Order this book from Amazon.com Studs Lonigan James T. Farrell New York City: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1935 Recommended by: Tom Wolfe The first time I started reading things like novels, I was probably 14 or 15. And my first great discovery, in my mind, was James T. Farrell, who had written the Studs Lonigan books. You don't hear anything about them much anymore, but the first volume of the three Studs Lonigan books -- it's a trilogy -- and the first one, which is called Young Lonigan, is so beautifully lyrical. And Farrell is thought of as a kind of plodding naturalist today, if he's thought of at all. But that was an extraordinary book. And it was about a boy about my age. And it just opened up all sorts of possibilities to me. About the Book James T. Farrell's trilogy of the youth, early manhood and death of Studs Lonigan: Young Lonigan, The Early Manhood of Studs Lonigan and Judgment Day. In this relentlessly naturalistic yet richly complex portrait, Studs starts out his life full of ability and ambition, qualities that are crushed by the Chicago youth's limited social and economic environment.