SOURCE: "The Bitter Bread of James T. Farrell," in The New York Herald Tribune Books, May 17, 1937, p. 6.

In the following review of Can All This Grandeur Perish? and Other Stories, Kazin finds much to condemn and praise in Farrell's short stories; repulsed by the sordidness of Farrell's soulless characters, he is nonetheless intrigued by the brutal honesty of his characterizations.

There are seventeen stories in this volume, and most of them are crumbs from Mr. Farrell's usually lavish table. Whether you will find them nourishing or not, however, depends a good deal on whether you find Mr. Farrell's bitter bread palatable at all. If you feel that it is somehow indecent to write of human beings as if they stalked a menagerie; if you believe, as so many excellent people do, that Mr. Farrell's characters should not be allowed into the respectable society of the novel at all...