Tough Stuff

THE YOUNG MANHOOD OF STUDS LONIGAN--James T. Farrell--Vanguard ($2.50). Author Farrell is already a little out of date. Though brutally realistic novels with tough slum heroes will doubtless continue to be written, their day is waning with the reading public. Of their departing kind The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan is a worthy example. The Lonigans were decent Irish Catholics, dwellers in a poor Chicago neighborhood. But they thought of themselves as citizens of no mean city. Young Studs took to his tough environment like an alley-cat to a garbage can--fought, smoked, played football in vacant lots, shot pool, went with whores, drank rotgut, occasionally made his confession. In his weaker moments Studs sometimes asked himself what the hell it was all about, even fell in love with a nice girl. But the nice girl married somebody else and Studs's musings never came to anything. By & large he was well content to be one of the boys and proud of his reputation as a hard guy. Then the neighborhood began to lose caste with an invasion of Negroes. When the Lonigans moved out the old gang broke up. On a sentimental journey back to his boyhood streets Studs saw that his world's base had been built on stubble, felt to his secret horror that he himself was growing soft, slack, ignoble.

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