Farrell's other dream-boys and dream-girls. Under his compassionless prose and belabored cataloging we feel in...