{"id":131,"date":"2006-01-19T16:08:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-19T16:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading2\/?p=131"},"modified":"2006-01-19T16:08:00","modified_gmt":"2006-01-19T16:08:00","slug":"studs-lonigan-trilogy-by-james-t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/2006\/01\/studs-lonigan-trilogy-by-james-t.html","title":{"rendered":"Studs Lonigan: a Trilogy by James T Farrell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rarely have I been so excited to finish a book as I was Studs Lonigan<\/a>. It doesn’t help that it was three books, more than 900 pages in all. The first and third books weren’t so bad but the middle one was pretty tedious, and overall it was about 700 more pages of Studs than I needed.<\/p>\n

The book is set prior to and during the depression in Chicago amongst Irish Catholics. Of all the socio-economic groups in the world, the Irish Catholics are probably the one I relate to the least. I shouldn’t even read books about them. It just pisses me off. Religion can be very, very bad for you and Irish Catholics are the best example of that I can think of. <\/p>\n

On top of not having any innate sympathy for the denizens of Farrell’s Chicago neighborhood, I absolutely loathed Studs, who’s a petty minded, prejudiced, vile little nothing of a boy\/man. He’s supposed to be “everyman” but he’s not any man I know or would care to associate with. Even giving him allowance for being a product of his environment, he’s a particularly poor product of it. The book is peppered with people who manage to do better. <\/p>\n

In the first book, two things happen: he kisses a girl and he wins a fist fight. In the second book, nothing happens. He spends a lot of time remembering how he kissed a girl and won a fight. In the third book, some stuff happens again. I realize this is meant to be a slice of life but it’s nine fucking hundred pages of slice of life. How is this book on the 100 Best list?<\/p>\n

Oh well, it’s still a million times better than Unnatural Exposure. At least what plot it does have is believable and the characters, while not sympathetic, are real and original. What I mean to say is that this is a very well done book about a lousy guy and his lousy life which he fritters away anyway. The writing is excellent. The point is hammered home (and hammered and hammered). The detail is amazing and the picture is drawn with breathtaking clarity. I’m just glad I’m done with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rarely have I been so excited to finish a book as I was Studs Lonigan. It doesn’t help that it was three books, more than 900 pages in all. The first and third books weren’t so bad but the middle one was pretty tedious, and overall it was about 700 more pages of Studs than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-100-best","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawnalguard.com\/reading\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}